On Language Processing Shaping Decision Making

Decision-Making Machines With Talking Heads

We are constantly making decisions, from mundane ones—such as what to eat or wear—to more significant ones—such as whether to undergo a surgical procedure or enroll in a retirement plan. In effect, we are decision-making machines. But humans are also talking heads, since we love to tell others about our feelings and ideas. Thus, we are decision-making machines with talking heads. Consequently, we make decisions based on information that is largely communicated linguistically. How do language and decision-making processes interact when guiding our decisions? We assess this issue by exploring how using a foreign versus a native language affects our revealed preferences, choices, and judgments. Understanding how our talking heads affect our decisions is fundamental to promoting better and wiser decisions.

In principle, provided that information is understood, the language in which it is presented should not be a major factor affecting our decisions. Consider, for example, that you have to decide between having surgery and undergoing a more conservative treatment. You are presented with the available information and carefully evaluate the risks and benefits, also considering your preferences. In this context, your decision should be independent of whether you are interacting with a doctor in your native or foreign language. However, this is not the case.

Using a Foreign Language Modifies Decision-Making Tendencies

Our decisions are driven by different forces. One is automatic, intuitive, and cost-free, and the other is more controlled and deliberative (see Evans, 2008, for a review). These processes are constantly at play when we make decisions and do not always favor the same responses or have the same weight on our choices (Kahneman, 2003). Put simply, on some occasions we go with our gut feeling and on others we slow down, thinking twice about the situation and the options at stake. Our reliance on each of these processes depends on several factors, such as our mood at a given moment or how demanding or familiar the situation is (Shiv & Fedorikhin, 1999; see Kahneman, 2011, for a review). Using a foreign language affects the contributions of intuition and deliberation to our decisions—a phenomenon known as the foreign-language effect. This effect has been explored in three domains.

First, the language in which information is presented affects people’s treatment of losses, gains, and risk. Foreign-language processing leads to a reduction of loss and risk aversion. For example, in a foreign-language context, people are less sensitive to whether options are presented in terms of gains or losses—they are less affected by the way choices are framed, showing more consistent preferences. Also, people are more willing to take risks in foreign-language contexts, at least for positive expected outcomes. For example, most people prefer accepting a sure outcome of €1 to gambling with an even chance of winning €2.50 or nothing. This goes against normative behavior, given that taking the gamble has a higher expected value (€1.25) than the sure outcome (€1). Using a foreign language reduces this tendency (see Costa, Foucart, Arnon, Aparici, & Apesteguia, 2014; Keysar, Hayakawa, & An, 2012). Consistent with this, foreign-language use also affects people’s judgments of risks and benefits—reducing the perception of risk and increasing the perception of benefit (Hadjichristidis, Geipel, & Savadori, 2015).

Second, foreign-language contexts affect the way we make sense of the events we encounter in the world. In particular, foreign-language processing reduces illusory correlations. Consider, for example, the hot-hand fallacy: the tendency to expect a positive outcome after a series of prior positive outcomes, even when the events are independent. Using a foreign language reduces this fallacy effect (Gao, Zika, Rogers, & Thierry, 2015). Similarly, foreign-language use can reduce illusions of causality, whereby people perceive a causal link between two successive independent events (Díaz-Lago & Matute, 2014).

The third, and perhaps most striking, domain in which language affects people’s choices is morality. In particular, foreign-language processing prompts more utilitarian choices than native-language processing. For example, when presented with the well-known footbridge dilemma, in which saving the life of five people involves actively sacrificing the life of another person (Foot, 1978; Thomson, 1986), people are more willing to make this sacrifice if the dilemma is presented in a foreign language (Costa, Foucart, Hayakawa, Aparici, & Apesteguia, 2014). This phenomenon has been replicated with several native and foreign languages (Cipolletti, McFarlane, & Weissglass, 2016; Geipel, Hadjichristidis, & Surian, 2015a), showing that it is not restricted to specific languages or cultures (see also Geipel, Hadjichristidis, & Surian, 2016). Consistent with this effect, people tend to judge the wrongness of moral transgressions—actions that break moral or social norms but have no tangible consequences—less harshly when the transgressions are presented in a foreign language (Geipel, Hadjichristidis, & Surian, 2015b).

