Brits still associate working-class accents with criminal behavior – study warns of bias in the criminal justice system
University of Cambridge
People who speak with accents perceived as ‘working-class’ including those from Liverpool, Newcastle, Bradford and London risk being stereotyped as more likely to have committed a crime, and becoming victims of injustice, a new study suggests.
- Received pronunciation (RP) accent perceived as highest status and less likely to commit crimes with the exception of a sexual offence.
- Liverpool’s accent most closely associated with criminal behaviour in general.
- Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish accents perceived more positively than regional English accents overall.
Research led by the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University, raises serious concerns about bias in the UK criminal justice system due to negative stereotyping of accents.
These stereotypes, the researchers argue, can affect all parts of the system from arrest to sentencing, and undermine not only suspects and defendants, but also the testimony of witnesses. The study is particularly concerned about accented speakers being incorrectly selected from voice identification parades.
The findings, published today in Frontiers in Communication, suggest that despite progress in equality and diversity in some parts of British life, including ‘working-class’ and regional accents becoming more prominent on television and radio, harmful stereotypes remain.
“Our findings bring into sharp focus the disadvantage that speakers of some accents may still face in the criminal justice system,” said lead author, Alice Paver, from the University of Cambridge’s Phonetics Laboratory and Jesus College, Cambridge.
“Voices play a powerful role in the criminal justice system and police officers, lawyers and juries are all susceptible to judging voices based on stereotypes, whether they're aware of it or not. As things stand, listeners think some accents sound guiltier than others and we should all be concerned about that.”
The test
The researchers, from Cambridge and Nottingham Trent University, asked 180 participants (~50:50 gender split) from across the UK to listen to recordings of ten regionally-accented male voices: Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Newcastle and Standard Southern British English (SSBE), also referred to as RP.
Participants were then asked to rate the voices on 10 social traits – ‘Educated’, ‘Intelligent’, ‘Rich’, ‘Working class’, ‘Friendly’, ‘Honest’, ‘Kind’, ‘Trustworthy’, ‘Aggressive’ and ‘Confident’; as well as on 10 morally ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘ambiguous behaviours’, which included a range of crime types.
These behaviours included: ‘Return a lost wallet to its owner’, ‘Stand up for someone who is being harassed’, ‘Cheat on a romantic partner’, ‘Report a relative to the police for a minor offence’, ‘Drive dangerously’, ‘Physically assault someone’, ‘Shoplift’, ‘Touch someone sexually without consent’, ‘Vandalize a shop front.’
The study used a wider range of recorded accents, behaviours and criminal offences than previous research which has tended to focus on criminal behaviour in general or the binary of white versus blue-collar crime. This study included crimes which are not class stratified, such as a driving offence and a sexual offence, and is the first to identify links between listener perceptions of morality, criminality, and social traits.
To ensure their results would be valid in a criminal justice context, the researchers created voice samples in a similar way to how they are constructed for voice ID parades. The aim was to mimic, as closely as possible, how a juror or earwitness would experience them.
Findings: Status, class and regions
The results show that people with non-standard accents are more likely to be associated with criminal behaviour but that there is significant variation in perceptions between accents.
The RP-like accent was perceived as the least likely to behave in criminal ways, while the Liverpool and Bradford accents were the most likely.
Alice Paver said: “The strongest connection we found was between people's perceptions of class or status, negative traits such as aggression, and how they think someone is going to behave, particularly when it comes to crime. This is the first time that a concrete link between traits and behaviours has been made in the context of accent judgements.”
Unlike previous findings, the researchers did not observe a relationship between ‘solidarity traits’ (such as kindness and trustworthiness) and any behaviours. Status proved a much more important predictor of behaviours, re-enforcing the link between social class and expectations of behaviour in the UK.
However, non-English accents, in particular Belfast’s and Glasgow’s, were rated significantly less likely to behave in criminal ways than almost all other accents. They were also thought most likely to ‘stand up for someone being harassed’ (‘honourable behaviour’) and least likely to exhibit ‘morally bad’ behaviours.
Alice Paver said: “Our findings show that perceptions of speakers of regional accents and how status, social attractiveness and morality interact are much more complex than previously assumed. We need a much more nuanced understanding of how accents are evaluated when it comes to different crime types.”
Findings: Sexual offences
The London and Liverpool accents were rated most likely to touch someone sexually without consent, but they were very closely followed by the RP accent. Participants thought the RP accent was more likely to commit a sexual assault than any of the other offences tested.
“This finding simultaneously undermines certain traditional stereotypes about both higher status and working-class men,” Alice Paver said. “This may indicate shifting perceptions of the ‘type’ of man who can and does commit sexual offences.”
The Glasgow and Belfast speakers were thought the least likely to commit this sexual offence.
The study found that participants perceived this sexual offence as distinct from other criminal behaviours. Poor ratings for it clustered with those for non-criminal ‘morally bad’ behaviours, namely ‘being unfaithful to a romantic partner’ and ‘lying on a CV’.
Findings: Newcastle and Birmingham
Previous studies have found that the Newcastle accent rates highly for traits such as friendliness, but this study recorded less positive ratings for kindness, honesty, friendliness and trustworthiness.
By contrast, the Birmingham accent, which has rated poorly in previous research across these measures, performed better than Bradford, Bristol, Liverpool, London and Newcastle in this study.
“Although relatively stable over time, language attitudes can change,” Alice Paver said. “This might be the case for the Birmingham and Newcastle accents. But previous studies have often asked people what they think of an accent label whereas we played them an actual voice. That’s a very different stimulus so we’re not surprised people reacted differently.”
