Accentuate the self: Prioritization of self-associated external voices is enhanced by accent matching.

While it has long been established that self-relevant information, such as one’s own name or face, captures attention and is prioritized by the cognitive system, recent evidence shows that even external voices can elicit the Self-Prioritization Effect (SPE), with voices labelled as belonging to ‘you’ prompting faster responses than those assigned to a ‘friend’ or ‘stranger’ (Payne et al., 2021). This effect can be further enhanced when participants are given agency to choose their self-associated voice, strengthening the connection to self through a sense of ownership. In the current study, we investigate whether greater links to self, in the form of accent matching between external voices and participants’ own accents, enhance this self-bias. In Exp 1 (N = 140), we found that accent-matched self-associated voices elicited a stronger SPE than mismatched voices. In Exp 2 (N = 70), combining accent matching with agency - allowing participants to choose their self-associated voice - further amplified the SPE, demonstrating that these effects are additive. These findings highlight the role of accent as a social marker in self-prioritization and have implications for the development of personalized voice-based technologies.