Would you respect a norm if it sounds foreign? Foreign-accented speech affects decision-making processes

Abstract

Does listening to a foreign-accented speaker bias native speakers’ behavior? We investigated whether the accent, i.e., a foreign accent versus a native accent, in which a social norm is presented affects native speakers’ decision to respect the norm (Experiments 1 and 2) and the judgement for not respecting it (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, we presented 128 native Spanish speakers with new social norms, adapted from the measures imposed by the Spanish Government to fight the Covid-19 pandemic (e.g., ‘To avoid the spread of the Covid-19 virus, keep your distance’), whereas in Experiment 2, we presented 240 native Spanish speakers with everyday social norms learned from childhood (e.g., ‘Not littering on the street or in public places’), that have an intrinsic cultural and linguistic link. In Experiment 1, the norms were uttered either in a native accent, or in a foreign accent unfamiliar to our participants to avoid stereotypes. In Experiment 2, we added an accent negatively perceived in Spain to assess the role of language attitudes on decision making. Overall, accent did not directly impact participants’ final decisions, but it influenced the decision-making process. The factors that seem to underlie this effect are emotionality and language attitudes. These findings add up to the recent Foreign Accent effect observed on moral judgements and further highlight the role of the speaker’s identity in decision making.

The impact of foreign accent on irony and its consequences on social interaction

“…These findings are informative for models of language processing but, as other studies that have shown the role of the speaker's identity on language comprehension, they cannot tell the implication it may have on L1 users' behaviours. However, this is an important question because recent literature has demonstrated that a foreign accent affects the decisions we make (Bazzi et al 2022;Foucart and Brouwer 2021). In Foucart and Brouwer (2021) participants were presented with a moral dilemma in their L1 either in a native or a foreign accent.…”

Understanding the impact of foreign language on social norms through lies

“…Additionally, the FLE in social norms may be attributed to reduced sensitivity to undesirable consequences in norm-violation (Białek et al, 2019). Furthermore, the upholding of social norms can also be destabilized when individuals are exposed to foreign-accented speech (Bazzi et al, 2022). In sum, the collection of these findings indicates that social norms regulating judgments and decisions may be somewhat different in a foreign language compared to the native language.…”

War feels less horrid in a foreign accent: exploring the impact of the foreign accent on emotionality

“…A modulation of emotionality by accent was reported as well by Bazzi et al (2022b). The main focus of their study was the impact of the speaker's accent (native vs. foreign) on the likelihood to respect social norms and the judgement for not respecting them.…”

“…Hence, the choice of the language, that entails speaking in a native or a foreign accent, can be crucial depending on the situation, especially in such contexts where listeners must process a message with a high emotional burden. Although a few studies have suggested a modulation of emotion processing by foreign accented speech (Hatzidaki et al, 2015;Bazzi et al, 2022b), the impact it may have on the valence and arousal elicited by emotion words has never been clearly demonstrated with explicit measures. In this study, we addressed this question by presenting Spanish L1-speakers with audio emotional vocabulary (in a native and a foreign accent) that they assessed both for their level of valence (pleasant or unpleasant quality of a stimulus) and arousal (high or low intensity of a stimulus).…”

“…However, until now, an explicit reduction of emotional response to affective-laden stimuli has not been clearly demonstrated. First, both Foucart and Brouwer (2021) and Bazzi et al (2022b) used materials considered to have an emotional impact on the listener (i.e., norms and moral dilemmas) but that did not consistently feature emotionally charged words. For example, the sentence "Do not litter in the street" lacks explicit positive or negative emotion words, and the emotion it triggers is implicit.…”