Effect of listener race and gender on the social evaluation of creaky voice

Nonpathological creaky voice is a common and natural voice quality with linguistic function, such as indicating the end of an utterance. However, it is also a target of gender-based prejudice, with studies suggesting that women who use creaky voice sound less hirable and less pleasant. A previous study in our lab suggested that not all listeners have negative attitudes toward naturally produced creaky voice when it appears sentence-finally. Instead, this previous study found that older women were the only group of listeners who rated the creaky voice among young women speakers as less pleasant, suggesting a form of self-group distancing. In the current study, we examined the perception of utterances with creaks present across multiple words and compared perception among Black and White older listeners. For hireability, creaky productions were rated more negatively overall, and an interaction suggested that women listeners had even more negative ratings. For pleasantness, creaky productions were rated more negatively overall, and an interaction suggested that White listeners had even more negative ratings. Furthermore, Black men rated all stimuli more pleasant than the other listener groups. Taken together, these findings provide some additional evidence for self-group distancing, as the speakers in the study were primarily White.