̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Nottingham Trent ̽��ֱ��

Brits still associate working-class accents with criminal behaviour – study warns of bias in the criminal justice system

ta385 — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Research led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, in collaboration with Nottingham Trent ̽��ֱ��, raises serious concerns about bias in the UK criminal justice system due to negative stereotyping of accents.

These stereotypes, the researchers argue, can affect all parts of the system from arrest to sentencing, and undermine not only suspects and defendants, but also the testimony of witnesses. ̽��ֱ��study is particularly concerned about accented speakers being incorrectly selected from voice identification parades.

̽��ֱ��findings, published in Frontiers in Communication, suggest that despite progress in equality and diversity in some parts of British life, including ‘working-class’ and regional accents becoming more prominent on television and radio, harmful stereotypes remain.

“Our findings bring into sharp focus the disadvantage that speakers of some accents may still face in the criminal justice system,” said lead author, Alice Paver, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Phonetics Laboratory and Jesus College, Cambridge.

“Voices play a powerful role in the criminal justice system and police officers, lawyers and juries are all susceptible to judging voices based on stereotypes, whether they're aware of it or not. As things stand, listeners think some accents sound guiltier than others and we should all be concerned about that.”

̽��ֱ��test

̽��ֱ��researchers, from Cambridge and Nottingham Trent ̽��ֱ��, asked 180 participants (~50:50 gender split) from across the UK to listen to recordings of ten regionally-accented male voices: Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Newcastle and Standard Southern British English (SSBE), also referred to as RP.

Participants were then asked to rate the voices on 10 social traits – ‘Educated’, ‘Intelligent’, ‘Rich’, ‘Working class’, ‘Friendly’, ‘Honest’, ‘Kind’, ‘Trustworthy’, ‘Aggressive’ and ‘Confident’; as well as on 10 morally ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘ambiguous behaviours’, which included a range of crime types.

These behaviours included: ‘Return a lost wallet to its owner’, ‘Stand up for someone who is being harassed’, ‘Cheat on a romantic partner’, ‘Report a relative to the police for a minor offence’, ‘Drive dangerously’, ‘Physically assault someone’, ‘Shoplift’, ‘Touch someone sexually without consent’, ‘Vandalize a shop front.’

̽��ֱ��study used a wider range of recorded accents, behaviours and criminal offences than previous research which has tended to focus on criminal behaviour in general or the binary of white versus blue-collar crime. This study included crimes which are not class stratified, such as a driving offence and a sexual offence, and is the first to identify links between listener perceptions of morality, criminality, and social traits.

To ensure their results would be valid in a criminal justice context, the researchers created voice samples in a similar way to how they are constructed for voice ID parades. ̽��ֱ��aim was to mimic, as closely as possible, how a juror or earwitness would experience them.

Findings: Status, class and regions

̽��ֱ��results show that people with non-standard accents are more likely to be associated with criminal behaviour but that there is significant variation in perceptions between accents.

̽��ֱ��RP-like accent was perceived as the least likely to behave in criminal ways, while the Liverpool and Bradford accents were the most likely.

Alice Paver said: “ ̽��ֱ��strongest connection we found was between people's perceptions of class or status, negative traits such as aggression, and how they think someone is going to behave, particularly when it comes to crime. This is the first time that a concrete link between traits and behaviours has been made in the context of accent judgements.”

Unlike previous findings, the researchers did not observe a relationship between ‘solidarity traits’ (such as kindness and trustworthiness) and any behaviours. Status proved a much more important predictor of behaviours, re-enforcing the link between social class and expectations of behaviour in the UK.

However, non-English accents, in particular Belfast’s and Glasgow’s, were rated significantly less likely to behave in criminal ways than almost all other accents. They were also thought most likely to ‘stand up for someone being harassed’ (‘honourable behaviour’) and least likely to exhibit ‘morally bad’ behaviours.

Alice Paver said: “Our findings show that perceptions of speakers of regional accents and how status, social attractiveness and morality interact are much more complex than previously assumed. We need a much more nuanced understanding of how accents are evaluated when it comes to different crime types.”

Findings: Sexual offences

̽��ֱ��London and Liverpool accents were rated most likely to touch someone sexually without consent, but they were very closely followed by the RP accent. Participants thought the RP accent was more likely to commit a sexual assault than any of the other offences tested.

“This finding simultaneously undermines certain traditional stereotypes about both higher status and working-class men,” Alice Paver said. “This may indicate shifting perceptions of the ‘type’ of man who can and does commit sexual offences.”

̽��ֱ��Glasgow and Belfast speakers were thought the least likely to commit this sexual offence.

̽��ֱ��study found that participants perceived this sexual offence as distinct from other criminal behaviours. Poor ratings for it clustered with those for non-criminal ‘morally bad’ behaviours, namely ‘being unfaithful to a romantic partner’ and ‘lying on a CV’.

