Bilingual People May Make Different Choices Based on the Language They’re Thinking In. Here’s Why.

Young adults don’t always make great decisions. I myself did stupid things, which comes as a shock to my kids and husband, who know me as pretty, well, boring. Was my personality more reckless back then? Or could it have been because I lived much of life in a second language: French?

Knowing another language broadens your opportunities: the people you can talk to, the items you can read, the films you can watch, the countries you can comfortably communicate in. But studies suggest that it can also have unintended consequences when it comes to decision-making.

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“When language is learned and used in an emotional context, the emotional resonances accrue to the language,” says Catherine Caldwell-Harris, an associate professor of psychology at Boston University and author of various papers on the effects of foreign languages. On the flip side, a foreign language probably hasn’t had an opportunity to gain this emotional impact.

Caldwell-Harris co-authored another study, currently under peer review, that posed ethical dilemmas to 52 university students in Turkey who spoke English and Turkish, and another 201 for comparison who only spoke Turkish. For example, say you worked for a pharmaceutical company that developed a drug that could make a lot of money but had potentially life-threatening side effects. Would you offer it to the public anyway? In a native language, more people said they would be ethical and not sell it. In a foreign language, more said they would. Caldwell-Harris deduces this is because the foreign-language participants did not feel the emotions that would censor them from doing the unethical thing.

Read the whole story (subscription may be required): The Washington Post