Personality Judgements of Australian Aborigine and White Speakers: Ethnicity, Sex and Context

Abstract

Eighty-four male and 84 female high-school students, who were urban whites, rural whites, or rural Australian Aborigines rated audiotapes of Aboriginal and white male and female speakers. Each speaker presented two standardcontent passages representing statusand solidarity-oriented contexts. Aboriginal students rated all speakers favourably, and rated Aboriginal speakers more favourably in the solidarity context. Rural white students, who had more contact with Aborigines than did urban whites, rated Aboriginal speakers more positively than did urban whites. Interactions involving sex of speaker revealed that traditional sex-roJedit6fotypes were applied according to context by urban white young people. Finallyt the discussion presents the possibility of a hierarchy of impressions based on speech, in which the application of sex-role stereotypes to outgroup sp4akers varies as a function of social distance from the group.