Researchers uncovering a knack for detecting insincerity in the UK’s north and Ireland have found that locals excel at identifying when someone is being dishonest.
A study examining approximately 1,000 participants across the UK and Ireland found that respondents from Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and northeast England demonstrated greater proficiency in recognizing mimicked regional accents compared to those from southern regions. The workforce’s current analysis is now complete. While a new publication focuses exclusively on individuals from the UK and Ireland, it serves as a timely cautionary tale for those in North America to venture forth and tackle those notoriously tricky regional dialects.
Researchers found that team members exhibit exceptional skill in identifying fake accents, exceeding common capabilities across seven UK and Ireland accents. According to Jonathan Goodman, a University of Cambridge researcher and lead author, “individuals throughout teams are higher than common when detecting when somebody is faking any accent.” Additionally, the study revealed that some native speaker groups demonstrate a greater aptitude than others in recognizing fake accents from their own regions.
The workforce’s audio system featured a diverse range of regional accents, including those from northeast England, Belfast, Dublin, Bristol, Glasgow, and Essex, alongside more common British English pronunciations. Individuals were asked to utter several check sentences, including “She kicked the goose with her foot,” “Jenny told him to withstand his weight,” “Equipment strutted across the room,” “Hold up these two used tea bags,” and “He thought a shower would make him feel comfortable.” The sentences feature phrases that serve as explicit “tells” for whether the speaker’s accent was authentic or fabricated.
Goodman explained that their team collaborated closely with the phonetics laboratory in Cambridge to craft sentences that highlighted and isolated distinct phonemic differences in pronunciation, shaped by unique regional accents and dialects. For example, while some people pronounce “bathtub” as if it rhymed with “path”, others align it with “moth”. These regional differences give rise to distinct accents that can be mapped across the UK and Ireland.
The recordings of individual voices were captured in short, 2-3 second snippets for each person. With surprising aptitude, people from Belfast were found to excel at deciphering fake accents, while those from northeastern England and Dublin trailed closely behind. While listeners from Essex, Bristol, and London were amongst the most inaccurate.
The research suggests that areas experiencing greater intergroup tension, such as Belfast, Glasgow, and Dublin, are likely to exhibit higher detection rates of audio mimics, whereas regions with less social pressure, like Essex, may demonstrate relatively poorer mimicry detection capabilities. While distinct cultural influences shaped accents in Belfast, Glasgow, and Dublin, a pronounced shift towards the Essex dialect occurred in this region over the past quarter-century, driven by significant demographic changes.
There’s another side to the story. While the converse aspect, highlighted in the study, suggests that individuals in London and Bristol may be more desensitized to specific accents due to their daily exposure to a diverse range of accents.
A bizarre medical case from last year’s research recalls a patient with metastatic prostate cancer who inexplicably developed an unmanageable Irish brogue despite having no Irish heritage, according to the BMJ Case Studies investigation. The team ultimately determined that the individual was afflicted with foreign accent syndrome, a genuine condition that leads people to perceive changes in someone’s speech as an accent. The actor’s convincingly authentic Irish brogue wasn’t explicitly highlighted in that particular piece of work.
While recent studies focused exclusively on participants from the UK and Ireland, let’s be honest – it’s futile to pretend to master a convincing British or Irish brogue. I think we’d be better off not trying.
