Chapter 5: Is Acknowledging One’S Foreign Accent an Effective Strategy to Reduce Bias?: Growth-Mindset Orientation and Continuous Development

Despite the fact that Hispanic immigrants have become an integral part of the American workforce, they are stigmatized due to their foreign accents and are subject to negative stereotypes and biases in the workplace. One strategy that stigmatized individuals might adopt to undermine the stereotyped attributions and biases involves a straightforward acknowledgment of a stigmatizing condition. Yet, there is a lack of research attention on the effectiveness of an acknowledgment strategy on the evaluation and judgment of foreign-accented individuals. Thus, using a 2 (sex: male vs. female) × 3 (condition: Standard American English vs. Mexican-accent acknowledgment vs. Mexican-accent no acknowledgment) between-subjects design and data from 416 participants, the present study examined the effectiveness of the acknowledgment strategy of Mexican-accented job applicants. Results showed that the acknowledgment strategy was an effective employment strategy such that Mexican-accented job applicants who acknowledged their accent were evaluated more positively than Mexican-accented job applicants who did not acknowledge their accent. However, even when Mexican-accented applicants acknowledged their accent, they were still evaluated more negatively compared to Standard American English-accented job applicants. Implications for human resource management policies and practices are discussed.