Your Morals Depend on Language

Summary

Should you sacrifice one man to save five? Whatever your answer, it should not depend on whether you were asked the question in your native language or a foreign tongue so long as you understood the problem. And yet here we report evidence that people using a foreign language make substantially more utilitarian decisions when faced with such moral dilemmas. We argue that this stems from the reduced emotional response elicited by the foreign language, consequently reducing the impact of intuitive emotional concerns. In general, we suggest that the increased psychological distance of using a foreign language induces utilitarianism. This shows that moral judgments can be heavily affected by an orthogonal property to moral principles, and importantly, one that is relevant to hundreds of millions of individuals on a daily basis.

Key Points

• 1Using a foreign language can lead to more utilitarian decisions in moral dilemmas
• 2Reduced emotional responses in a foreign language may affect moral judgments
• 3Participants from multiple language backgrounds showed varied tendencies towards utilitarianism
• 4The study utilized well-known moral scenarios like the trolley dilemma to assess decision-making processes.

Related articles

• Ten Problems of Bodily Ownership

  This chapter outlines ten fundamental questions regarding the concept of bodily ownership, exploring the unique relationship between self-awareness and bodily experience. It examines issues such as the differences between sensory modalities and their implications for how we perceive ownership over our bodies.

• Understanding Bicultural Identity Development through Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Theory

  This document explores Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory and its application to bicultural identity development, proposing a longitudinal study to investigate the relationship between cultural frame switching and authenticity among bicultural emerging adults.

• Social Perception: Primacy & Recency Effects, and Attribution Theory

  This document explores concepts in social psychology, focusing on social perception, the primacy and recency effects, and attribution theory, including how they influence impressions and judgments of others.

• Clinical Psychology Review

  This review synthesizes the experiences of mental health practitioners using talking therapy in natural outdoor spaces, exploring the benefits and challenges of this approach. It aims to establish a framework for best practices in outdoor therapy.

• Article 2

  This document reviews recent findings related to the neurobiology of infant attachment, focusing on the importance of parenting quality in attachment and emotional development. It explores how early caregiving shapes the development of brain structures essential for emotional regulation and expression.