Does language mastery related to individual’s characteristic? It’s an interesting question to figure out. Many bilingual individuals say they feel like a different person depending on which language they are speaking. How can this be? A new study might shine some light on their claims.

Language plays such a significance role in human life. With language, not only individual perceive his/her experience, but also transfer his/her knowledge related to the experience, to others. So language does shape human’s experience and hence shape individual’s life.

But does language mastery related to individual’s characteristic? It’s an interesting question to figure out. Many bilingual individuals say they feel like a different person depending on which language they are speaking. How can this be? A new study might shine some light on their claims.

Nairan Ramirez-Esparza, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, charted the personality traits of 225 Spanish/English bilingual subjects in both the U.S. and Mexico as they responded to questions presented in each language. The study ends up with the following conclusions: when using English, the bilinguals were more extraverted, agreeable and conscientious than when using Spanish.

Many previous researches have shown that bicultural individuals can assume
different roles depending on environmental cues. But the new results indicate that character itself can morph. "To show that changes in personality - albeit modest ones - can be triggered by something as subtle as the language you're speaking suggests that personality is more malleable than is widely expected," Ramirez-esparza says.

This study might cast some doubts on whether the translation of the questions is accurate or not, although all subjects were truly fluent with both languages. "The results are significant in that they document the contextual nature of personality," Says Daniel Heller, a psychology professor at the University of waterloo in Ontario, not involved in the research.