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Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
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Paradox Lost

Unraveling the Puzzle of Simpatía

Nairán Ramírez-Esparza

University of Texas at Austin, nairan{at}gmail.com

Samuel D. Gosling

University of Texas at Austin

James W. Pennebaker

University of Texas at Austin

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.

Key Words: Simpatía • Agreeableness • Hispanics • cross-cultural • personality • self-reports • bilinguals

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 6, 703-715 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0022022108323786
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