By Amir Sepehri, Ph.D., and Julia Smith, MSc

Anyone who speaks a language other than their mother tongue has inevitably had moments of self-doubt about their accent: “Do they understand me? Do I sound silly? Is my pronunciation okay?”

While it’s tempting to dismiss these fears and reassure yourself that no one is judging you based on your accent, recent research suggests there’s some basis to those concerns. Amir Sepehri, assistant professor of marketing at ESSEC Business School, and co-authors Aliah Zewail at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Reihane Boghrati at Arizona State University, and Mohammad Atari at the University of Massachusetts Amherst published a study in Psychological Science suggesting public speakers with non-native English accents struggled to get attention compared with native speakers. This indicates that there’s work to be done when it comes to sharing knowledge across cultures and languages.

In our interconnected world, it’s easier than ever to share your message, but ensuring your message gets heard is more complicated. TED Talks are one strategy for spreading the word, used by experts all over the world and viewed by millions of people. However, not every video will rack up millions of views, and our research team identified the speaker’s accent as a critical factor influencing engagement. Specifically, speakers with a non-native English accent garnered fewer views and likes. This indicates that “accentism” is a major form of bias, and one that has been underrepresented in past research.

While extensive research has been conducted on other forms of discrimination (class, race, gender), we know less about the impact of accents on how people are perceived. While accents are often linked to other qualities of the speaker, such as national origin or class, accentism is a distinct form of discrimination (Hegarty, 2020). Science is starting to explore the topic, with studies on the impact of our accent on how we are perceived at work and the link to stereotypes.

Our research team explored how viewers reacted to TED Talks to understand the accent-engagement link, analyzing information from over 5300 TED Talks. Since TED Talks’ primary audience is young Americans, it’s the ideal context to study the influence of a non-native English accent on how a talk is perceived. To further explore the impact of accentism, we also conducted a lab experiment to examine how American adults would react to the same talk by the same person but with a different accent. A Canadian-Iranian speaker recorded two audio clips: one with a North American English accent, one with a Persian accent.

Does having a stronger accent lead to fewer views?

The results from both studies indicated that engagement was higher for videos with native accents. Speakers with native English accents got more likes and views, regardless of their topic. Those with non-native accents were also more likely to be seen as cold, less trustworthy, and less competent. In turn, viewers were less inclined to engage with their content. Viewers also indicated that they found talks with non-native speakers harder to process. As I [Amir Sepehri] explained, “We saw that stereotypes and processing fluency play a powerful role in perception. Accents carry social stereotypes: They tie us to social identities, and a non-native accent identifies the speaker as “other.” The other effect in play is the role of processing fluency: a “native speaker audience can find that a non-native speaker is harder to understand, requiring more cognitive effort to process their message.” These results indicate that stereotypes and cognitive processing are the key factors driving the impact of accents on engagement.

Takeaways and tools for speakers and platforms

The verdict is in: A non-native accent can impact your engagement. Our research team proposes several strategies for addressing this:

Sites can give equal footing to talks by non-native speakers, for instance, by featuring these talks on the site’s homepage.

The ease of cognitive processing could be tackled by technology: subtitles, real-time translation, and other AI tools to “smooth” voices could all reduce the load.

Raising awareness about accentism as a form of bias and in diversity and inclusion programming, as education can help reduce bias.

We all have accents, and it shouldn’t stand in the way of effective communication. With further research into the impact of accents on perceptions of the speaker, and increased awareness of accentism as a form of bias, we can smooth the way for the plethora of talented experts who have something to say in a language that is not their mother tongue.

Amir Sepehri, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of marketing at ESSEC Business School, and Julia Smith is editor-in-chief of ESSEC Knowledge.