Previous studies have explored the influence of sociopsychological factors on second language (L2) pronunciation, yet personality traits remain relatively underexplored in this context. Notably, the interplay between speakers’ familiarity with the target L2 and the predictive role of personality traits in L2 speech production has not been thoroughly investigated. This study used a speech imitation task to assess the speech production abilities of 35 L2 speakers of English, who had no prior knowledge in Chinese, in both English (familiar L2) and Chinese (unfamiliar L2). Native speakers of English and Chinese rated the accuracy of sentences imitated by the participants. Personality traits were evaluated using the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (short form) in five aspects: cultural empathy, flexibility, social initiative, open-mindedness, and emotional stability. The findings from a linear mixed-effects model revealed that only cultural empathy showed a significantly negative effect on speech imitation scores for Chinese, not for English. This implies that good cultural empathy may hinder individuals from accurately imitating the accent of an unfamiliar L2, possibly due to concerns about cultural misunderstandings. These results suggest that certain sociopsychological measures may pose challenges to initial encounters with a novel language Time: Dec 20, 10:45 Decision: ACCEPT Keywords: personality traits, speech imitation ability, cultural empathy, second language speech acquisition, individual differences Paper: ✔ Student first author: 200413 Presentation type preference: 200415 Special sessions: 200757 Topics: Prosody in L2 and L3