Framing a problem in a foreign language seems to reduce decision biases

MBlume

The researchers aren't entirely sure why speaking in a less familiar tongue makes people more "rational", in the sense of not being affected by framing effects or loss aversion. But they think it may have to do with creating psychological distance, encouraging systematic rather than automatic thinking, and with reducing the emotional impact of decisions. This would certainly fit with past research that's shown the emotional impact of swear words, expressions of love and adverts is diminished when they're presented in a less familiar language.

Paywalled article (can someone with access throw a PDF up on dropbox or something?): http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/04/18/0956797611432178

Blog summary: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/we-think-more-rationally-in-foreign.html

The researchers aren't entirely sure why speaking in a less familiar tongue makes people more "rational", in the sense of not being affected by framing effects or loss aversion. But they think it may have to do with creating psychological distance, encouraging systematic rather than automatic thinking, and with reducing the emotional impact of decisions. This would certainly fit with past research that's shown the emotional impact of swear words, expressions of love and adverts is diminished when they're presented in a less familiar language.

Paywalled article (can someone with access throw a PDF up on dropbox or something?): http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/04/18/0956797611432178

Blog summary: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/we-think-more-rationally-in-foreign.html

I'm not sure, it seems obvious to me - words have connotations for those familiar with them that go beyond their literal meanings, and I tend to go with the hypothesis that language defines our thought process. (I'd call it cognitive linguistics, because that's the sensible thing to call it, but I think that somebody else already defined that phrase to refer to something less sensible.)

But I have one caveat. Less biased doesn't necessarily mean either better or more rational. Our decision making processes aren't optimized, nor should they be, for laboratory environments.

I believe linguistic relativity and Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis are the usual names for this idea. I also believe it's been mostly discredited in linguistic circles, but it's been a while since I talked about it with a linguist, so you should do your own research.

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Framing a problem in a foreign language seems to reduce decision biases

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Framing a problem in a foreign language seems to reduce decision biases

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