Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias

Inside the kaleidoscope: unravelling the "feeling different" experience of bicultural bilinguals

This article explores the phenomenon of "feeling different" experienced by bicultural bilingual individuals when they switch between their two different languages. Available data suggests that this experience is genuine and holds substantive value, not merely anecdotal. While on one hand, such a feeling may stem from the fact that the two languages were acquired at different times in individuals' lives (with all that entails in terms of efficiency and empowerment in using the two languages), on the other hand, it seems to entail deeper differences linked to the differential activation of cultural values, behavioral patterns, and expectations when the two languages are used. Its manifestations seem to be influenced by a variety of factors beyond just language choice, including the context in which this choice is performed. Results of studies investigating the experience of feeling different also suggest that it can lead to a sense of exclusion, isolation or marginalization within one's own community. However, this experience more often yields positive outcomes, with individuals perceiving it as enriching and contributing positively to both their personal development and the broader societal fabric. Amid contemporary challenges related to immigration, the study of biculturalism and related psychological phenomena, such as the "feeling different" experience, becomes imperative, as it may provide insights into how individuals navigate the complexities linked to their cultural identities.

Does perceptual disfluency affect the illusion of causality?

When a subjective experience of difficulty is associated with a mental task, people tend to engage in systematic and deliberative reasoning, which can reduce the usage of intuitive and effortless thinking that gives rise to cognitive biases. One such bias is the illusion of causality, where people perceive a causal link between two unrelated events. In 2019, Díaz-Lago and Matute found that a superficial perceptual feature of the task could modulate the magnitude of the illusion (i.e., a hard-to-read font led to a decrease in the magnitude of the illusion). The present study explored the generalisability of the idea that perceptual disfluency can lead to a decrease in the magnitude of the illusion. In the first experiment, we tested whether a physical-perceptual manipulation of the stimuli, specifically the contrast between the written text and the background, could modulate the illusion in a contingency learning task. The results of the online experiment (N = 200) showed no effect of contrast on the magnitude of the illusion, despite our manipulation having successfully induced task fluency or disfluency. Building upon this null result, our second experiment (N = 100) focused on manipulating the font type, in an attempt to replicate the results obtained by Díaz-Lago and Matute. In contrast to their findings, we found no discernible effect of font type on the magnitude of the illusion, even though this manipulation also effectively induced variations in task fluency or disfluency. These results underscore the notion that not all categories of (dis)fluency in cognitive processing wield a modulatory influence on cognitive biases, and they call for a re-evaluation and a more precise delineation of the (dis)fluency construct.

A debiasing intervention to reduce the causality bias in undergraduates: the role of a bias induction phase

The causality bias, or causal illusion, occurs when people believe that there is a causal relationship between events that are actually uncorrelated. This bias is associated with many problems in everyday life, including pseudoscience, stereotypes, prejudices, and ideological extremism. Some evidence-based educational interventions have been developed to reduce causal illusions. To the best of our knowledge, these interventions have included a bias induction phase prior to the training phase, but the role of this bias induction phase has not yet been investigated. The aim of the present research was to examine it. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups (induction + training, training, and control, as a function of the phases they received before assessment). We evaluated their causal illusion using a standard contingency judgment task. In a null contingency scenario, the causal illusion was reduced in the training and induction-training groups as compared to the control group, suggesting that the intervention was effective regardless of whether or not the induction phase was included. In addition, in a positive contingency scenario, the induction + training group generated lower causal judgments than the control group, indicating that sometimes the induction phase may produce an increase in general skepticism. The raw data of this experiment are available at the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/k9nes/

Not all bilinguals are the same: A meta-analysis of the moral foreign language effect

Emerging evidence shows bilinguals employ different decision-making strategies in their foreign language compared to their native language (known as the Foreign Language Effect). When completing moral dilemmas, accumulating research findings indicate that bilinguals are more likely to endorse the utilitarian option. We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate whether linguistic variables (proficiency, immersion, and language similarity) moderate utilitarian responding to moral dilemmas in a foreign language. A systematic literature search extracted experiments comparing binary responses to moral dilemmas among bilingual participants. Analyses confirmed a moral Foreign Language Effect within personal dilemmas, though this effect was moderated by self-reported reading proficiency, whereby bilinguals with higher self-reported reading proficiency were less likely to make a utilitarian choice. Our findings suggest that not all bilinguals may experience a Foreign Language Effect, with low self-reported reading proficiency being the most likely indicator of whether their response tendencies to a moral dilemma change in the foreign language.

The foreign language effect on decision-making: A meta-analysis

In recent years, a growing body of literature has shown that being in a foreign language (FL) context affects the way in which people make choices. This phenomenon is known as the foreign language effect (FLE). The FLE affects both moral decision-making and risk-aversion tendencies, but no cumulative evidence is available. Herein, we aimed to estimate, through a meta-analytical approach, the effect of being in an FL context as compared with that of a native language (NL). We found 17 studies matching our criteria and, in total, 47 experiments were included (N = 38 investigated the FLE in the moral decision-making domain; N = 9 investigated the FLE in the risk-aversion domain). Results showed that FL affects participants' decisions as compared with NL in both the moral decision-making and risk-aversion domains, inducing participants to be more willing to accept harm in order to maximize outcomes in the former and reducing risk aversion in the latter. In addition, two metaregressions were performed on the studies that investigated the moral decision-making domain in order to assess whether participants' proficiency in the FL, or NL-FL similarity, moderated the observed effect. Our findings indicate that proficiency in the FL does not moderate the observed effect, while NL-FL similarity does. Our results support previous findings on the FLE and provide suggestions for future research.