Findings: Newcastle and Birmingham

Previous studies have found that the Newcastle accent rates highly for traits such as friendliness, but this study recorded less positive ratings for kindness, honesty, friendliness and trustworthiness.

By contrast, the Birmingham accent, which has rated poorly in previous research across these measures, performed better than Bradford, Bristol, Liverpool, London and Newcastle in this study.

“Although relatively stable over time, language attitudes can change,” Alice Paver said. “This might be the case for the Birmingham and Newcastle accents. But previous studies have often asked people what they think of an accent label whereas we played them an actual voice. That’s a very different stimulus so we’re not surprised people reacted differently.”

Bringing about change

̽��ֱ��study contributes to the Improving Voice Identification Procedures project. Its team of researchers is currently drafting revised guidelines for voice identification parades aimed at police officers and legal professionals.

They support the use of pre-tests to screen for bias against foil or suspect voices to make sure that they don't stand out as sounding unduly guilty or untrustworthy.

“Jurors are not currently made aware of or warned against letting voice- or accent-based prejudice sway their decisions,” Paver said. “If we're asked to judge whether someone is guilty or not, and they've got a particular accent, we need to be sure we're not making that judgment because we think they sound like a bad guy.”

̽��ֱ��researchers hope that future studies will examine even more offence types; further explore the relationships between perceptions of criminality and other, non-criminal, behaviours; and make use of a broader range of voices for each accent to tease apart the effect of individual voices and the strength of regional accents.

̽��ֱ��research was carried out in collaboration with Professor Natalie Braber and Dr David Wright of Nottingham Trent ̽��ֱ��’s School of Arts and Humanities, and Dr Nikolas Pautz, of NTU's Dept. of Psychology.

Funding

This research was supported by the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council as part of the project Improving Voice Identification Procedures (IVIP), reference ES/S015965/1. Additional funding was provided by the Isaac Newton Trust.

Reference

A. Paver, D. Wright, N. Braber and N. Pautz, ‘Stereotyped accent judgements in forensic contexts: listener perceptions of social traits and types of behaviour’, Frontiers in Communication (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1462013

People who speak with accents perceived as ‘working-class’ including those from Liverpool, Newcastle, Bradford and London risk being stereotyped as more likely to have committed a crime, and becoming victims of injustice, a new study suggests.

Listeners think some accents sound guiltier than others and we should all be concerned about that

Alice Paver

Art De Cade via Flikr under a CC license

̽��ֱ��Old Bailey in London. Photo: Art De Cade via Flikr under a CC license

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Illuminating art’s history

sc604 — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 06:00:00 +0000

Faced with the prospect of his rapidly approaching nuptials on 29 October 1442, and with no wedding gift purchased for his bride-to-be, Francis I of Brittany (1414–1450) did what many of us have done at some point: he ‘re-gifted’. He took something that was already in his possession and gave it to someone else.

But this was no ordinary gift: it was an illuminated manuscript, made for Francis’ first wife, Yolande of Anjou, who had died in 1440. Francis had it altered and presented it to his new bride, Isabella Stuart, daughter of James I. ̽��ֱ��portrait of his first wife was covered with that of Isabella and an image of St Catherine was added, using cheaper pigments. Then, when Francis was made a duke, the portrait was painted over yet again to give Isabella a coronet.

Art historians have written volumes on the Hours of Isabella Stuart over the last century, but a cross-disciplinary Cambridge project is using a variety of imaging techniques to uncover this story of re-gifting. ̽��ֱ��team’s work is challenging previous assumptions about this and many other manuscripts, helping them to see and understand medieval painting and illumination in new and unexpected ways.

Combining research in the arts, humanities, sciences and technology, MINIARE (Manuscript Illumination: Non-Invasive Analysis, Research and Expertise) currently focuses on uncovering the secrets of medieval art, but it is anticipated that many of the imaging techniques they are adapting may be used to study other types of art, from a range of different periods.

̽��ֱ��project is led by Dr Stella Panayotova, Keeper of Manuscripts and Printed Books at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Professor Stephen Elliott of the Department of Chemistry, who are working with colleagues from across the ̽��ֱ�� and around the world.

“Working in a truly cross-disciplinary way can benefit art history, scientific research and visual culture in general, while pushing technology forward at the same time,” said Panayotova. “Thanks to the imaging techniques we’ve been using, we can see things in these manuscripts that we couldn’t see before.”

Much of what we know about illuminated manuscripts comes from art-historical analysis and circumstantial evidence. Since they are so delicate and the layers of pigment are so thin, manuscripts are seriously compromised by taking samples, which is common practice for the analysis of panel or fresco paintings. To gather hard evidence about how these manuscripts were made, while preserving them, non-invasive techniques are required.

