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Abstract
The present study investigates the link between multilingualism and the personality trait of cognitive empathy among 2158 mono- and multilinguals. Data were collected through an online questionnaire. Statistical analyses revealed that the knowledge of more languages was not linked to cognitive empathy. Bilingual upbringing and the experience of having lived abroad were equally unrelated to cognitive empathy. Gender and education level were linked to cognitive empathy. Most interestingly, a small but significant positive correlation emerged between multilingualism (operationalised as advanced levels of proficiency in several foreign languages and frequent use of these languages) and cognitive empathy. Further analysis revealed that frequent use of multiple languages was linked to higher levels of cognitive empathy, which could be interpreted as an indication of multicompetence.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers and the guest editors for their useful comments and suggestions.
Notes
1. We are obviously aware of the recent surge of research on the linguistic effects of multilingualism in additional language learning and usage (De Angelis, Citation2007; De Angelis & Dewaele, Citation2011), but this lies outside the scope of the present paper.
2. To avoid taking up too much space, we will only report the largest groups.