Paradox Lost

Simpatía is a cultural script that characterizes Hispanics as agreeable, friendly, sympathetic, and polite. However, on self-reports Hispanics score lower on Simpatía/Agreeableness than do non-Hispanics. This study reveals that it is the modesty within Simpatía that accounts for these paradoxical findings by driving down scores on Hispanics' self-reports. To test this idea, this study assesses Simpatía/Agreeableness in Mexican American bilinguals using (a) self-reports of Simpatía in English and Spanish and (b) behavioral manifestations of Simpatía in a social interaction task conducted in English and Spanish. As predicted, on self-reports bilinguals score lower on Simpatía when the assessment is in Spanish than when it is in English, but they show more Simpatía-related behaviors in the social interaction task in Spanish than in English. Follow-up analyses show that the results cannot be explained by translation artifacts on the questionnaire, response-style biases, or reference-group effects. The paradox sheds light on the complex interplay between culture and language.