{"id":104723,"date":"2015-11-20T12:35:14","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T10:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=104723"},"modified":"2015-11-20T12:38:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T10:38:59","slug":"an-english-accent-makes-you-more-trustworthy-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/104723\/an-english-accent-makes-you-more-trustworthy-in-sa\/","title":{"rendered":"An English accent makes you seem more trustworthy in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers from the University of Cape Town have conducted\u00a0a <a href=\"https:\/\/open.uct.ac.za\/bitstream\/item\/14042\/thesis_com_2014_yagman_e.pdf?sequence=1\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a>, showing that having an English accent makes you appear more trustworthy in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The study, done in 2014 by Ece Yagman, et al, is based on a &#8220;trust game&#8221;, which was designed to determine how much subjects trust their experiment partners (who are strangers) based on race, gender, or any other variable.<\/p>\n<p>The game mimics a simplified economic transaction: subject A is asked to give subject B any portion of their money (from nothing to all of it). Once the transaction is done, the total money is doubled &#8211; and subject B may or may not return the initial amount.<\/p>\n<p>The aim of such an experiment is determine if subject A trusts subject B to return the initial amount.<\/p>\n<p>In a perfect trust setting, subject A would give all the money to subject B, and once the money is doubled, subject B would return the initial amount, and both would sit with equal amounts.<\/p>\n<p>The specific trust game played by Yagman, et al was to test what impact an English accent would have on trust.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In an increasingly global world, where English is the dominant language, does investing in English yield positive outcomes,&#8221; the researchers asked.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Impact of language on trust<\/h3>\n<p>The result of the experiment found that both blacks and whites that spoke with an English accent yielded far greater investment than any other mother tongue, overall.<\/p>\n<p>However there was a stark difference between blacks and whites when it came to black partners.<\/p>\n<p>Notably, black subjects were willing to part with more of their money &#8211; as much as 20% more &#8211; if their partner was black and spoke with an English accent.<\/p>\n<p>Among whites, though, if their black partner had an English accent, they trusted them less, making smaller offers.<\/p>\n<p>In summary:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>White men offered more to whites, irrespective of their language, and less to blacks, irrespective of their language.<\/li>\n<li>Black men offered more to blacks with an English accent.<\/li>\n<li>Black women offered more to whites, irrespective of their language, and offered less to blacks, unless they had an English accent, in which case they got more.<\/li>\n<li>White women offered more to whites, irrespective of their language, and offered more to blacks, unless they had an English accent &#8211; which is opposite to they way black women reacted.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, the overall study found that <strong>a mother tongue of English &#8216;reinforces&#8217; trustworthiness<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Race and gender<\/h3>\n<p>Previous trust games cited in the document found that there are also big differences along racial and gender lines.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, in 2006, a similar experiment using black and white subjects found that white men were consistently trusted more, and black men were trusted the least &#8211; by both blacks and whites.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest difference seen in that experiment, however, was that blacks were the least trusting overall, making &#8220;significantly lower offers&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Findings from this study point towards a systematic distrust towards black partners, by both black and white proposers, and this is mostly due to mistaken expectations,&#8221; Yagman said.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at gender, Yagman cited international experiments which found that women are the least trusting, while men were more trusting, consistently making higher offers.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Why is English trusted?<\/h3>\n<p>While the study doesn&#8217;t go into too much detail to unpack the &#8220;why&#8221; behind the results, the researchers found that most reactions were due to entrenched stereotypes related to language.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If [a subject] realizes that [a partner] is wearing a doctor\u2019s coat, [they] might change [their] perception quite quickly,&#8221; they said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Applying this to our results, when white students first see a black student, they may send greater amounts out of pure altruism based on a stereotype of lower socio-economic status.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;However, in our study, we speculate that white students\u2019 perceptions change when they hear a mother tongue English accent as they realise that the black partner does not fit the stereotype that they might have created in the first place.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This reaction may account for why black partners with an English accent received lower offers from whites.<\/p>\n<p>With black students, the researchers said that colonial history pushed English into &#8220;high-status&#8221; domains such as politics, media, education, etc &#8211; which entrenched the perception of power, pushing African languages into a &#8220;lower-status&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It can be argued that this fragmentation along high-status\/low-status language manifests itself in the Trust Game when Black students trust their co-ethnic partners more if they have a mother-tongue English accent,&#8221; the researchers said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on language<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a title=\"These are the most spoken languages in South Africa\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/104497\/the-most-spoken-languages-in-south-africa\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">These are the most spoken languages in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Permalink to SA adds Mandarin to school curriculum\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/83847\/sa-adds-mandarin-to-school-curriculum\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">SA adds Mandarin to school curriculum<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Permalink to How will English change in the next 100 years?\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/104045\/how-will-english-change-in-the-next-100-years\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">How will English change in the next 100 years?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Permalink to The problem with making Zulu compulsory for all university students\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/100834\/the-problem-with-making-zulu-compulsory-for-all-university-students\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">The problem with making Zulu compulsory for all university students<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers from the University of Cape Town have done a study exploring how language impacts how much we trust each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":104797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,10636],"class_list":["post-104723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104723"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104811,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104723\/revisions\/104811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}