Multiple Personality When You Speak Different Language

According to a research study published in the in the Journal of Consumer Research, people who are bi-cultural and speak two different languages can shift their personalities when they switch one language to another. In the study researchers found significant changes in one’s self perception called “frame-shifting” in bi-cultural participants who speak Spanish and English. Bi-cultural people switch frames more quickly and easily than those who are bilingual monoculturals. In the research women who came from Spanish background perceived themselves as more assertive when they spoke Spanish than when they spoke English.

In one of the studies, participants saw the ads in one language and in six months later, they saw the same ads in the other language. The participants saw an ad’s main character as a risk-taking, independent woman in the Spanish version and hopeless, lonely, confused woman in the English version.