Explicit attitudes materials

The television audio clips, distracter questions, and perceived realism measure were the same as those described in sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.4.

Attitudes baseline stimuli. The first six sentences of the Rainbow Passage were used for the baseline. The Rainbow Passage was selected as the baseline because it captures features across a multitude of accents. Six white male speakers in their 20s and 30s read the selected passage. Two speakers spoke with Midwestern/Northern accents, two with Southern accents, and two with Western accents. The first six sentences (transcribed below) result in a 20-30 second recording.

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but

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no one ever finds it. When people look for something beyond their reach, their friends say they’re looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Speakers were recorded in a sound booth at the University of Michigan using an

omnidirectional microphone and Audacity. All four of the actors who performed the media clips were heard in the baseline. The two Southern speakers were the actors who put on ASE accents in the clips. They were actually from the Midwest. Participants were told they were rating the speakers they may hear in the television clips in a neutral context.

Attitudes baseline measure. The baseline was measured using a 7-point semantic

differential scale. The six speakers were rated on ten adjective pairs. A 7-point Likert scale was selected to give more chance for variability due to the potential for a small effect. Previous research has shown that 7-point Likert scales are comparable to 5-point Likert scales (Dawes 2008, Preston, & Colman 2000) and that 7-point scales are favored in terms of participant usability (Preston & Colman 2000). McConnell and Leibold (2001) also use a 7-point scale in the semantic differential scales in their experiment.

The adjective pairs were selected from previous studies of language attitudes (Giles et al. 1992; Preston 1999; Heaton & Nygaard 2011).20 Five adjectives that group with status and relate to intelligence and five filler adjectives that group with solidarity were selected (Heaton & Nygaard 2011). The intelligence adjective pairs were incompetent-competent, not educated-

educated, dumb-smart, unimportant-important, and unreliable-reliable. Solidarity adjective pairs

were not sociable-sociable, dislike-like, gloomy-cheerful, dishonest-honest, and untrustworthy-

trustworthy.

Evaluation stimuli. The RA debriefing passage was formulated to include a variety of Southern features. The RA was a white male graduate student from Alabama working on his doctoral degree. He was paid $20/hour for his work. The passage itself took approximately two to three minutes to read. The RA read from a script to ensure each participant got the same information and linguistic input. The full text of the passage can be found in Appendix B.

Evaluation measure. The evaluation was populated mostly with filler questions to distract the participant from the true purpose of the experiment. These questions included rating the

20 _{Adjectives were selected from previously existing lists rather than brainstormed specifically for the groups in} question via focus groups (as in Campbell-Kibler, Preston). With the focus on broad effects of television/media focusing specifically on the unintelligence stereotype of ASE speakers, it would not have been prudent to find attitudes specific to the sample at hand. Instead, the focus is on broad effects that could appear in any group across the country.

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sound quality, rating the acting in the clips, and rating the environment of the experiment. Several questions asked the participant free response questions or asked for elaborate further on an answer. The participant was also asked to rate the researcher who gave them instructions before the experiment and the researcher who explained the experiment to them after it was finished.21 The full evaluation text can be found in Appendix C.

The latter rating of the RA is what was truly of interest for the results. Eight adjective pairs were rated, again on a 7-point scale, with four pairs dealing with intelligence and four pairs serving as fillers. Decisions to not include certain pairs were determined by how feasible it was that the trait would matter for a researcher or research assistant. For instance, it would be

reasonable to ask whether a researcher comes across as intelligent and trustworthy, but not to ask about the researcher’s importance and general sociability.

For the intelligence adjectives, dumb-smart, unreliable-reliable, and incompetent-

competent were carried over from the baseline. Unintelligent-intelligent was added. Not

educated-educated and unimportant-important were eliminated as they seemed odd to include in

a rating of an RA hired by the lab. For the filler adjectives, untrustworthy-trustworthy and

gloomy-cheerful were carried over from the baseline. Unfriendly-friendly and rude-cordial were

added. Not sociable-sociable, dislike-like, and dishonest-honest were eliminated.