Trích bài báo “Ramirez-Esparza, N., Gosling, S.D., Benet-Martinez, V., Potter, J.P. & Pennebaker, J.W. (2006). Do bilinguals have two personalities? A special case of cultural frame switching. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 99-120.”
By some estimates, half the world’s population is bilingual and many others are multilingual (Grosjean, 1982). With regard to this group, it has often been noted, sometimes by bilinguals themselves, that bilinguals express different personalities when they speak in different languages. Indeed, previous research has even provided some support for the idea that language influences bilinguals’ responses to value-related surveys (e.g., Ralston, Cunniff, & Gustafson, 1995). One of the most compelling theoretical explanations for these phenomena is the Cultural Frame Switching effect (CFS; Hong, Chiu, & Kung, 1997; Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martínez, 2000), where bicultural individuals shift values and attributions in the presence of culture-relevant stimuli.
Bicultural individuals are those who have two internalized cultures that can guide their feelings, thoughts, and actions (Hong et al., 2000 and LaFromboise et al., 1993). Recent research on bicultural individuals has shown that the presence of culture-specific cues can elicit culture-specific attributions and values. For instance, in one series of studies, Chinese American biculturals displayed more internal attributions when primed with American icons (e.g., American flag, Superman), and more external attributions when primed with Chinese icons (e.g., Chinese dragon, Great Wall) (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002 and Hong et al., 2000). Similarly, Hong Kong Chinese and Chinese Americans generated more collective self-descriptions when their Chinese identity was activated, than did North Americans. On the other hand, North Americans and Chinese Americans generated more individual self-descriptions, when their American identity was activated, than did Hong Kong Chinese (Hong, Ip, Chiu, Morris, & Menon, 2001).
Cực kỳ thú vị, và rất có lý! Dù không phải là bilingual thứ thiệt, tôi cũng tự thấy mình có cường độ biểu cảm thay đổi khi nói tiếng Anh: thẳng thắn hơn, chính xác hơn, và out-going hơn khi nói tiếng Việt. Ngược lại, nói tiếng Việt luôn tình cảm hơn. Một trong các kết quả của bài báo là:
We found that bilinguals were more extraverted, agreeable, and conscientious in English than in Spanish and these differences were consistent with the personality displayed in each culture. The cross-language personality differences for Neuroticism were relatively small and the differences for Openness were not consistent with the cross-cultural differences identified in Study 1.