A study conducted by Diane Markley and Patricia Cukor-Avila
shows how regional accents can affect hiring. The study involved 56 hiring professionals who were asked to make judgments about potential based solely on how candidates, with different regional accents, sounded. The hirers were asked to judge if each speaker sounded educated or uneducated, intelligent or unintelligent, energetic or lazy, uptight or laid back, outgoing or withdrawn, assertive or docile. Of the 10 regional accents, a distinctive “New Jersey” accent received the most negative rating by hiring professionals. When asked to decide what types of jobs the individuals were suited for based solely on their accents, only 5 percent of the hirers selected the New Jersey speaker for positions requiring a high level of customer contact and more than 64 percent selected the New Jersey speaker for positions requiring little technical expertise and little-to-no customer contact.
Research at the University of Chicago shows that a foreign accent undermines a person’s credibility. Researchers have found that because an accent makes a person harder to understand, listeners are less likely to find what the person says as truthful.
Wharton management professor Laura Huang conducted a study and wrote a paper published in the Journal of Applied Psychology titled “Political Skill: Explaining the Effects of Non-Native Accent on Managerial Hiring and Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions.” Huang finds that entrepreneurs and aspiring executives with foreign accents are passed over for startup funding and management positions far more than their competition. This is the result of the greater business community’s perception that non-native English speakers lack “political skill,” including “effective and competent communication” as well as “the ability to be perceptive and influence others,” according to Huang’s research.
Accents are affected by where you live or who is a part of your life. You accent is a part of you and makes you interesting. It’s important to remember that an accent does not always affect your communication skills but it could hold you back from obtaining your dream job faut il une ordonnance pour le viagra.
