Would your decisions made in a foreign language be the same as in your native tongue? While many would undoubtedly say yes, the opposite is in fact true. Globally proven by many, the FLE opposes the notion that a person would make the same choice regardless of the language the question was presented in. In fact, thinking in a foreign language is known to reduce decision-making biases, allowing people to make more rational decisions.
A foreign language is defined as a language that is not spoken in one’s native country, usually studied in classroom setting.
While the naïve view is that bilinguals are those who can speak two languages with native-like fluency, this “balanced” bilingualism is often hard to achieve. Therefore, in this proposal, bilinguals are referred as having a dominant native tongue, and a second language that can be spoken with certain effort.
Research Topic
I would like to investigate if this FLE extends to bilinguals whose second language is not considered a foreign language in particularly two domains: risk-taking and moral issues. More specifically, whether FLE would be present in English-Chinese speakers in Singapore. The effects of language dominance on decision-making will also be studied.
The research questions are as follows:
(1) Does foreign-language effect only apply if their second language is a foreign language?
(2) Does language dominance play a role in the decision-making of a bilingual?
Rationale
The bilingual education policy was implemented in Singapore in 1966, requiring every student to study the English language and his respective mother tongue, mainly Mandarin, Tamil or Malay. However, due to the different races in Singapore, English has easily dominated our daily lives as a common ground for communication. This has resulted in a stark difference in proficiencies of both languages, with many sidelining their mother tongues.
Understanding the benefits of bilingualism can aid in improving Singaporeans’ perceptions on their mother tongues, thereby encouraging them to appreciate their languages and culture. Moreover, bilingualism can act as an incentive to future employers, especially when applying for career positions which require decision-making.
Preliminary Research: Explaining the Foreign-Language Effect
It is undeniable that language has a strong influence on the way we think and the choices we make. A well-known phenomenon would be that people are more reluctant to take risks if an impersonal decision is presented as a potential gain rather than framed as a potential loss, even though the outcomes are identical (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981).
1. In Risk-Taking
People are generally risk averse, constantly forgoing multiple opportunities despite how attractive it can be. This is so as people are usually affected emotionally twice as much by loss as they are affected positively by gains of an equivalent amount. However, new findings have shown that such aversion to loss is drastically reduced when the decision is made in their foreign tongue (Keysar, Hayakawa & An, 2012).
Typically, people associate their native language with emotions, which may confuse their logical thinking. Therefore, it is theorized that speaking in a foreign language makes people more rational by creating a psychological distance, causing them to switch from automatic to systematic thinking (Jarrett 2012). This lack of emotional connection with their foreign language leads to a more rational thought process.
By regularly making decisions in a foreign language, bilinguals might be more willing to take risks and welcome opportunities, as they exhibit less myopic loss aversion. In the long run, this behavior could be very much beneficial.
2. In Moral Issues
In another study, when bilinguals were confronted with a moral dilemma, it was noted that the participants were more likely to choose the utilitarian option of maximizing benefit for the majority (Costa, Foucart, Hayakawa, Aparici & Apesteguia, 2014). This highlights that using a foreign language affects moral judgement.
Similar to risk-taking, this might be due to the use of a foreign language inhibiting emotional processing. People are more utilitarian in their foreign tongue because they feel less, not because they feel more (Hayakawa et al., 2017). Another possibility would be that more cognitive effort is needed when using a foreign language, resulting in the person slowing down to think more deliberatively, therefore more rationally.
Although rational decision-making in terms of loss aversion and moral judgment has been shown in bilinguals with foreign language, it has not been widely observed in bilinguals with a second language that is not considered foreign. These people are typically early bilinguals who are frequently exposed to both languages since childhood (De Houwer, 1995). Thus, the current study aims to test whether FLE applies to early bilinguals, and how language dominance might affect.
Methodology
I intend to obtain quantitative data through an online questionnaire distributed to target participants. The target participants are 18-year-old English-Chinese speakers of NUS High School. Participants will be randomly assigned to a risk-taking situation or a moral dilemma through the questionnaire in either English or Mandarin Chinese. They will then have to make a decision by choosing from a list of possible choices of action, which will be translated into numbers for quantification. Once completed, the participants’ language proficiencies will be assessed using the Bilingual Language Profile (BLP; Birdsong et al., 2012).
Questionnaires are useful as they reduce biasness that may arise if the questions were asked in-person. This is because unwanted factors such as the way or tone of questioning may influence the participants’ choices. Online questionnaires provide anonymity, which encourages the participants to answer truthfully as they do not have to worry about being judge for their opinions. The quantified data will also allow easy collation and comparison of results.
However, there are limitations in carrying out this research method such as the proficiencies of the participants’ languages being self-reported. Different people might have different self-perceived language standards. Unfortunately, faking of results by participants are also unavoidable.
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References
Tversky, Amos and Kahneman, Daniel, 1981. The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science. 211(4481), pp. 453–458. ISSN 1095-9203.
Keysar, B., Hayakawa, S. L., & An, S. G. (2012). The Foreign-Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases. Psychological Science, 23(6), 661–668.
Jarrett, C. (2012) We think more rationally in a foreign language.
Hayakawa S, Tannenbaum D, Costa A, Corey J. D., Keysar, B. (2017). Thinking More or Feeling Less? Explaining the Foreign-Language Effect on Moral Judgement. Psychological Science.
Costa, A., Foucart, A., Hayakawa, S., Aparici, M., Apesteguia, J. (2014) Your Morals Depend on Language. PLOS ONE 9(4): e94842.
De Houwer A. (1995). Bilingual language acquisition, in The handbook of Child Language, eds Fletcher P., MacWhinney B., editors. (Oxford: Blackwell; ), 219–250.
Birdsong D., Gertken L. M., Amengual M. (2012). Bilingual Language Profile: An Easy-to-Use Instrument to Assess Bilingualism. Austin, TX: COERLL, University of Texas at Austin
Wong, G., & Ng, B. C. (2018). Moral Judgement in Early Bilinguals: Language Dominance Influences Responses to Moral Dilemmas. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1070. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01070
Ludden, D. (2017). How Speaking a Second Language Affects the Way You Think.