Setting up a blog involves numerous decisions; one being the language in which you will write the blog. My mother language is Dutch, approximately spoken by 23 million people (Netherlands, Flanders, Suriname). While this is a considerable amount, it is negligible compared to for example native English, Spanish or Chinese speakers.
Therefore, I decided to write in English, also because English is ‘de facto’ the scientific language; see for example the list of the top-25 psychology journals. They are all, except one, written in English.
Now, there is one more reason to write your blog in your second language.
Keysar et al. (2012) found that forcing people to rely on a second language systematically reduced human biases, allowing the subjects to escape from the cognitive illusions we all experience.
The researchers used a modified version of the very famous “Asian disease” problem
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1981). They told their subjects the following story.
Recently, a dangerous new disease has been going around. Without medicine, 600,000 people will die from it. In order to save these people, two types of medicine are being made.
- If you choose Medicine A, 200,000 people will be saved.
- If you choose Medicine B, there is a 33.3% chance that 600,000 people will be saved and a 66.6% chance that no one will be saved.
Which medicine do you choose? In the original experiment, 72% choose the first option A and 28% choose for medicine B (p. 453). Why? This is the gain-frame version of the story. The results are expressed positively, in gains (200,000 people will be saved). You don’t want to take any risks here.
The loss-frame version was the same, except that for Medicine A, it stated that “400,000 will die,” and for Medicine B, it stated that there was a 33.3% chance that “no one will die” and a 66.6% chance that “600,000 people will die.” In the original experiment of Tversky & Kahneman (1981) only 22% choose medicine A and 78% choose medicine B. In this case, you are willing to take the risk. This is, of course, not very logical, because if 200,000 people will be saved, it is exactly the same as 400,000 people will die.
Keysar et al. (2012) replicated these studies but added a few languages: Japanese, Korean and French, which are for some subjects the first and for others the second language. The figure below shows the percentage of persons who choose the “sure” option.
Clik here to view.
In Experiment 1a (a), English was the native language, and Japanese the foreign language; in Experiment 1b (b), Korean was the native language, and English the foreign language; in Experiment 1c (c), English was the native language, and French the foreign language.
As you can see, the illogical asymmetry between the alternatives disappeared when the decision was made in a foreign language. Of course, this could also be the result of not reading (or understanding) the question (in the foreign language) and responding at random. The authors controlled for these cases and the conclusion still stands:
“… people who routinely make decisions in a foreign language rather than their native tongue might be less biased ..” (p. 7)
REFERENCES
- Keysar, B., Hayakawa, S. L., & An, S. G. (2012). The Foreign-Language Effect Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases. Psychological Science. [full-text at the website of the first author]
- Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453. [full-text at website of second author, scroll all the way down Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
to 1981]
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