The effect of prejudice control intervention on the hireability of non-native accented job applicants.

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2021-07-13

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en

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As a result of globalization, organizations are expanding worldwide and are hiring people from different countries. Due to the multicultural workplace, various accents are being spoken which differ from the accent spoken by local employees. Non-native accents often evoke prejudices about the speaker based on stereotypes and by raising awareness, listeners may reduce these prejudices. The present study therefore examined whether prejudice control intervention has an effect on the hireability of non-native English job applicants compared to native English job applicants. The prejudice control intervention consisted of a written informative text about how stereotypes are triggered and was tested on a French-English accented job applicant. A British-English accent was tested as the control group. 122 Dutch participants with hiring experience filled out a questionnaire based on an audio file of a job interview. They evaluated the job applicant with regard to hiring recommendation, status, solidarity, dynamism, similarity, understandability and degree of accentedness. The main finding was that prejudice control intervention did not influence hiring recommendation for the non-native accented speaker. Furthermore, it was concluded that perceived similarity between job applicant and the participant, solidarity and dynamism influenced hiring recommendation of the job applicant.

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