THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE EFFECT IN MORAL JUDGMENT AND MENTAL IMAGERY

Abstract

The foreign language effect refers to the finding that bilingual and multilingual individuals reason differently in tasks that are presented in their native language as compared to their non-native (foreign) language. These findings have been observed across many different languages and contexts, including judgment and decision-making. The current study addressed three open questions: (1) does the foreign language effect extend to reasoning about morally charged real-world contexts like judgments of war crimes?; (2) does social distance from a scenario being judged moderate the strength of the effect; and (3) does the effect generalize to Albanian/English bilinguals? It was hypothesized that when using their first language, mental imagery vividness would be higher and moral judgment would be harsher than when using their foreign language. The results did not show a significant difference when comparing Albanian and English responses but did show a correlation between stronger mental imagery and harsher moral judgment. The findings also revealed that social closeness was a factor in moral judgment, in that participants judged the scenario that was socially closer to them more harshly. The finding suggest that although the foreign language effect might not be as strong as it is believed, mental imagery plays a part in how harsh one's moral judgment is for a situation and that the judgment is harsher when the situation is socially close.