Want to change your personality? Try learning a new language

Our persona changes when we start communicating in a different language, research suggests

Research that keeps in view the shift in people’s persona when they learn a new language and start communicating in it suggests that our personalities are highly influenced by the language we speak .

A somewhat similar concept was also explained in humourist David Sedaris’s book Me Talk Pretty One Day. The author recounts how he struggles to learn French with a cruel master. As a result, whenever he tries speaking French, he feels weak and vulnerable.

Take for instance the case of Margarita, a Russian-American immigrant, who came to the United States at the age of 19. As she learned the English language, she experienced a sudden change in her personality whenever she spoke it.



According to her, while speaking Russian, she feels “guarded, reserved and uncomfortable”, whereas when she converses in English, she becomes “curious,” “outgoing,” and “free”.

Likewise, Tony, who only knew English and Spanish, started learning French and said when he speaks the language he feels “sophisticated, elegant, suave”.

According to the study, language does affect personalities and the perception we associate with the culture also influences our behaviour. Nairan Ramirez-Esparza, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Connecticut, conducted research in 2006. She asked bilingual Mexican Americans to take a test in both English and Spanish. The test was to evaluate five traits: extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.



When the results came, it appeared that the subjects scored higher in in extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness in English. It reflects that individualistic culture of the United States places more emphasis on assertiveness, achievement and superficial friendliness unlike collectivist cultures such as of Mexico.

“The language cannot be separated from the cultural values of that language,” says Esparza. “You see yourself through the cultural values of the language you are speaking.”

Our personalities also change when we observe how people react to our speaking in a different language. That might be because identity is “your sense of self, but also how you feel others are perceiving you and how that impacts on how you can project who you are,” says Carolyn McKinney, a professor of language and literacy studies at the University of Cape Town.

One might feel very comfortable with speaking his native language during a presentation but will perhaps sound and feel withdrawn while conducting a meeting in a foreign language.

The article orignally appeared on Quartz