Using a Foreign Language Could Affect Moral Judgement – D-brief

It seems that people are more rational when making certain emotionally-charged decisions when the options are presented in a different language than their own.

This might explain to some extent why expatriate management and mixed boards applying to a second (non native) language for usual decision making argumentation tend to choose options that some would consider “blunt” when announced but turn in the end, nonetheless, to be the correct ones.

This might apply as well to international bailout negotiations (see Greece) held in English (non native language for most), where agreed decisions might sound imoral for a present generation, yet save the next one down the road….

“Would you push a man off a bridge and into the path of an oncoming train to prevent the speeding locomotive from killing five people further down the track? […]

Psychologists […] found that people who speak multiple languages tended to take a more utilitarian approach to this moral dilemma when it was presented in their non-native tongue.

[…] the use of foreign languages reduces our emotional response and provides psychological distance when making moral decisions. […] foreign languages blunt some emotional responses.”

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/04/29/using-a-foreign-language-could-affect-moral-judgement/#.VajBucvfrqB