People from Scotland, Ireland and north-east England are better at being able to spot a fake accent than those from the South, a study has found.
Cambridge University researchers found those from Belfast were the most able to tell when someone is mimicking their accent, while people from Essex, Bristol and London were the least accurate.
Dr Jonathan R Goodman, corresponding author of the study from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, said the team think “the ability to detect fake accents is linked to an area’s cultural homogeneity, the degree to which its people hold similar cultural values”.
Around 50 speakers with seven accents of English were recruited and asked to read sentences in their accents, and then to do the same while mimicking other accents.
The range of accents included people from north-east England – including Tyne and Wear – and from Belfast, Dublin, Bristol, Glasgow, and Essex.
It also included those who spoke with Received Pronunciation (RP) – sometimes described as standard British English.
Cambridge University researchers said southern speakers were worst at spotting mimicry.
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Researchers then got the participants to listen to short recordings and determine whether the accents were genuine or fake.
In a further phase of the study, researchers recruited more than 900 people from the UK and Ireland to listen to recordings and determine if the accents were mimicked or not.
For those from Scotland, north-east England, Ireland and Northern Ireland, between 65% and 85% of respondents were able to tell whether short recordings of their native accent were real or fake.
Meanwhile, those from Essex, London and Bristol had a success rate ranging from just over 50%, to 65%, and to 75%.
Participants across all groups were slightly better than even odds at detecting fake accents, succeeding just over 60% of the time, and those who spoke naturally in the test accent tended to spot mimics more accurately than non-native listener groups.
But the researchers said the results could be partially informed by how accents from Belfast, Glasgow, Dublin and north-east England have culturally evolved over the past several centuries.
The authors suggested that there had been “multiple cases of between-group cultural tension” – especially in the south-east of England – in that period, which caused pressure on those from the North East, Belfast, Dublin and Glasgow to “place emphasis on their accents as signals of social identity”.
They then argued that “greater social cohesion among accent speakers may have increased the risks posed by free riders from other groups, necessitating improved accent recognition and mimicry detection – characteristics probably not needed by individuals without strong cultural group boundaries, such as those living in London”.
Researchers pointed out in their study that many people with an Essex accent only moved to the region from London over the past 25 years.
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Dr Goodman said about the study’s findings: “Cultural, political or even violent conflict are likely to encourage people to strengthen their accents as they try to maintain social cohesion through cultural homogeneity.
“Even relatively mild tension, for example the intrusion of tourists in the summer, could have this effect. I’m interested in the role played by trust in society and how trust forms.
“One of the first judgments a person will make about another person, and when deciding whether to trust them, is how they speak.
“How humans learn to trust another person who may be an interloper has been incredibly important over our evolutionary history and it remains critical today.”
The research was published in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences.