Foreign language effects in personality feedback evaluation

Abstract

Research on the foreign language effect suggests that language context can shape judgement, although evidence varies across tasks and populations. We examined whether perceived accuracy of personality feedback differs across languages among 170 Polish native speakers with advanced English proficiency. Participants rated the accuracy of either genuine or enhanced feedback on their self-actualisation. Enhanced feedback was judged as more accurate than genuine feedback across language conditions, indicating a robust self-enhancement effect. The overall effect of language and the language × favourability interaction were not statistically significant, suggesting that L2 use did not reliably reduce self-enhancement in explicit self-judgement. In exploratory analyses, a significant language × feedback component interaction suggested that language context may be associated with variation in how different types of self-relevant information are evaluated. These findings suggest that explicit self-evaluation may be relatively resistant to foreign language effects globally, while showing tentative, component-specific variation that requires further investigation.