Assessing Levels of Mental Health Professional Trust and Other Moderators

A growing body of research investigates social reactions and responses to differences within speakers. This research illustrates that, in general, social perceptions of others can impact the perception of their speech. Building from this research, language studies have investigated these social perceptions on the speech of non-native accented speakers. These studies have illustrated that those with negative perceptions of non-native accented speakers rate those speakers as lower on evaluations of comprehensibility, intelligibility, trustworthiness, and other social measures. The current study aims to expand on this research, first investigating if non-native accented speech predicts ratings of mental health professional trust. Then, to investigate a possible origin of this relationship, the study aims to examine if political ideology moderates the relationship between non-native accented speech and mental health professional trust. It is anticipated that a relationship will be seen between non-native accented speech and lower ratings on social measures. It is also expected that political ideology will mediate this relationship. Once conducted, this research can serve to further inform social responses to speech, specifically focused on non-native accented speech and mental health professionals.