Research: How the “Accent Penalty” Determines Who Gets Heard

In modern organizations, leaders tacitly assume that good ideas rise on their merits: The most compelling argument wins, or the clearest insight gains traction. In principle, expertise, evidence, and originality should objectively determine whose ideas garner attention. In practice, however, influence often depends on something far less visible: a speaker’s accent. Who gets listened to, shared, cited, or followed is shaped not only by what is said, but also by characteristics of the speaker that influence how ideas are received. New evidence suggests a hidden force quietly distorting this process: accent bias. Across a plethora of digital platforms, we found that speakers with nonnative English accents consistently receive less engagement. These findings support previous research that suggests the same bias can affect in-person judgments of credibility and competence, including in organizational contexts like hiring and evaluation. Our research found that the “accent penalty” carries extensive weight in settings where attention determines reach and influence. In public-facing and digital contexts, such as recorded talks and online presentations, engagement shapes which ideas circulate and which ones fade. Even subtle biases in attention can thus meaningfully alter which ideas gain visibility. Evidence From TED Talks To understand whether accent alone shapes engagement in real-world settings, we analyzed more than 5,000 high-profile public TED Talks delivered in English. These talks varied widely in topic, speaker expertise, and visibility, offering a rare opportunity to observe how audiences respond to ideas “in the wild,” rather than in tightly controlled laboratory settings. A clear pattern emerged: Speakers with nonnative English accents consistently received less engagement as measured by the number of views and likes. Importantly, this gap persisted even after adjusting for the content quality, topic, expertise, and visibility of the speakers’ talks. Put differently, two speakers could deliver equally strong ideas, on equally prominent stages, and still receive meaningfully different levels of attention, simply because one spoke with a “less-standard” accent. This finding matters well beyond public platforms. In the organizational world, attention often functions as a form of currency, determining which proposals advance or stall, which ideas are revisited or discarded, and which employees are seen as influential contributors. When an accent systematically reduces engagement, it distorts how ideas circulate and who is recognized for their expertise. Why the Accent Bias Is Subconscious What makes accent bias especially insidious is that it is not experienced by listeners as deliberate or intentional bias. In a follow-up controlled experiment conducted in 2024, we recruited over 1,300 U.S. adults to listen to a short audio clip modeled after a public talk on creativity. The content and presentation of the talk were identical across conditions. The only difference was the speaker’s accent: In one version, the speaker spoke with an American accent; in the other, a Persian accent, carefully selected because while it is clearly nonnative, it is not widely recognizable among most U.S. adults (the TED-based study looked at a variety of accents, not just Persian). After listening, participants reported how interesting they found the talk, how likely they would be to share it online, how engaged they felt overall, how easy or difficult the talk was to understand, and how warm and competent they found the speaker. The results of our experiments reveal that listeners are not intentionally “discounting” ideas; instead, they follow a psychological routine: Accented speech subtly increases cognitive effort and reduces perceptions of warmth and trustworthiness, which in turn suppress engagement. Specifically, the Persian-accented condition was perceived as harder to process and less warm compared to the American-accented condition, leading to decreased levels of intended engagement (e.g., willingness to share the content) among the participants. In organizations, this dynamic can distort whose expertise is recognized and whose ideas gain traction, especially in global teams where nonnative English speakers are prevalent. Thus, the opportunity lies in recognizing accent as a previously overlooked barrier to inclusion, influence, and innovation. When left unexamined, accent bias may quietly shape whose ideas or contributions are amplified, with downstream consequences for decision quality and organizational learning. While organizations have invested heavily in reducing bias based on gender, race, and appearance, accent remains largely unaddressed—despite being ubiquitous in global teams and leadership pipelines. Combating Accent Bias A few practical recommendations for alleviating such barriers warrant mention. Leaders can redesign meetings so materials by all members are circulated in advance, reducing reliance on real-time processing. Organizations can evaluate ideas through written proposals or anonymized reviewers before oral presentations are given. Even small procedural tweaks matter: When a single designated person (often the meeting chair) briefly summarizes each contribution, ideas are judged through a common voice, stripping away cues tied to accent or delivery. And simply increasing awareness of cognitive bias in evaluation can gradually reduce its influence. . . . In a world where ideas are increasingly competing for attention rather than airtime, accent has become an invisible gatekeeper. Recognizing and ameliorating this bias is not about lowering standards or privileging some voices over others. Rather, it is about ensuring that organizations hear the best ideas, not just the most familiar-sounding ones.

Research: How the “Accent Penalty” Determines Who Gets Heard

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