The Jetpacker

Do you distrust people with foreign accents?

Apparently so according to a new study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

The research found that people were less likely to believe a person was telling the truth if their accent made it difficult to understand them.  They concluded that the thicker the accent, the greater the distrust.

In one experiment, researchers asked a group of English-speaking Americans to listen to recordings of trivia statements read by nine different people and determine whether they were true or false.

Three of the speakers had no accent, three had mild accents (Polish, Turkish and Austrian-German) and three had heavy accents (Korean, Turkish and Italian).

The listeners had no idea some of the speakers had accents before hand.  They were simply told that the speakers were reading statements prepared for them, and it was up to the listener to determine the truthfulness of the statement.

When all was said and done, the listeners rated the readers with no accents as mostly truthful, the ones with mild accents as a little less truthful, and the people with thick accents as least truthful.

But when asked if they could identify which country the accents belonged to, only a few could.

Ironically, the research was conducted by two dark, very foreign-looking Israeli dudes — with accents.

I won’t get into all the problems with this experiment — maybe the questions read by the people with thicker accents were more difficult, maybe the participants aren’t good at true / false, maybe the listener had no prejudice whatsoever but simply couldn’t understand the statement (or hear it that well) — but I’ve got a few questions:

#1.  I sometimes have no clue what born and raised Americans from Boston or a New York who speak with a thick accent are saying.  Does this mean I don’t believe what they’re saying, or I’m just confused by the fact that they’re speaking English and I can’t decipher it?  They’re not foreigners, they’re just hard to understand sometimes.

#2.  Does this apply to trips abroad?  I mean, if I’m in Italy and I ask a native for directions, will I automatically assume everything they say is untrue?

#3.  If I’m visiting another country, will the locals not trust me because I’m the foreigner with the weird accent?  Should I worry that every Italian will look at me like I’m a bag of lies who can’t be trusted?  As a result, should I not travel at all?

Gimme a break.  The harder it is to understand someone, the more fun it is.  It’s like a game of charades without the competitive spirit.

Get out there.  Travel.  And trust the people with the accents.  Unless they tell you to walk down a strange dark alley with blood splattered on the wall.