The Foreign Language Effect In Risky Decision-making By Chinese-english Bilingual Students

The framing effect suggests that people s decisions can be affected by thedifferent phrasing of the options. Kahneman and Tversky (1981) pointed out thatwhen an individual was presented with two differently worded (framed) versions ofa problem that described identical outcomes, their choices would be different. Whenthe options were phrased positively in terms of “gain”, people preferred the certainoption (e.g.,“300people will be saved”); when phrased negatively in terms of “loss”,the risky option was preferred (e.g.,“there is a1/3probability that nobody will dieand a2/3probability that900people will die”). However, Keysar, Hayakawa, andSun s study in2012found that the framing effect disappeared when options werepresented in a foreign language, and they termed this phenomenon as the foreignlanguage effect.The present study was intended to answer the question whetherChinese-English bilinguals would display the foreign language effect, and further toexplore whether factors, such as participants profession experience (student ofEnglish and student of Finance) and task scenario (the human life scenario and themonetary scenario), may influence the result of the foreign language effect.Two experiments are reported in the current study, with the first one exploringthe foreign language effect on English majors (altogether277) and the second oneexploring financial majors (altogether188). Two task scenarios (the human lifescenario and the monetary scenario) were used in each of the two experiments. Eachscenario involved a choice between a certain option and a probabilistic (“risky”)option of equal expected value, presented either in the participant s native languageor their foreign language. The2(frame: positive frame vs. negative frame)×2(language: Chinese vs. English) design yielded4versions of the decision problem instrument. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the4versions, and theirtask was to choose between the two options.The data we collected indicates that Chinese-English bilinguals also displayedthe foreign language effect, especially in the human life scenario. And comparedwith English majors, though financial majors seemed to be more cautious in themonetary scenario, they were not immune to the foreign language effect.“Professionexperience” and “task scenario” had no influence on the result of the foreignlanguage effect.The presence of the foreign language effect in Chinese-English bilinguals, withtheir particular culture and language background, and with their particularprofession background, suggests that the foreign language effect is universal, andmaking decisions in a foreign language may overcome the weakness of the framingeffect in the mother tongue.