American think people with accents aren't credible.

Subject: American think people with accents aren't credible.

in other news they trust in imaginary guy up in the sky more than in sci.


For the 24.5 million Americans who told the Census Bureau in 2007 that they spoke English less than "very well," it may not be their imagination that people don't take what they say quite as seriously as they do native English speakers. Researchers in Chicago have shown that people with a noticeable accent are considered less credible than those with no accent.

The stronger the accent, the less credible the speaker.

The researchers asked Americans to listen to native and non-native speakers of English making simple statements such as "A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel can," and then judge how truthful they were.

To guard against simple prejudice, the listeners were told the information came from a prepared script and wasn't based on the speaker's own knowledge.

Even so, on a scale where 10 was most truthful, native English speakers got a score of 7.5, people with mild accents a score of 6.95 and people with heavy accents a score of 6.84.

The paper is in the current issue of theJournal of Experimental Social Psychology.

read more about it here http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/07/americans-with-accents-judged-less-credible-than-native-speakers/1