People with a foreign accent are less credible to the brains of their listeners than native speakers , according to a University of Chicago study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology .
To demonstrate this, a group of North American volunteers were asked to rate the following phrase uttered by a native Englishman and a non-native Englishman: "A giraffe can live without water for longer than a camel." The participants gave the natives a score of 7.5 in credibility , while those who expressed themselves with an accent obtained only 6.84 .
"The results of this research have important implications at a time of great international mobility, in which millions of people speak in a non-native language on a daily basis," explains Boaz Keysar, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and an expert in communication. According to Keysar and his colleagues, the accent could reduce immigrants' chances of finding employment, affect the credibility of some witnesses in a jury trial, or condition the perception of the veracity of the news narrated by a reporter "with accent". And all unconsciously.
