Research has shown that faces and voices shape impression formation. The findings suggest that theoretical contradictions are a consequence of methodological choices, which reflect distinct aspects of social information processing. Importantly, the effects varied across ages, with younger adults showing no effects of ethnicity in either task. In contrast, Asian speakers received the most negative accent ratings across all accents, consistent with a bias-based view, but group distinctions again came into play here, with the effect most pronounced in older adults, and limited to standard German for teens. In line with exemplar models, repetition accuracy increased when the expected and perceived speech matched, but the effect was limited to the foreign accent, and-at the group level-to teens and older adults. To address these accounts, and to assess ethnicity effects across different age groups, three non-university populations (n = 172) were primed with photographs of Asian and white European women and asked to repeat and rate utterances spoken in three accents (Korean-accented German, a regional German accent, standard German), all embedded in background noise. when ethnicity and speech clash with listeners' expectations. In contrast, exemplar models of socially indexed speech perception suggest that such negative effects arise only when a contextual cue to the social identity is misleading, i.e. Bias-based accounts assume conscious misunderstanding of native speech in the case of a speaker classification as nonnative, resulting in negative ratings and poorer comprehension. They also allow predicting reactions to ethnically mixed people, who are increasingly present in modern societies.Īn unresolved issue in social perception concerns the effect of perceived ethnicity on speech processing. Findings demonstrate the importance of studying the combination and sequence of different types of information in impression formation. However, the sequence in which information was presented mattered: When heard first and then seen, his evaluations dropped (Experiment 1b). When a job candidate looked foreign, but later spoke with a native accent, his evaluations rose and he was evaluated best of all candidates (Experiment 1a). We show that evaluations of expectancy-violating people shift in the direction of the added information. We examine how varying accent and appearance information about people affects evaluations. If accents were studied, it was often done in isolation (i.e., detached from appearance). Most research on person perception has focused on appearance, overlooking accents that are equally important social cues. Psychological research has neglected people whose accent does not match their appearance.