Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

The paper (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094842" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.plosone.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...</a>) is not an example of good science.<p>First: did they even find some kind of correlation, or is it just a statistical aberration? Second: if they found a real correlation, is their explanation of why that correlation exists correct?<p>IMHO, their evidence does not support their claims. Where are the controls? What are the sampling biases? What are possible alternative explanations, and why are those not considered? What is the relationship between a person&#x27;s response to a hypothetical situation and his&#x2F;her actions in a real one?<p>They greatly overstate their findings in the discussion section. It&#x27;s almost painful to read:<p>&gt; We have shown that people’s moral judgments and decisions depend on the native-ness of the language in which a dilemma is presented, becoming more utilitarian in a foreign language.<p>&gt; Most likely, a foreign language reduces emotional reactivity, promoting cost-benefit considerations, leading to an increase in utilitarian judgments.<p>&gt; This discovery has important consequences for our globalized world as many individuals make moral judgments in both native and foreign languages. Immigrants face personal moral dilemmas in a foreign language on a daily basis, sometimes dilemmas with even larger stakes such as when serving as a jury member in a trial.<p>&gt; Given that what we have discovered is surprising and unintuitive, increasing awareness of the impact of using a foreign language may help us check our decision-making context and make choices that are based on the things that should really matter.<p>&gt; Foreign languages are used in international, multilingual forums such as the United Nations, the European Union, large investment firms and international corporations in general. Moral choices within these domains can be explained better, and are made more predictable by our discovery.<p>Wait, what? When was that covered in the rest of the paper?

I have a theory about why that is.<p>In the book &quot;Thinking, Fast and Slow&quot; there are a number of experiments described that show that human thought can roughly be separated into two systems, one of which is intuitive, fast, heuristic, and low-energy, and the other which is rational, analytical, uses more calories, and is only engaged when necessary.<p>We use the first system most of the time, and only use the second system when we really need to. They found that when people were given something to read in a smaller font, their responses to it were more rational.<p>This might be the same effect - if the second system is already engaged due to the difficulty of understanding the other language, the result is a more rational response.<p>It&#x27;s a very interesting book, and well done. It&#x27;s a bit long, but thorough. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow</a>

I wonder if this might not be something else.<p>When you study a language in a classroom, you frequently engage in conversations on various topics, whose sole purpose is to make you practice much more than to actually have a well-thought conversation. As such (and here I speak from my own experience only), it is much more common to defend positions in which you don&#x27;t actually believe, for the sake of argument or maybe just because it is easier to express than the subtleties you might find while thinking this over in your native language.<p>I think it may be a good idea to try to only ask bilingual people (as opposed to people <i>studying</i> a language), or at least to test the above hypothesis before jumping to conclusions.

I really liked being introduced to the Trolley Problem (especially the second formulation), I hadn&#x27;t heard of it before.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Trolley_problem</a><p>I spent more time than I should reading about several possible answers :)<p>for example:<p><a href="http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/thomsonTROLLEY.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu&#x2F;faculty&#x2F;rarneson&#x2F;Courses&#x2F;t...</a><p>some with a libertarian slant:<p><a href="http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/08/the-trolley-non-problem/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bleedingheartlibertarians.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;08&#x2F;the-trolley-non...</a><p><a href="http://freedomed.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-trolley-problem-is-bullshit.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;freedomed.blogspot.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;10&#x2F;the-trolley-problem-is...</a><p>Edit: where is a good place to read about and&#x2F;or discuss interesting philosophical questions (preferrably not too far out :) )? Is it worth it to take a course on philosophy? (I&#x27;ve had short courses on &quot;moral education&quot; which were really awful).

When I first heard this problem, it was told in a heart-wrenching first-person &#x27;this actually happened&#x27; way. Roughly as follows:<p>&quot;A man who worked the gears for a train line took his son to work. His son ran off to play and when it came time for him to divert a train (not doing so would cause a head on collision) he couldn&#x27;t see his son, but he heard him cry out - he was stuck in the gears. Diverting the train would kill his son. So he does the right thing, sacrifices his son to save hundreds of lives.&quot;<p>This was a Sunday School story, meant to illustrate how God So Loved The World that he sacrificed his son. So I&#x27;ve actually always unhesitatingly believed that the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few, or the one.<p>As an adult and upon deeper reflection, I find that this holds true for strangers, but if I am completely honest my life and the lives of those I hold dear are worth more to me than the lives of basically any number of strangers.

Pushing the large man is risky, you can&#x27;t be 100% sure that it will work, and you can&#x27;t be absolutely sure that five people will die if you don&#x27;t do it. So it could be the willingness to take chances rather than the moral judgments.

Interesting. I speak 6 languages and actively think in 3–4 of those, and I notice slight changes in my attitudes and behaviour depending on the active language in my head. It might be interesting to experiment and find out if not just the fact that it&#x27;s a foreign language matters, but also the influence of the actual choice of language.

&gt; in general people react less strongly to emotional expressions in a foreign language<p>As a non-native English speaker, I wonder if this affects programming. Do English-speaking people find beautiful programs written in English more beautiful than others ? Anyone here programmed in both their mother tongue and one other language ?

&gt; Extreme moral dilemmas are supposed to touch the very core of our moral being. So why the inconsistency?<p>This question doesn&#x27;t seem scientific.<p>I would say, &quot;We didn&#x27;t predict this outcome, what&#x27;s wrong with our theory?&quot;<p>If you&#x27;re observing something in nature, in this case people, calling nature inconsistent doesn&#x27;t make sense. Nature is consistent. Your theory has problems if it calls nature inconsistent.

Maybe when you ask native people in a foreign language, they perceive it as a game and are less serious?<p>Maybe this &quot;results&quot; are nothing to do with moral judgment?<p>I am a native french speaker and live in the U.S. &quot;Moral&quot; decisions feel the same for me at least. I will be more influenced by the culture around me than a choice of words...

If you want to play with the trolley problem: <a href="http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/trolleyproblem/TrolleyProblem.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pippinbarr.com&#x2F;games&#x2F;trolleyproblem&#x2F;TrolleyProble...</a>

Despite English not being my native language, I would object to pushing the man in front of the train. Does that mean my mastery of English is sufficient that it can touch me on the same level as my native language?

hmm psychology is fun but... I wont trust the results of this study until they ask the same set of train-switch-murderous-multilingual users to also choose between chocolate cake or fruit salad [1].<p>1: <a href="http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/fruit-salad-chocolate-cake-cognitive-control-and-poverty" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.worldbank.org&#x2F;impactevaluations&#x2F;fruit-salad-cho...</a>

Gives new meaning to &quot;Are you speaking my language?&quot; It can have moral overtones too.

<i>Our Personal Predictions about Moral Judgments in Contrived Hypothetical Situations while Being Observed by a Third Party Depend on What Language We&#x27;re Reading</i><p>I mean seriously, if you&#x27;re going to test the slight difference in people&#x27;s moral attitudes based on the method of information consumption at least find it important to consistently distinguish between oral and written.<p>That aside, this article, unless you ignore what was actually tested and just imagine it to be what you want, is saying absolutely nothing.

Correlation vs.causation. Here we go again ...

A quote: &quot;But it does help us predict and explain some moral choices.&quot;<p>Predict, yes. Explain, no. Many such studies can predict that something is going to happen, that a correlation exists, but far fewer even attempt to offer a testable explanation, a way to turn a correlation into a cause-effect relationship. Science commentators as far back as Aristotle have described science as a way to craft explanations for observations, not merely describe the observations and their outcomes, which is that this study does.