Effects of Foreign Language on Decision Making Charlotte Duong

Do bilinguals think differently depending on the language they use at a moment?

The foreign language effect The framing effect Tversky and Kahneman (1981) Asian disease problem

Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs are as follows: If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If Program B is adopted, there is 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and 2/3 probability that no people will be saved. Which of the two programs would you favor? If Program A is adopted, 400 people will be killed. If Program B is adopted, there is 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and 2/3 probability that 600 people will be killed. Which of the two programs would you favor?

The foreign language effect Keysar et al. (2012) Framing effect found in native language but not foreign language Other decision making tasks Lack of emotional attachment with foreign language

Will the fluency of the foreign language have an impact on the phenomenon?

Hypotheses The framing effect would be found in the Vietnamese questionnaires for both students at the local school and students at the international school. A reduced framing effect in the English questionnaires would occur for both students at the local school and students at the international school. For the English questionnaires, the framing effect found in students at the international school would be more pronounced than the framing effect found in students at the local school.

Questionnaire A Questionnaire B English 19 16 Vietnamese 14 12

Participants Trung Vuong School (TV) British International School (BIS) Average age of English acquisition: 8 Average Vietnamese fluency rating: 6.33 Average English fluency rating: 4.75 Average age of English acquisition: 4.5 Average Vietnamese fluency rating: 5.01 Average English fluency rating: 5.98

Results No framing effect found in Vietnamese for both schools Framing effect found in one problem for TV and two problems for BIS in English Limitations Over-simplistic assumptions Measurement of language fluency Sample size

In which scenarios would a non-native speaker of a language will be less susceptible to the framing effect? In which situations will they still be receptive to the bias?

Q&A