We trust people with similar accents

Arecent study has suggested that one tends to trust an individual with a similar accent. However, the study noted that in addition to accent, one’s tone of voice is keenly observed. According to Marc Pell, senior author of the study, “There are possibly two billion people around the world who speak English as a second language — and many of us live in societies that are culturally diverse. As we make decisions about whether or not to trust people who are different from us, we pay a lot of attention both to visual cues and to a person’s voice. Here, we wanted to better understand how we make trustrelated decisions about other people based strictly on their speaking voice.”

The research found that trust-related decisions about accented speakers are more difficult due to our underlying bias for members of our own group. They also discovered that different regions of the brain are activated to analyse whether to believe what’s being said by “ingroup” and “out-group” members.

The brain engages in additional processes in resolving the conflict between our negative bias towards the accent and the impression that the speaker is very sure of what they’re saying. Researchers also discovered that when speakers with a regional or foreign accent use a very confident voice, their statements are judged to be equally believable as native speakers of the language.

When making decisions about whether to trust a speaker who has the same accent as us or not, the researchers discovered that the listeners could focus simply on the tone of voice. The areas of the brain that were activated were those involved in making inferences based on past experiences.