Neural substrates of the interplay between cognitive load and emotional involvement in bilingual decision making

Prior work has reported that foreign language influences decision making by either reducing access to emotion or imposing additional cognitive demands. In this fMRI study, we employed a cross-task design to assess at the neural level whether and how the interaction between cognitive load and emotional involvement is affected by language (native L1 vs. foreign L2). Participants completed a Lexico-semantic task where in each trial they were presented with a neutrally or a negatively valenced word either in L1 or L2, either under cognitive load or not. We manipulated cognitive load by varying the difficulty of the task: to increase cognitive demands, we used traditional characters instead of simplified ones in L1 (Chinese), and words with capital letters instead of lowercase letters in L2 (English). After each trial, participants decided whether to take a risky decision in a gambling game. During the Gamling task, left amygdala and right insula were more activated after having processed a negative word under cognitive load in the Lexico-semantic task. However, this was true for L1 but not for L2. In particular, in L1, cognitive load facilitated rather than hindered access to emotion. Further suggesting that cognitive load can enhance emotional sensitivity in L1 but not in L2, we found that functional connectivity between reward-related striatum and right insula increased under cognitive load only in L1. Overall, results suggest that cognitive load in L1 can favor access to emotion and lead to impulsive decision making, whereas cognitive load in L2 can attenuate access to emotion and lead to more rational decisions.

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

The majority of research on learning a non-native language has focused on the personal benefits of being bilingual or multilingual. In this paper, we focus on the potential positive effect of actively thinking in a non-native language. Our approach is inspired by recent experimental research suggesting that actively thinking in a non-native language leads to improved reasoning and decision-making, which is known as the foreign-language effect (FLE). We examine the possibility that one could choose to think in a non-native language in order to reap these potential benefits. Integrating this research with research in positive psychology, we explain how doing so might be understood as a type of "nudge," or intervention that one could use to increase their chances of making autonomous decisions reflecting their own best interest. Nudges have been associated with improved outcomes with respect to many aspects of our lives - for instance sticking to goals, saving money, exercising more frequently, maintaining a healthy diet. It may be that bilinguals can assume an active role in increasing their happiness or well-being by making better decisions through strategic implementation of a non-native language in decision-making contexts. We also discuss the ethics of using the FLE as a nudge when it has beneficial consequences, as there are instances when doing so could be beneficial with respect to public policy as well. For instance, it has been shown that people are less averse to sustainable farming and eating practices (e.g., eating insects) when actively thinking in a non-native language. After reviewing the current research on the FLE, we suggest that further research needs to be done because actively thinking in a non-native language seems to function beneficially in some circumstances but may pose cognitive disadvantages in others.

Investigating the foreign language effect as a mitigating influence on the ‘optimality bias’ in moral judgements

Bilinguals often display reduced emotional resonance their second language (L2) and therefore tend to be less prone to decision-making biases in their L2 (e.g., Costa et al. in Cognition 130(2):236–254, 2014a, PLoS One 9(4):1–7, 2014b)—a phenomenon coined Foreign Language Effect (FLE). The present pre-registered experiments investigated whether FLE can mitigate a special case of cognitive bias, called optimality bias, which occurs when observers erroneously blame actors for making “suboptimal” choices, even when there was not sufficient information available for the actor to identify the best choice (De Freitas and Johnson in J Exp Soc Psychol 79:149–163, 2018. 10.1016/j.jesp.2018.07.011). In Experiment 1, L1 English speakers (N = 63) were compared to L2 English speakers from various L1 backgrounds (N = 56). In Experiment 2, we compared Finnish bilinguals completing the study in either Finnish (L1, N = 103) or English (L2, N = 108). Participants read a vignette describing the same tragic outcome resulting from either an optimal or suboptimal choice made by a hypothetical actor with insufficient knowledge. Their blame attributions were measured using a 4-item scale. A strong optimality bias was observed; participants assigned significantly more blame in the suboptimal choice conditions, despite being told that the actor did not know which choice was best. However, no clear interaction with language was found. In Experiment 1, bilinguals gave reliably higher blame scores than natives. In Experiment 2, no clear influence of target language was found, but the results suggested that the FLE is actually more detrimental than helpful in the domain of blame attribution. Future research should investigate the benefits of emotional involvement in blame attribution, including factors such as empathy and perspective-taking.

A hard to read font reduces the causality bias

Previous studies have demonstrated that fluency affects judgment and decision-making. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the effect of perceptual fluency in a causal learning task that usually induces an illusion of causality in non-contingent conditions. We predicted that a reduction of fluency could improve accuracy in the detection of non-contingency and, therefore, could be used to debias illusory perceptions of causality. Participants were randomly assigned to either an easy-to-read or a hard-to-read condition. Our results showed a strong bias (i.e., overestimation) of causality in those participants who performed the non-contingent task in the easy-to-read font, which replicated the standard causality bias effect. This effect was reduced when the same task was presented in a hard-to-read font. Overall, our results provide evidence for a reduction of the causality bias when presenting the problem in a hard-to-read font. This suggests that perceptual fluency affects causal judgments.

The influence of native language in shaping judgment and choice

As a result of globalization, millions of people operate in a language that they comprehend well but is not their native tongue. This paper focuses on how the nativeness of the language of a communication influences judgments and decisions. We review studies that compare decision making while people use a native language to when they use a nonnative language they understand well. The evidence shows that a nonnative language decreases the impact that emotions and socio-moral norms have on users, thereby reducing well-known judgmental biases and norm-related behavior. This effect of nonnative or foreign language brings to light the important role that the native language plays routinely in judgment and decision making. It suggests that the native language is not a simple carrier of meaning. Instead, it reveals that our native language serves as a carrier of emotions and socio-moral norms which in turn govern judgments and choices.

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

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.