Harvard study finds speech accents influence career opportunities

A new study from Harvard researchers suggests that speech patterns and accents can significantly influence career opportunities, even when professional competence is equal. The research, conducted by Kadeem Noray of Harvard Business School and Savannah Noray of the Harvard Kennedy School, examined how employers use familiar speech styles as proxies for social competence.

By analyzing over 40,000 observations, including audio recordings and census data from 1980 to 2016, the study focused on individuals with Southern accents in the United States. The findings indicated that people with Southern accents were more frequently found in roles requiring high human contact in regions where the accent is common, such as the South and Midwest. However, this pattern was not observed in coastal regions.

The study also noted that the correlation between perceived social competence and the social demands of a job was at least 2.5 times stronger when the individual spoke with the dominant regional accent. Additionally, the research highlighted disparities among Black workers, noting that the proportion of Black workers in contact-intensive roles increased by approximately 12 percentage points in areas with large Black populations, while remaining largely unchanged in areas with smaller Black populations.