Speakers of some accents appear more likely to commit a crime than others - full list
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Speakers of some accents risk being stereotyped as more likely to have committed a crime, new research suggests. The study led by the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University, sought to understand people's perceptions about 10 different accents across the UK.
The researchers asked 180 participants both male and female from across the UK to listen to recordings of 10 male voices from Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Newcastle and Standard Southern British English (SSBE), also referred to as received pronunciation, or RP.
Participants were 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. Those behaviours included how likely they were to: 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 and vandalise a shopfront.
'Some accents sound guiltier than others'. The findings, which were peer-reviewed and published in the Frontiers in Communication journal, concluded people with Liverpool and Bradford accents were perceived as the most likely to behave in criminal ways, while those with an RP accent were considered the least likely.
