The interplay between emotion and modality in the Foreign-Language effect on moral decision making

Susanne Brouwer

doi:10.1017/s136672892000022x

Abstract

AbstractThis study examined whether theForeign-Language effect, an increase in bilinguals’ rate of rational decisions to moral dilemmas in their foreign versus their native language, is influenced by emotion and the modality in which the dilemmas are presented. 154 Dutch–English bilinguals were asked to read and listen to personal and impersonal moral dilemmas in Dutch or in English. Importantly, the reading task had the character of a self-paced reading task to resemble the listening task as closely as possible. In both modalities, participants’ task was to indicate whether the proposed action was appropriate or not. Results showed that the Foreign-Language effect was present for personal dilemmas only. In addition, an effect of modality demonstrated that participants took overall more rational decisions during the listening than the reading task. These findings give insight in the interplay between language, emotion and task demands, revealing that moral decision making is context-dependent.

Highlights

Living ethically entails that our daily habits and overall intentions must be aligned with a certain moral code
This finding is in line with the work that has revealed that bilinguals experience weaker emotional activation upon hearing emotional words in their second than their native language (e.g., Chen, Lin, Chen, Lu & Guo, 2015; Harris, Aycicegi & Gleason, 2003; Sulpizio, Toti, Del Maschio, Costa, Fedeli, Job & Abutalebi, 2019)
The current study reports which circumstances may affect this so-called FOREIGN-LANGUAGE EFFECT, giving insight into the flexibility of moral decision making

Summary

Introduction

Living ethically entails that our daily habits and overall intentions must be aligned with a certain moral code. Bilinguals have shown to be more emotional when responding to moral dilemmas in their native compared to their foreign language (e.g., Costa, Foucart, Hayakawa, Aparici, Apesteguia, Heafner & Keysar, 2014; Geipel, Hadjichristidis & Surian, 2015a, 2015b; Cipolletti, McFarlane & Weissglass, 2016). A dual-process theory has been proposed to account for differences in moral decision making (e.g., Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley & Cohen, 2001; Kahneman, 2003) This theory assumes that moral decision making is driven by a complex interaction between emotional and rational processes. The controlled system is more explicit and asks for deliberative, effortful reasoning and is mostly detached from emotions It operates slowly and uses abstract, rational knowledge which often requires a certain amount of exercise

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Methods

Results