Americans' Attitudes Toward Foreign-Accented Speakers: The Role of National Group Stereotypes and Processing Fluency.

This study investigates how American listeners' attitudes toward speakers of five foreign accents—French, Hindi, Mandarin, Russian, and Vietnamese—are influenced by two factors: national group stereotypes and processing fluency, defined as the ease with which listeners comprehend accented speech. Results showed that both more positive stereotypes about a speaker's national group and greater processing fluency independently predicted higher ratings of speaker competence and warmth across all accents. Processing fluency accounted for a larger portion of variance in attitudes than stereotypes, suggesting it may be a stronger predictor of language attitudes in some cases. The findings support theoretical models that language attitudes arise from both social categorization-based stereotyping and metacognitive experiences of speech processing, with implications for interventions aimed at reducing language-based prejudice.