If you speak multiple languages, you might have multiple personalities. Reporting October 15 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, psychologists at Hong Kong Polytechnic University found that native Chinese students who were fluent in English appeared more assertive, extraverted and open to new experiences—personality traits often associated with Westerners—when conversing with an interviewer in English as opposed to Cantonese.

The interviewer’s ethnicity mattered, too. In either language, observers rated students as more extraverted, assertive, helpful and open to new experiences when speaking to a Caucasian interviewer as compared with when they talked to a Chinese interviewer.

The authors argue that personalities are not fixed. Instead the language a person is speaking—and with whom—can lead individuals to take on the personality traits of the culture associated with that language or person.

5 Comments

1. 1. Momus 06:02 PM 5/2/11

   Why the sensational BS title?!
   
   Of course people behave and speak differently i different situation, depending on whom they talk to and how they see the other person. And of course the native Chinese learned and used Chinese when children, used it at home, and in different social situations than they've used English.
   
   Now, if they used different languages the same way, then this would be real weird..
   
   It's OK and needed to have studies that confirm the obvious, but instead of pretending it's a sensation, you may have done some homework and connect it with many other studies on similar subject.
   
   People who speak multiple languages, people who travel, who lived in different environments learn to adapt and behave different. There were studies which confirmed another simple obvious, that people who leave a cinema behave differently depending on the type of the movie played. etc, etc...
   
   

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2. 2. mesmoiron 12:19 AM 5/3/11

   Well this article is challenging. I am a polyglot and have considered myself as having multiple personalities. First of all my mind is very fluid in capabilities. Some say children have an other way of perceiving reality due to the state of their brain development. I say I haven't lost that ability.
   
   So to me multiple personality sounds familiar. It's like dressing up the mind with a new mindset. But it is not like behaving differently because of a different situation. More like the whole set changes in same situations. It also feels like someone else. If I can I would give these personalities different nicknames.
   
   It is difficult to explain something that comes natural to me.

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3. 3. Arrive2.net 05:36 AM 5/3/11

   This certainly reinforces the view that language is a fundamental part of culture. And if language spoken affects personality function, that also supports the "Worfian hypothesis" view that language spoken modifies cognitive function, as well. The emphasis place on retaining threatened legacy languages by Indigenous peoples also makes more sense because speaking the traditional language is necessary to retaining a culture's traditional way of becoming and being a person.
   
   Bart Schuster
   Arrive2.net
   Twitter.com/arrive2_net

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4. 4. HubertB 01:14 PM 5/3/11

   Or as we used to say, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

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5. 5. Jim in Tokyo 11:29 PM 5/4/11

   It ain't the language, you eggheads; it's the cultural context. I'm me no matter which of my languages I'm speaking, and I adjust things like tone and manner for the cultural context of the people I'm interacting with at any given time—I believe the term of art is <i>accommodation</i>.

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