The limits of the foreign language effect on decision-making: The case of the outcome bias and the representativeness heuristic

Abstract

Language context (native vs. foreign) affects people’s choices and preferences in a wide variety of situations. However, emotional reactions are a key component driving people’s choices in those situations. In six studies, we test whether foreign language context modifies biases and the use of heuristics not directly caused by emotional reactions. We fail to find evidence that foreign language context modifies the extent to which people suffer from outcome bias (Experiment 1a & 1b) and the use of the representativeness heuristic (Experiment 2a & 2b). Furthermore, foreign language context does not modulate decision-making in those scenarios even when emotion is brought into the context (Experiment 1c & 2c). Foreign language context shapes decision-making, but the scope of its effects might be limited to decision-making tendencies in which emotion plays a causal role.

The Influence of Emotional and Foreign Language Context in Content Learning

“…Indeed, Anooshian and Hertel (1994) found that participants remembered emotional words better than neutral words in their NL, but not in their FL. This is in line with foreign language effect (FLE) research supporting a reduction in emotionality in an FL (Costa, Foucart, Hayakawa, et al, 2014;Costa, Foucart, Arnon, Aparici, & Apesteguia, 2014;Costa, Vives, & Corey, 2017;Hadjichristidis, Geipel, & Savadori, 2015;Keysar, Hayakawa, & An, 2012, but see Vives, Aparici, & Costa, 2018). Conversely, other studies find the same effects of emotion on memory in both languages (Ayçiçe i & Harris, 2004;Caldwell-Harris, 2009;Ferré, Ventura, Comesaña, & Fraga, 2015;Ponari et al, 2015).…”

“…However, the use of emotional semantic contexts can be a short-term tool in the classroom, particularly during aural exercises or verbal transmission of new information in order to boost memory. Considering the emotional distancing or detachment that has been typically associated with FL contexts (see Costa et al, 2018), the use of emotionally loaded materials or activities in classroom settings could be useful for partially counteract existing FLEs. Note: Numbers in parentheses refer to standard deviation for the FL and NL groups, except for in the final line (Bayes Factor) where they refer to error percentage.…”

The dual-process approach to human sociality: Meta-analytic evidence for a theory of internalized heuristics for self-preservation

“…One is that several works have shown that information processed in a second language does not increase analytic thinking. For example, foreign language does not improve performance on CRT (Costa et al, 2014a), conjunction fallacy or base rate neglect problems (Vives et al, 2018), and detection of semantic illusions (Geipel et al, 2015; but see Hadjichristidis, Geipel, & Surian, 2017). Therefore, if anything, foreign language can be a useful technique to impair Type 1 thinking, but not to promote Type 2 responses.…”

Thinking in a Non-native Language: A New Nudge?

“…According to the reduced emotionality account, our emotions have a stronger impact on our decision-making processes when we think in our native language as opposed to our non-native language (Keysar et al, 2012;Corey et al, 2017;Hayakawa et al, 2017;Vives et al, 2018;Hadjichristidis et al, 2019a). Since emotions might play into certain heuristics or biased reasoning, reducing emotion by actively thinking in a non-native language would allow for reasoning that is not interrupted or distorted by emotional reactions that one would have experienced reasoning in L1.…”