Investigating the foreign language effect as a mitigating influence on the ‘optimality bias’ in moral judgements

Bodig, E., Toivo, W. and Scheepers, C. (2020) Investigating the foreign language effect as a mitigating influence on the ‘optimality bias’ in moral judgements. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 4(2), pp. 259-273. (doi: 10.1007/s41809-019-00050-4)

Abstract

Bilinguals often display reduced emotional resonance their second language (L2) and therefore tend to be less prone to decision-making biases in their L2 (e.g., Costa et al. in Cognition 130(2):236–254, 2014a, PLoS One 9(4):1–7, 2014b)—a phenomenon coined Foreign Language Effect (FLE). The present pre-registered experiments investigated whether FLE can mitigate a special case of cognitive bias, called optimality bias, which occurs when observers erroneously blame actors for making “suboptimal” choices, even when there was not sufficient information available for the actor to identify the best choice (De Freitas and Johnson in J Exp Soc Psychol 79:149–163, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.07.011). In Experiment 1, L1 English speakers (N = 63) were compared to L2 English speakers from various L1 backgrounds (N = 56). In Experiment 2, we compared Finnish bilinguals completing the study in either Finnish (L1, N = 103) or English (L2, N = 108). Participants read a vignette describing the same tragic outcome resulting from either an optimal or suboptimal choice made by a hypothetical actor with insufficient knowledge. Their blame attributions were measured using a 4-item scale. A strong optimality bias was observed; participants assigned significantly more blame in the suboptimal choice conditions, despite being told that the actor did not know which choice was best. However, no clear interaction with language was found. In Experiment 1, bilinguals gave reliably higher blame scores than natives. In Experiment 2, no clear influence of target language was found, but the results suggested that the FLE is actually more detrimental than helpful in the domain of blame attribution. Future research should investigate the benefits of emotional involvement in blame attribution, including factors such as empathy and perspective-taking.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Scheepers, Dr Christoph and Toivo, Wilhelmiina
• Authors: Bodig, E., Toivo, W., and Scheepers, C.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Psychology; College of Social Sciences > School of Social & Environmental Sustainability
• Journal Name: Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science
• Publisher: Springer
• ISSN: 2520-100X
• ISSN (Online): 2520-1018
• Published Online: 15 November 2019
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science 4(2): 259-273
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
190423		ESRC Doctoral Training Centre 2011...	Mary Beth Kneafsey	Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)	ES/J500136/1	Research and Innovation Services