Language and Self

Hier een link naar een recent artikel over zelfde onderzoek als Huib en ik. Language and the Bicultural Self Michael Ross University of Waterloo, mross@uwaterloo.ca W. Q. Elaine Xun University of Waterloo Anne E. Wilson Wilfrid Laurier University Abstract In a study of bicultural individuals’ self-perceptions, Chinese-born students were randomly assigned to participate in either Chinese or English. Serving as controls, Canadian-born participants of either European or Chinese descent participated in English. The effects of the language manipulation paralleled findings in previous studies comparing East Asians to North Americans. Participants responding in Chinese reported more collective self-statements in open-ended self-descriptions, lower self-esteem on the Rosenberg scale, and more agreement with Chinese cultural views than did the remaining groups. In their self-descriptions, participants writing in Chinese provided similar numbers of favorable and unfavorable self-statements. The other groups reported more favorable self-statements. Participants reporting in Chinese indicated similar levels of positive and negative mood. The remaining groups reported more positive mood. The results suggest that East-Asian and Western identities may be stored in separate knowledge structures in bicultural individuals, with each structure activated by its associated language