To judge a risk more clearly, it may help to consider it in a foreign language.
A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the U.S. and
Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated,
misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are
perceived.
“It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices
regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of
using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We
discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language
reduces decision-making biases,” wrote Keysar’s team.
Psychologists say human reasoning is shaped by two distinct modes of thought: one that’s systematic, analytical and cognition-intensive, and another that’s fast, unconscious and emotionally charged.
'Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language?'
In light of this, it’s plausible that the cognitive demands
of thinking in a non-native, non-automatic language would leave people
with little leftover mental horsepower, ultimately increasing their
reliance on quick-and-dirty cogitation.
Equally plausible, however, is that communicating in a learned language forces people to be deliberate,
reducing the role of potentially unreliable instinct. Research also
shows that immediate emotional reactions to emotively charged words are muted in non-native languages, further hinting at deliberation.
To investigate these possibilities, Keysar’s team developed several
tests based on scenarios originally proposed by psychologist Daniel
Kahneman, who in 2002 won a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on prospect theory, which describes how people intuitively perceive risk.
In one famous example, Kahneman showed that, given the hypothetical
option of saving 200 out of 600 lives, or taking a chance that would
either save all 600 lives or none at all, people prefer to save the 200 —
yet when the problem is framed in terms of losing lives, many more people prefer the all-or-nothing chance rather than accept a guaranteed loss of 400 lives.
People are, in a nutshell, instinctively risk-averse when considering gain and risk-taking when faced with loss,
even when the essential decision is the same. It’s a gut-level human
predisposition, and if second-language thinking made people think less
systematically, Keysar’s team supposed the tendency would be magnified.
Conversely, if second-language thinking promoted deliberation, the
tendency would be diminished.
The first experiment involved 121 American students who learned
Japanese as a second language. Some were presented in English with a
hypothetical choice: To fight a disease that would kill 600,000 people,
doctors could either develop a medicine that saved 200,000 lives, or a
medicine with a 33.3 percent chance of saving 600,000 lives and a 66.6
percent chance of saving no lives at all.
Results
of two tests of foreign-language effects on framing biases. In each,
people were given the choice between sure savings or an all-or-nothing
bet. Bars show how many people preferred sure savings when the choice
was framed in terms of gains (black) or losses (gray) and considered in
their native language (left pair) or second language (right pair).
Image: Keysar et al./Psychological Science
Nearly 80 percent of the students chose the safe option. When the
problem was framed in terms of losing rather than saving lives, the
safe-option number dropped to 47 percent. When considering the same
situation in Japanese, however, the safe-option number hovered around 40
percent, regardless of how choices were framed. The role of instinct
appeared reduced.
Two subsequent experiments in which the hypothetical situation
involved job loss rather than death, administered to 144 native Korean
speakers from Korea’s Chung Nam National University and 103 English
speakers studying abroad in Paris, found the same pattern of enhanced
deliberation. “Using a foreign language diminishes the framing effect,”
wrote Keysar’s team.
The researchers next tested how language affected decisions on
matters of direct personal import. According to prospect theory, the
possibility of small losses outweigh the promise of larger gains, a
phenomenon called myopic risk aversion and rooted in emotional reactions to the idea of loss.
The same group of Korean students was presented with a series of
hypothetical low-loss, high-gain bets. When offered bets in Korean, just
57 percent took them. When offered in English, that number rose to 67
percent, again suggesting heightened deliberation in a second language.
To see if the effect held up in real-world betting, Keysar’s team
recruited 54 University of Chicago students who spoke Spanish as a
second language. Each received $15 in $1 bills, each of which could be
kept or bet on a coin toss. If they lost a toss, they’d lose the dollar,
but winning returned the dollar and another $1.50 — a proposition that,
over multiple bets, would likely be profitable.
When the proceedings were conducted in English, just 54 percent of
students took the bets, a number that rose to 71 percent when betting in
Spanish. “They take more bets in a foreign language because they expect
to gain in the long run, and are less affected by the typically
exaggerated aversion to losses,” wrote Keysar and colleagues.
The researchers believe a second language provides a useful cognitive
distance from automatic processes, promoting analytical thought and
reducing unthinking, emotional reaction.
“Given that more and more people use a foreign language on a daily
basis, our discovery could have far-reaching implications,” they wrote,
suggesting that people who speak a second language might use it when
considering financial decisions. “Over a long time horizon, this might
very well be beneficial.”
Citation: “The Foreign-Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue
Reduces Decision Biases.” By Boaz Keysar, Sayuri L. Hayakawa and Sun
Gyu An. Psychological Science, published online 18 April 2012.
