Reducing accent bias at work

- Accent bias can arise continually for non-native speakers throughout their career trajectory, from initial interviews through performance evaluations, to promotions and more. And bias begins before anyone even speaks a word. Studies continue to show that applicants with ethnic minority names get fewer calls and opportunities to even interview. And even during the interview, people make assumptions just from what someone looks like. Linguist Okim Kang from Northern Arizona University presented students with two photos: one, an Asian man, the other, a Caucasian man. Then, they listened to a recording of the person speaking. It was the same recording of the same person, but students reported more trouble understanding a speaker that they thought was Asian than they did a speaker they thought was Caucasian. This phenomenon, known as reverse linguistic stereotyping, indicates attribution of a speaker's group membership…