Some people have hypothesized that people with two cultures might act like a sort of average between the two cultures. But, instead, they seem to perform cultural frame-switching, operating in one culture or the other depending on the context. “Biculturals and bilinguals are like two people within one,” Benet-Martínez says. For example, in one study, she and her colleagues showed Chinese-American biculturals an image of a fish swimming ahead of a group of fish. But first, each person was primed with either Chinese or American references. Even though the priming was all done in English, people who had been primed to think about Chinese culture were more likely to say the fish was out in front because he’d been kicked out by the group or because the group told him to go ahead and find food for them. People who had gotten the American prime said the fish was going ahead because it is his idead or he wanted to.