The effect of language and cultural context on the BIG-5 personality inventory in bilinguals

Studies have found that bilinguals respond differently to personality measures in their two languages, indicating that bilinguals change their personality as they switch between their two languages and/or cultures. Across two experiments, we attempted to investigate the effect of language and culture separately on how bilingual speakers rate themselves on the personality dimensions on the Big-5 Personality Inventory. Swedish speakers were asked to imagine applying for a job either at a Swedish (home country/own culture) or an American (foreign country/culture) company, and they responded to the Big-5 questions in either their first language Swedish, or their second language English, in a 2 by 2 design. Overall, differences on several of the personality dimensions were found, mainly affected by the language factor, generally replicating previous research. These results suggest that separate processes may be driving previously found differences on personality measures in bilinguals’ two languages to some extent, and that these processes affect the personality dimensions (as measured by the Big-5 personality inventory) differently, even if the language variable seems to be the stronger indicator.