Abstract
Accents, along with other cultural features including shared place of origin, helped to increase the number of people with whom an individual could signal cooperative tendencies (Cohen, 2012). Yet as groups became larger and underwent continued fission and fusion, signals of group membership may have become more important to reduce the risk of infiltration (Foley, 2004). We would expect, as the risk of imposters grew along with group size, for signals of group membership to become more complex, and for true group members to become adept at recognising false signals (McElreath et al., 2003). Here we are exploring how well people who speak naturally in 7 specific regions of the British Isles detect mimicry of their own accent. Our findings suggest that individuals are better than chance at detecting accent-mimicry of their own native accents, supporting this evolutionary account.