How accents sway the scales of justice: Study reveals bias in perceptions of guilt

(CN) — The way we speak says a lot about us, but what people think it says may not always be true.

Accents often indicate where we’re from, our social status, and sometimes even whether we’re likely to commit a crime. In the justice system, those assumptions can lead to bias. The way we speak could hold much more power than we realize — for better or worse.

A study published Thursday in Frontiers in Communication by scientists at the University of Cambridge and Nottingham Trent University highlights just how much these perceptions can influence judgments—with potential consequences for the justice system.

According to researchers, accents that are considered “lower status” were linked to a higher likelihood of being judged as having committed crimes.

Alice Paver, the lead author of the study, said this connection reveals a strong bias based on perceived social status rather than a person’s actual character or behavior.

“We found a strong link between perceived social status and the perceived likelihood of committing crimes,” Paver said in a statement accompanying the study. “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 U.K. listeners’ expectations about behavior, and this might have serious implications in the criminal justice system.”

Scientists recruited 180 participants from across Britain to listen to 10 different accents, including those from Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Newcastle, and Standard Southern British English.

The participants were asked to rate the voices based on two main traits: social status and personality. They were also asked to assess how likely they thought the speaker was to commit certain crimes, such as theft, fraud, or assault, as well as moral behaviors, like defending a victim of harassment or cheating on a partner.

Researchers found a clear divide between accents associated with high social status, like Standard Southern British English, and those linked to lower status, like accents from areas such as Glasgow or Belfast.

The participants were more likely to associate these “lower-status” accents with criminal behavior, even though the speakers’ actual intentions or actions were never heard.

According to researchers, the accents from London and Liverpool were rated as more likely to display negative or morally bad behaviors, including cheating or failing to defend a victim.

Meanwhile, accents from Glasgow and Belfast were considered less likely to exhibit these behaviors. SSBE, on the other hand, was rated as least likely to have committed crimes.

The accents played a larger role in how participants judged criminality than any other trait, such as trustworthiness or kindness.

“We didn’t see a strong link between how criminal someone’s voice sounded, and how kind or trustworthy they sounded,” Paver said. “Instead, there was a much more important link between how criminal a voice sounds and how working-class a voice sounds.”

One of the more surprising findings was the connection between certain accents and behaviors deemed morally “bad” but not necessarily criminal, like cheating on a partner.

SSBE speakers were less likely to be seen as defending a victim of harassment, despite being less likely to be associated with actual crime.

According to researchers, this paints a complicated picture of how accents influence our judgments of behavior, not just criminality.

Accent bias in the justice system

It’s important to tackle accent-based bias in the justice system, said Paver, because these stereotypes can have real legal consequences. These biases could impact judgments, shaping how people see guilt, witness credibility, and even sentence severity.

“The team are currently drafting new guidelines for the implementation of voice line-ups,” she said. “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 findings open up larger questions about systemic discrimination and its effects on decision-making in the criminal justice system.

The researchers plan to look into how the strength of an accent might affect listeners’ perceptions, and how these biases show up in real-world situations like courtrooms and policing.

“Like other forms of prejudice, stereotypes based on accent can play an unconscious role throughout the justice system,” said Paver in an email. “Members of the jury and law enforcement alike might have these biases, which means that accent prejudice may have effects on perceptions of witness credibility, defendant guilt or sentence harshness.”

According to Paver, we often assume we know a lot about a person based on how they sound. But in reality, those assumptions can shape more than just first impressions. They can alter outcomes in ways that affect people’s lives.

“Accent isn’t a protected characteristic," Paver said in an email. “And there isn’t much awareness about avoiding accent-based prejudice, particularly in legal settings. That’s what we’d like to change.”