“For our team, it was about finding new applications for existing techniques, and pushing them far beyond current boundaries in order to analyse the very thin layers of a manuscript,” said Elliott. “Part of our research is in the area of medical diagnostics and environmental sensing, where we analyse materials in very thin layers, which is not so different from analysing a painting. So we could certainly see what the problems were.”

Using a combination of imaging techniques, including photomicroscopy, visible and infrared imaging at multiple wavelengths, reflectance imaging spectroscopy and optical coherence tomography, the MINIARE team is able to peer through the layers of a painting to uncover its history, as in the case of the Hours of Isabella Stuart.

“We do have to adapt conventional analytical techniques to make them safe to use on something as fragile as an illuminated manuscript,” said conservation scientist Dr Paola Ricciardi. “For instance, Raman spectroscopy is a brilliant technique, but it’s a challenge to use it on a manuscript as we tend to use one-hundredth of the laser power that we would on a less fragile object.”

̽��ֱ��technological challenge for the MINIARE team is making sure the imaging technology is non-invasive enough to keep the manuscript safe, but still sensitive enough to get an accurate result. Many of the imaging tools that the team use are in fact not cameras, but scanners that acquire a spectrum at each point as they scan an entire object. ̽��ֱ��resulting ‘spectral image cubes’ can then provide information about the types of materials that were used, as well as the ability to see different layers present in the manuscript.

Combining these non-invasive imaging techniques not only helps the researchers to distinguish between artists by analysing which materials they used and how they employed them, but also helps them to learn more about the technical know-how that these artists possessed.

“Many of the artists we’re looking at didn’t just work on manuscripts,” said Panayotova. “Some of them were panel painters or fresco painters, while others also worked in glass, textiles or metal. Identifying the ways in which they used the same materials in different media, or transferred materials and techniques across media, offers a whole new way of looking at art.”

For example, Ricciardi has found evidence for the use of smalt, a finely ground blue glass, as a pigment in an early 15th-century Venetian manuscript made in Murano. ̽��ֱ��use of a glass-based pigment is not unexpected given the proximity of the Murano glass factories, but this illuminator was working half a century before any other Venetian easel painter whose works are known to contain smalt.

Another unexpected material that the MINIARE team has encountered is egg yolk, which was a common paint binder for panel paintings, but not recommended for manuscript illumination – instead, egg white or gum were normally used. By making a hyperspectral reflectance map of the manuscript, the researchers were able to gather information about the pigments and binders, and determine that some manuscript painters were most likely working across a variety of media.

̽��ֱ��techniques that the team are developing and refining for manuscripts will also see application in other types of art. “All of the imaging techniques we’re using on the small scale of medieval manuscripts need to be scalable, in order that we can apply them to easel paintings and many other types of art,” said Dr Spike Bucklow of the Hamilton Kerr Institute. “It’s an opportunity to see how disciplines relate to each other.”

MINIARE (www.miniare.org) involves the Fitzwilliam Museum, Hamilton Kerr Institute, Departments of Chemistry, Physics, History of Art, History and Philosophy of Science, and Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, as well as the Victoria & Albert Museum, Durham ̽��ֱ��, Nottingham Trent ̽��ֱ��, Antwerp ̽��ֱ��, Getty Conservation Institute, J Paul Getty Museum, National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and SmartDrive Ltd.

Inset image – top: Macroscopic X-ray fluorescence imaging has allowed to prove the presence of smalt, a cobalt-containing glass pigment, mixed with ultramarine blue in selected areas of this early 15th century manuscript fragment painted by the Master of the Murano gradual; Left: Fitzwilliam Museum, Marlay Cutting It 18; Right: Cobalt distribution map; Credit: S. Legrand and K. Janssens, Department of Chemistry, ̽��ֱ�� of Antwerp.

Inset image – bottom: Hyperspectral reflectance imaging in the visible and near-infrared range confirms evidence for the use of egg yolk as a paint binder only in figurative areas within the decorated initials in the Missal of Cardinal Angelo Acciaiuoli, painted in Florence ca. 1404; Left: Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 30, fol 1r (detail); Centre: RGB composite obtained from the hyperspectral image cube; Right: egg yolk distribution map, showing its use to paint the figure of Christ with the exclusion of his ultramarine blue robe; Credit: J. K. Delaney and K. Dooley, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Scientific imaging techniques are uncovering secrets locked in medieval illuminated manuscripts – including those of a thrifty duke.

Identifying the ways in which they used the same materials in different media, or transferred materials and techniques across media, offers a whole new way of looking at art

Stella Panayotova

Fitzwilliam Museum

Francis I of Brittany 'regifted' the Book of Hours to his second wife Isabella after having his first wife painted over

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes