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How racial stereotypes impact the way we communicate

Date:
May 26, 2015
Source:
University of British Columbia
Summary:
Racial stereotypes and expectations can impact the way we communicate and understand others, according to research.The new study highlights how non-verbal 'social cues' -- such as photographs of Chinese Canadians - can affect how we comprehend speech.
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Racial stereotypes and expectations can impact the way we communicate and understand others, according to UBC research.

The new study, published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, highlights how non-verbal "social cues" -- such as photographs of Chinese Canadians -- can affect how we comprehend speech.

"This research brings to light our internal biases, and the role of experience and stereotypes, in how we listen to and hear each other," says Molly Babel, the paper's lead author and an assistant professor with UBC's Department of Linguistics.

One of the study's tasks involved participants from the UBC community transcribing pre-recorded sentences amid background static. The sentences were recorded by 12 native speakers of Canadian English. Half of the speakers self-identified as White, and the other half self-identified as Chinese. All speakers were born and raised in Richmond, B.C., which is south of Vancouver.

The pre-recorded sentences were accompanied by either black and white photos of the speakers, or by an image of three crosses. Overall, listeners found the Chinese Canadians more difficult to understand than the White Canadians -- but only when they were made aware that the speaker was Chinese Canadian due to the photo prompt.

Participants were also asked to rate the strength of the accents of the speakers. They were asked to listen to two sentences from each speaker -- one accompanied by the speaker's photo, the other by an image of crosses. "Once participants were aware that they were listening to a White Canadian, suddenly the candidate was perceived as having less of a foreign accent and sounding more like a native speaker of Canadian English," says Babel.

"It tells us as listeners that we need to be sensitive about the stereotypes that we carry," notes Jamie Russell, the study's co-author who was an undergraduate honours student in UBC's Department of Linguistics during the project.


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Materials provided by University of British Columbia. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Molly Babel, Jamie Russell. Expectations and speech intelligibility. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2015; 137 (5): 2823 DOI: 10.1121/1.4919317

Cite This Page:

University of British Columbia. "How racial stereotypes impact the way we communicate." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 26 May 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150526155715.htm>.
University of British Columbia. (2015, May 26). How racial stereotypes impact the way we communicate. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 14, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150526155715.htm
University of British Columbia. "How racial stereotypes impact the way we communicate." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150526155715.htm (accessed December 14, 2024).

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