Discrimination toward Asian Job Applicants on the Basis of Their Accents

U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers from discriminating on the basis of accent unless they can prove that the accent will impair a speaker’s job ability. Unfortunately, employers have used subjective, instead of objective, measures to prove job inability. While previous research has compared different ethnic and racial accents, most studies fail to take into account the magnitude of a person’s accent. In this study, we examined the impact of accent strength, specifically of a Chinese accent, on perceived employability. We hypothesized that stronger-accented applicants would be rated as less employable than their non-accented counterparts, with heavily-accented women rated as least employable. Three hundred and ten participants listened to one of six audio recordings in which a male or female applicant spoke with one of three varying degrees of a Chinese accent and rated the applicant on measures of employability, competence, and likeability. Results showed that strong-accented applicants were ...