Bringing about change
The study contributes to the Improving Voice Identification Procedures project. Its team of researchers is currently drafting revised guidelines for voice identification parades aimed at police officers and legal professionals.
They support the use of pre-tests to screen for bias against foil or suspect voices to make sure that they don't stand out as sounding unduly guilty or untrustworthy.
“Jurors are not currently made aware of or warned against letting voice- or accent-based prejudice sway their decisions,” Paver said. “If we're asked to judge whether someone is guilty or not, and they've got a particular accent, we need to be sure we're not making that judgment because we think they sound like a bad guy.”
The researchers hope that future studies will examine even more offence types; further explore the relationships between perceptions of criminality and other, non-criminal, behaviours; and make use of a broader range of voices for each accent to tease apart the effect of individual voices and the strength of regional accents.
Funding
This research was supported by the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council as part of the project Improving Voice Identification Procedures (IVIP), reference ES/S015965/1. Additional funding was provided by the Isaac Newton Trust.
Reference
A. Paver, D. Wright, N. Braber and N. Pautz, ‘Stereotyped accent judgements in forensic contexts: listener perceptions of social traits and types of behaviour’, Frontiers in Communication (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1462013
Journal
Frontiers in Communication
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Stereotyped accent judgements in forensic contexts: listener perceptions of social traits and types of behaviour
Article Publication Date
17-Jan-2025
What do you think ‘guilty’ sounds like? Scientists find accent stereotypes influence beliefs about who commits crimes
Scientists studying the impact of accents on prejudices find that people associate accents they consider more working-class with more criminal behavior
The way you talk says a lot about you — but what people think it says may not be true. While no accent is better than any other, people use accents as markers for identifying and stereotyping social groups. In the justice system, these accent stereotypes could influence perceptions of guilt, leading to discrimination. Scientists collaborating on the Improving Voice Identification Procedures project explored this by testing participants’ perceptions of ten different accents heard around the UK. They found that speakers with accents considered lower-status were considered more likely to have committed crimes.
“We found a strong link between perceived social status and the perceived likelihood of committing crimes,” said Alice Paver of the University of Cambridge, lead author of the study in Frontiers in Communication. “This link was more important than how trustworthy, kind or honest someone was perceived to be. This shows that perceived social class, as judged from a speaker’s accent, is an important predictor of UK listeners’ expectations about behavior, and this might have serious implications in the criminal justice system.”
Anti-social accents?
Paver and her colleagues — Dr David Wright, Professor Natalie Braber, and Dr Nikolas Pautz of Nottingham Trent University — recruited 180 participants from all over the UK and assigned them to one of two surveys. The first asked participants to rate voices according to 10 social traits, while the second asked participants to rate how likely the voices were to have performed 10 behaviors — five different crimes and five moral behaviors, like defending a victim of harassment or cheating on your partner.
The scientists created 30-second collages from recordings of men speaking English in 10 accents: Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Newcastle, and Standard Southern British English (SSBE). To minimize outside influences, the scientists removed names and standardized the collages for speed, pitch, and intensity of speech. The samples were also reviewed by phoneticians to ensure they accurately reflected how most people with these accents speak.
The scientists then analyzed the participants’ responses to look for patterns. They found two major clusters of traits, which they named ‘solidarity’ — traits like kindness — versus ‘status’ — traits like wealth — as well as two minor clusters, labelled ‘confident’ and ‘working class’. The last cluster was the exact opposite of the ‘status’ cluster. SSBE was most highly rated on ‘status’ traits, as well as the ‘confident’ cluster, and the lowest rated in the ‘working class’ cluster.
All the crimes, except for sexual assault, clustered together. The higher an accent was rated for status, the lower it was rated for criminal acts. Sexual assault clustered with negative behaviors which weren’t necessarily illegal, so the authors labelled this cluster of behaviors as ‘morally bad’. The London and Liverpool speakers rated as likely, and the Glasgow and Belfast speakers as unlikely, to display morally bad behaviors.
However, while participants might assume someone is unlikely to commit a crime based on their accent, that assumption may not imply positive, prosocial behavior. For instance, the SSBE speaker, unlike the Liverpool speaker, was considered less likely to defend a victim of harassment.
“We didn’t see a strong link between how criminal someone’s voice sounded, and how kind or trustworthy they sounded,” said Paver. “Instead, there was a much more important link between how criminal a voice sounds and how working-class a voice sounds.”
Additionally, although the SSBE accent was rated less likely to have committed most crimes, that didn’t apply to the sexual assault. This could indicate that the image of people who commit sexual assault has moved away from historical assumptions implicating working-class men, unlike other types of crime.
Talking sense
The authors emphasized that more research, including more voices — particularly women’s voices — and investigating how accent strength affects assumptions, is needed to capture a fuller picture of accent biases. Additionally, they couldn’t rule out that vocal characteristics they couldn’t control for might have influenced their participants’ judgements.
“The team are currently drafting new guidelines for the implementation of voice line-ups,” said Paver. “We support the use of pre-testing to screen for voice bias. We also hope that anyone encountering voice evidence in the criminal justice system is warned against letting voice- or accent-based prejudice influence their decisions. These stereotypes could have real-life legal consequences.”
Journal
Frontiers in Communication
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Stereotyped accent judgements in forensic contexts: listener perceptions of social traits and types of behaviour
Article Publication Date
17-Jan-2025
