The Foreign Language Effect On Moral Decision Making In Chinese-English Bilinguals

Nowadays,with accelerated globalization,a closely interconnected "global village"has developed.An increasing number of bilinguals from various countries communicate with "their neighbors" in a non-native language,and more frequently people,like oversea students and employees in multinational companies,need to deliver decisions using a non-native language.So,for bilinguals,does the use of a foreign language influence their thinking process and then change their ultimate decision?It seems intuitive that the thinking process should be immune to the effect of native-ness of language and the same decision would be made(Keysar,Hayakawa,&An,2012)since decisions are based upon deep and thoughtful values and principles,individual or social(Costa,Foucart,Hayakawa,Aparici,Apesteguia,Heafner,et al.,2014).Instead,it was first found by Keysar and his colleagues(2012)that using a foreign language reduces the framing effect(risk seeking in the loss frame while risk avoiding in the gain frame)and elicits more rational decisions.They termed the significantly different tendencies in decision making between using the native language and using the foreign language as "foreign language effect".When extending this effect on economic decision making to moral decision making,it is found that this foreign language effect is affected by moral dilemma type:only in personal dilemmas are found significantly more utilitarian choices in the foreign language compared with the native language.The foreign language effect in personal dilemmas seems to have been well established as the number of relevant research increases.But actually,it is still uncertain whether this effect is robust and generalizable with drawbacks in data collection.Most previous findings were based on natives with western cultures and experiments presented in western languages,on an unbalanced sampling consisting of more females,and on an extremely small number of moral dilemmas(usually the same set of two or four dilemmas)Also,it is still controversial whether this foreign language effect is mediated by emotion according to the inconsistent findings of the existing literature,though the "dual process model" theory(Green,2007)claims that emotion is the mediator.Besides,with the popularity of the construal-level theory,the new research trend begins to apply it to explain moral decision making,explaining that the higher ion of mental construal,the more utilitarian choices.But it is unknown whether the foreign language effect is mediated by abstraction of mental construal since previous studies only apply it in the native language and few has applied it to explain the difference of moral choices between in the native language and in the foreign language.Accordingly,the present study aims to answer three major research questions:first,whether native-ness of language results in significantly different moral decisions with gender and dilemma type controlled for and under a rarely explored but indispensable Chinese cultural background;second,if native-ness of language alters moral decisions,whether this influence is mediated by emotion;third,if native-ness of language alters moral decisions,whether this alteration is mediated by abstraction of mental construal This study reviews the relevant literature about moral decision making,foreign language effect and two influential theories on moral decision making(i.e.,the dual process model and the construal-level theory)and presents two behavioral experiments.These experiments were presented and conducted with E-prime(Version 2)to collect data on moral decision making both in the native language context(Chinese)and in the foreign language context(English).And the results were analyzed by SPSS 16.0 using descriptive statistics,independent-sample T-test,one-way ANOVA and multinomial logistic regression.Results show that the foreign language effect can be extended to mainland Chinese-English bilinguals.Namely,this foreign language effect is not caused by an unbalanced gender and is robust under the Chinese culture,and also,it can just be found in personal dilemmas.And it is proved that emotion(at least self-rated emotion)fails to mediate interaction between language and moral choices,and thus the foreign language effect in mainland Chinese-English bilinguals may not be caused by the emotional difference between the native language and the foreign language.And it is found that there is a positive correlation between abstraction of mental construal and utilitarian choices:a more abstract mental construal elicits more utilitarian choices.Based on the research results above,the present study finally introduces their implications as well as explanations,and provides suggestions for future moral and general decision making.In order to make more rational decisions or maximize profits,people could try thinking in a foreign language,judging from a different cultural perspective,or visualizing only the overall picture rather than a highly detailed one.Instead,in order to guide the public to behave themselves and make more socially responsible decisions,the government could apply the abstraction effect on decision making:using advertising video or picture.