The language we use affects the decisions we make, according to a new study. Participants made more rational decisions when money-related choices were posed in a foreign language that they had learned in a classroom setting than when they were asked in a native tongue.

To study how language affects reasoning, University of Chicago psychologists looked at a well-known phenomenon: people are more risk-averse when an impersonal decision (such as which vaccine to administer to a population) is presented in terms of a potential gain than when it is framed as a potential loss even when the outcomes are equivalent. In the study, published online in April in Psychological Science, native English speakers who had learned Japanese, native Korean speakers who had learned English and native English speakers studying French in Paris all surrendered to the expected bias when they encountered the question in their native tongue. In their foreign language, however, the bias disappeared.

A second set of experiments tested another cognitive bias—we anticipate a personal loss will be more painful than an identical gain will be pleasant, so the benefit of winning must be disproportionately large for us to take a bet (such as gambling with our own money). Again, the foreign-language effect prevailed in two different experiments, one with native Korean speakers and one with native English speakers. The Koreans took more hypothetical bets in English than Korean, and the native English speakers took more real bets in Spanish than they did in English.

“When people use a foreign language, their decisions tend to be less biased, more analytic, more systematic, because the foreign language provides psychological distance,” lead author Boaz Keysar suggests. Cognitive biases are rooted in emotional reactions, and thinking in a foreign language helps us disconnect from these emotions and make decisions in a more economically rational way. This study did not consider, however, the instances in which emotional engagement im-proves, rather than hinders, our choices: “We have an emotional system for a good reason,” Keysar says.

This article was originally published with the title Reasoning Is Sharper in a Foreign Language.

18 Comments

1. 1. gesimsek 02:00 PM 11/25/12

   I think the question is how homosapiens survived before they acquaired language despite the lack of natural instincts

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2. 2. RSchmidt in reply to gesimsek 03:03 PM 11/25/12

   @gesimsek, what makes you think we have no natural instincts?

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3. 3. In-Tokyo 05:09 PM 11/25/12

   It may be that sometimes a foreign language provides psychological distance, but EXACTLY the OPPOSITE is also sometimes true.
   
   My wife for instance can be completely irrational in her 2nd language English, and only realize how irrational she is being when the discussion is changed to her native language.
   
   I wish someone would publish research studying her!!!!

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4. 4. l8learner 07:18 PM 11/25/12

   That's really interesting! What's her native language?
   
   I realize I'm more rational in a second language because I'm not very fluent, so I think more about what I say.

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5. 5. In-Tokyo 08:58 PM 11/25/12

   Her native language is Japanese.
   
   I think rather she is emotionally involved with me in English but not in Japanese. We do speak Japanese as our life requires it but mostly our relationship is in English, so switching to her native tongue may have in fact been switching to her second emotional language.
   
   In any case, the known cognitive benefits of being a balanced bilingual are increased cognitive flexibility and these findings seem generally consistent with that.

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6. 6. astoria17 09:49 PM 11/25/12

   I totally agree with this statement as a whole, because I have long wondered reason why it feels so different when I speak on my native tongue and foreign language. This reveals the fact that non-native English speakers learn English will benefit their thinking process, as well as native English speakers learn foreign language, eliminating the excuse that English speaker not learning foreign language as no-use. However, I strongly expect that the study will continue because I believe that there are differences in language that has rationality itself and language that does not. Asian language tend to be less grammatically strict compared to language in Europe. This lead people's thinking process more to emotional or logical way.

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7. 7. diducthat 07:05 AM 11/26/12

   I wonder does the structure of the language itself provide different modes of thinking. When I was learning physics in England there was a course in "Russian for Physicists". The rational was that in Russia there was a great deal of theoretical work to be read in physics and chemistry and it was best appreciated in the original language.
   
   Maybe this is why Germany excels in engineering.

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8. 8. rshoff 12:20 PM 11/26/12

   It seems to me that when we learn language as children from the people around us, we also learn their bias. How and when the words are used means as much as the words themselves. That is why we can never be learn a second language as well as native speaker. A native speaker has so much more context (and bias) connected to each word or phrase. The more abstract the conversation, the more apparent it becomes.

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9. 9. diducthat 05:22 PM 11/26/12

   I think there may be a deal of truth in what you say (rshoff) and it neatly explains in-Tokyo's report about his partner. What about the bias in the children of bi-lingual couples? Would these kids then automatically switch between languages (in their minds) in order to add clarity to their thinking?

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10. 10. GabrielleD 02:52 AM 11/27/12

    I agree with the "analysis dominates decision-making" part, but I don't quite understand where the "psychological distance" thing came from. It could very well be that the second language acquired is just more structurally acquired for some people. I for one am a complete bilingual in both Japanese and English (meaning, I can write theses in both languages, and native English speakers assume I am one as well). Acquiring a language involves structuring certain linguistic algorithms in your head that is derived from million patterns one encounters, and that requires analysis and deduction. It is therefore more likely that the second language requires more use of analysis, deconstruction and reconstruction, which also allows the decision-maker to analyse the pros/cons of the choices.
    
    Granted, this is only under the caveat that both languages are at the same level of mastery, as most often logic is dictated in the head by some sort of language. Therefore it might be easier to construe logical implications in a more familiar language. As the mastery level is not indicated in this article, it is difficult to say just how much this factors in. But as a bilingual of two completely different language systems, I find "psychological distance" too simplistic of an explanation to fully explain why choice-making patterns differ when language switches from one to another.

