Learning a foreign language makes people more rational, less biased

[Deep Dish]

Four experiments show thinking in a foreign language reduces the framing effect and two experiments show it reduces loss aversion, while in the foreign language. A pair of experiments show it reduces causality bias. It's not clear why, but it has been suggested a possible explanation is that the foreign language creates cognitive distance and emotional distance.

Sources:

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www.jstor.org

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journals.sagepub.com

 

[NoBiscuits]

Yup. This has been known about for some time.

I forgot the phrase for it, but there's a slang term for the personality you have in your new language.

 

[Pierce Manhammer]

Seems to only cover learning a new language not those who natively speak more than one language. Interesting nonetheless.

 

[NoBiscuits]

Seems to only cover learning a new language not those who natively speak more than one language. Interesting nonetheless.

It doesn't work on bilingual native speakers. Only when learning it as an adult. Those with C2 level fluency in a language report having different types of dreams depending on language. If it's emotional, it's almost always in their native language.

 

[DukeLasale]

It means that they spending more time to focus the imperative side of that matter rather than projecting more emotional output?

 

[NoBiscuits]

Yes. I think that's a fair way to put it.
Since the new language needs to be spoken consciously, the emotions projected when speaking are no longer second nature. They learned a foreign language by thinking carefully of how they will phrase each sentence in the clearest and most efficient way possible. That association sticks over time.

Eg. "I like the red shirt" is first learned. Later it may become "The scarlet shirt is pleasant" as more sophisticated grammar and vocabulary is learned.
But what they want to say is "omg, that's suuuuch a cute shirt! And the red is adorable!" but it gets short circuited since they can't do interjections, determiners, don't know how to stress the determiner ("suuuuch"), don't know when it's ok to use adjectives as nouns, and think starting a sentence on a conjuction is wrong. So the emotion coming out has hurdles to it.

It doesn't make you less biased. That's probably just a side effect from having a disconnect with the foreign culture you're in. Your world view will not change. Imo, the increase in rationality comes simply from the habit of being forced to think before speaking.

Students who travel to foreign countries together for a language course usually speak their native languages at the end of the day with each other. It's because of how tiring it was to think before speaking all throughout the day.