Centre for Decision Research Seminar Series: Non-Native Speakers: Judged More Harshly, Better Content?

Could speaking in a non-native language have positive outcomes?

Speaker: Dr Nicole Abi-Esber (London School of Economics)

Abstract:
Speaking in a non-native language is cognitively challenging, and leads to bias; perceivers evaluate those with a non-native accent more negatively compared to native speakers. But could speaking in a non-native language also have positive outcomes?

Existing research demonstrates that when speaking a non-native language, individuals engage in more System 2 processing, evidenced by economic games and brain teasers. We explore whether this also has implications for the quality of verbal communication. Specifically, we hypothesize that non-native speakers will produce higher-quality verbal content compared to native speakers, as rated by third parties, and that this is due to increased System 2 processing.

Across three studies, we manipulate the presence of accents by creating stimuli in two conditions: an audio condition (where accents are perceptible) and a transcript condition (with identical verbal content, but without accent cues). We replicate prior work finding that in the audio condition, non-native speakers are evaluated more negatively. However, in the transcript condition, we find that this difference disappears (Study 1) or that it reverses, such that non-native speakers are evaluated more favorably relative to native speakers (Studies 2 & 3).

Linguistic analysis of the text in the transcript condition reveals that non-native speakers use more System 2 (analytical) language in all studies, and we find evidence that this explains the effect of increased competence ratings. This work suggests a practical way to mitigate accent-based bias, and also invites a reappraisal of non-native speakers as producing higher-quality and more analytical verbal content.

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