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11. 11. ReasonForAll in reply to In-Tokyo 08:57 PM 11/27/12

    @In-Tokyo: Before scientists take it upon themselves to determine whether or not your wife presents a case worth studying, you would need to provide more context to clarify whether or not she is actually being irrational.

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12. 12. Olga Werby 03:30 PM 11/28/12

    I think the language difference is only present for those who are not immersed in it or are using the language as their primary language. I've learned English as an adult, but I would image that I would suffer from the same decision-making flaws as native English speakers -- I've used English as my primary language for too many years. It might be interesting to find out how long one would have to know/use a language before the psychological failures start to dominate the decision-making.

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13. 13. bucketofsquid in reply to ReasonForAll 03:30 PM 11/29/12

    Good point! My schizophrenic friend is convinced everyone else is crazy.

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14. 14. carthage 05:27 PM 12/1/12

    Oh Yes ! in deed !
    We tunisian are multi-language skilled people, we speak usually the tunisian language"Tounsi"(which is the origin or the maltese language), and when we need to do advanced mathematics or physics (sciences in general) we use french and it more analytic and more systematic for us, and if we want to be more emotional we speak arabic that we learned at school(offered because of geo-political/historical reasons). in my case I speack also 5 other languages and I think really that the foreign language provides psychological distance, for example english and german for engineering and french for religion and philosophy, Cognitive biases are rooted in emotional reactions, and thinking in a foreign language helps us disconnect from these emotions and make decisions in a more economically rational way.

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15. 15. jackvandijk 10:49 AM 12/10/12

    ..but we have to keep in mind that English as a language is a blah-blah construction. I experience it as a label language, words are labels and do not have a deep meaning, due to the French/Latin influence. (I am aware that many people will yell at me for saying this, but I do speak three languages fluently (English, German and Dutch) plus some French), although with a slight accent). No I am not a language expert, but love to become one.
    So, please, anyone who so disagrees with me, has to recommend me a study book about language and language learning. I am reading Chomsky, but it is difficult.

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16. 16. jackvandijk in reply to rshoff 10:51 AM 12/10/12

    There are the emotional, the business and the logical side to each language.

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17. 17. Michal B. Paradowski 06:14 AM 12/12/12

    The conclusion that code alternation in emotional contexts may serve a distancing function, as expressing emotions in the mother tongue would be too burdensome and anxiety-provoking, has long been ascertained in research on language-switching behavior, experiences of bilingual authors (think Felipe Alfau, Julia Alvarez, Iosif Brodsky, Andrei Codrescu, Minfong Ho, Eva Hoffman, Jerzy Kosiński, Gerda Lerner, Czesław Miłosz, Josip Novakovich, Anton Shammas, or Isaac Bashevis Singer, to name just a few), and scenes from multicultural marriages, where in disagreements the spouses automatically switch to their native tongue as a language more natural to express their emotions (see for instance Pavlenko 2005; Dewaele 2006). Psycholinguistic explorations, psychoanalytic case studies, and finally their own real life experiences unequivocally indicate that, especially when the second language has been learnt after puberty, for bilinguals the two languages differ in their emotional impact, the first being the language of personal and emotional involvement, and the second the language of distance and detachment (or at least the language having less emotional influence on the individual).
    
    However, the picture is a bit more complicated. Research on emotion-related language choice while swearing (Dewaele 2010; Gawinkowska, Paradowski & Bilewicz 2013) revealed that in the case of expletives, the language change does not have to be motivated by differences in the emotional power of both languages, but by the social norms regulating the use of such expressions: the foreign language exempts us from our own or socially imposed norms and limitations. The findings of Keysar, Hayakawa & An's study quoted in the original text suggest that we might be handling decision-making biases in the same way as our covert prejudices.

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18. 18. Michal B. Paradowski 06:16 AM 12/12/12

    The greater emotional overtone of the mother tongue might be connected with the first emotion experience. Altarriba (2003) hypothesized that emotional expression might be more richly represented in the native language of the bilingual, because emotions were first experienced in contexts in which that vernacular was the primary language. This conjecture corresponds with data obtained from numerous studies on psychotherapy of bilinguals, where the patients investigated did not want the sessions to be conducted in their native language, even when the therapist was bilingual, since using L1 would result in intense emotional reactions, whereas when L2 was used, the patients were calm and distant (see e.g. Buxbaum 1949; Greenson 1950; Krapf 1955; Amati Mehler, Argentieri & Canestri 1990; Aragno & Schlachet 1996; or Movahedi 1996).
    
    Regarding the relationship between bilinguals' use of language and their clarity in expressing themselves, of course, each language characterizes and evaluates objects and phenomena from a certain perspective. In different languages, the relation between words and the concepts they signify may follow different patterns (Pavlenko 1999). Therefore, mastering a second language and using multiple languages in parallel involves the assimilation of new perspectives, extending the available categorization of objects and concepts. Wierzbicka (1996), Paradis (1997), and Athanasopoulos (2001) all showed that bilinguals parcel up and categorize meanings (e.g. colors) in their respective languages in different ways. This suggests a greater richness of their conceptual representations, perception of objects and phenomena in a broader light, more clearly, or in a richer and more diversified way.

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