Keysar, B., et al. (June 2012). The foreign-language effect: Thinking in a foreign tongue reduces decision biases. Psychological Science, 23(6), 661-668. doi:10.1177/0956797611432178
This article investigates “if and how the use of a foreign language affects judgment and decision making” (p. 661). The authors assume that “two types of processes” (p. 661) can be at work when thinking and reasoning: one type “is more analytic, rule governed, and systematic,” the other type is “intuitive, affective, and heuristic” (p. 661). Based on this assumption, they present two possible outcomes: using a foreign language (a) “reduce[s] people’s ability to rely on more systematic processes … because a foreign language is harder to use” or (b) increases the reliance “on systematic processes, thereby reducing decision biases” (p. 661). The authors believe that “a foreign language provides a distancing mechanism that moves people from the immediate intuitive system to a more deliberate mode of thinking” (p. 661). They analyze six experiments in order to test their hypothesis. Four experiments test the influence of the “framing effect,” i.e. the way in which choices are presented (which then influences people’s “risk preferences” (p. 662), e.g. either to avoid or to seek risk), and two experiments tested the impact of “loss aversion” (p. 662). For each experiment, participants “who spoke the same native and foreign languages … were randomly assigned to perform a task in one of the two languages” (p. 662). They all “had acquired the foreign language mainly in a classroom setting and did not have a parent who spoke it as a native tongue” (p. 662); they were native English speakers who spoke either Japanese or French or Spanish as a foreign language and native Korean speakers who learned English as their foreign language. Participants “who did not demonstrate a clear understanding of critical elements” (p. 662) were excluded from the respective experiment. In the first three experiments, participants were presented with either a “gain-frame” (e.g. “200,000 people will be saved”) or a “loss-frame” (“400,000 will die”) version of a problem (p. 662-663). The forth experiment is the control study for the first three studies. Taking all four experiments into account, the authors conclude that the results “clearly show that using a foreign language eliminates the framing effect” (p. 664). Furthermore, the experiments show “that the foreign-language effect does not depend on a particular native language or a particular foreign tongue” (p. 664). In the fifths experiment, participants were presented with 18 different (hypothetical) bets “that could result in either a gain or a loss” (p. 665). Results show that “they were less loss averse in a foreign tongue than in their native language” (p. 665). However, “language affected choice only when the stakes were higher” (p. 665). The last experiment tested if people would react the same way when their own money was involved. The results from this experiment show that “people are not as loss averse in a foreign language as they are in their native tongue” (p. 666). All six experiments demonstrate “that people rely more on systematic processes … when making decisions in a foreign language” (p. 666). The authors suspect that this “foreign-language effect on decision making” (p. 666) happens because “[m]aking a decision in a foreign language could reduce the emotional reaction, thereby reducing bias” (p. 667).
This article is a good resource for those invested in the emotional aspects of foreign language use and decision making in a foreign language. The authors stress that it would be important for certain studies—and especially internet-based research—to know if and “when participants used a foreign language in order to interpret results accurately” (p. 667). Furthermore, language learners and language teachers can benefit from this article; “the reduction in emotional resonance” (p. 666-667) when using a foreign language can be an asset in the language classroom when discussing difficult topics such as cultural or political differences between countries.