To the extent that our choices in these contexts are the product of the interaction between intuitive and deliberative processes, language status seems to alter this relationship. This raises the question of why and how this effect arises.

On the Origin of the Foreign-Language Effect

The foreign-language effect has been interpreted in the context of dual-process theories of decision making. But how are the contributions of intuitive and deliberative processes affected by language status? Does foreign-language use reduce the impact of intuition and/or increase the impact of deliberation? There are reasons to believe that both might be true.

Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are more costly and largely less fluent in a foreign language than in a native language (see Costa & Sebastián-Gallés, 2014, for a review). Although there is still debate about the effects of processing difficulty on decision making, some authors have suggested that processing difficulty is used as a signal to engage in more thoughtful and deliberative processing, which reduces the effects of intuition (Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre, 2007; Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Oppenheimer, 2008; but see Meyer et al., 2015, for contrasting evidence). Put simply, situations that involve processing difficulties are less subject to the impact of intuition and prompt more deliberation.

In fact, independent research has revealed that foreign-language processing recruits brain areas related to control processes to a greater extent than native-language processing—the inferior prefrontal and dorso-anterior cingulate cortices (Branzi, Della Rosa, Canini, Costa, & Abutalebi, 2016; see Abutalebi & Green, 2016, for a recent review on the relationship between language control and executive control), areas that may be involved in the decision-making contexts described above (Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Tom, Fox, Trepel, & Poldrack, 2007). Hence, according to this view, the foreign-language effect could be the result of a decrease in processing fluency that prompts people to slow down and think more carefully about the decision-making situation.

Emotion is another factor associated with foreign-language processing that can alter the interaction between intuition and deliberation. Messages processed in a foreign language usually elicit a milder emotional response compared to those processed in a native language (see Pavlenko, 2012, and Caldwell-Harris, 2015, for reviews). ¹ Interestingly, people often use their emotional reaction to a given problem to guide their decision instead of engaging in more deliberative reasoning (Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001; Slovic, Finucane, Peters, & MacGregor, 2007). In other words, we go with our feelings regarding what is good or bad rather than considering the options in a thoughtful manner. But foreign-language use lowers emotional reactivity, as, for example, shown by reduced electrodermal responses to swear words and childhood reprimands (Harris, Aycicegi, & Gleason, 2003; see Dewaele, 2004, for similar behavioral evidence). Moreover, reading emotionally charged passages in a foreign language elicits less activation in brain areas related to emotional processing in the amygdala (Hsu, Jacobs, & Conrad, 2015). Interestingly, this brain structure has been shown to be relevant in decision-making contexts involving gains and losses (De Martino, Kumaran, Seymour, & Dolan, 2006). Hence, according to this view, the foreign-language effect could result from a reduction in the emotional reactivity elicited by the decision-making scenario. This, in turn, could reduce the impact of affective states on people’s decisions, therefore allowing for more deliberative processing.

Processing difficulty and emotionality may have collateral effects on the way people relate to and construe a given situation (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2008; Van Boven, Kane, McGraw, & Dale, 2010). In particular, foreign-language use may lead to an increase in psychological distance—it may aid in taking a more objective perspective of the situation and construing the options in a more global/abstract way (Trope & Liberman, 2010). Interestingly, psychological distance and foreign-language use can affect people’s decisions in a similar manner (Aguilar, Brussino, & Fernández-Dols, 2013; Lermer, Streicher, Sachs, Raue, & Frey, 2015; Raue, Streicher, Lermer, & Frey, 2015). Indeed, foreign-language use has been shown to lead to a detachment effect, such that people are able to discuss certain topics that they would otherwise find too aversive (e.g., Bond & Lai, 1986; Halberstadt, 1994; Marcos, 1976; see also Ivaz, Costa, & Duñabeitia, 2015). Thus, according to this view, the foreign-language effect could result from an increase in psychological distance, which would affect the contributions of intuition and deliberation to people’s choices. Note, however, that the way in which psychological distance affects people’s judgments is still debated, especially in the context of moral choice (Eyal, Liberman, & Trope, 2008; but see also Gong & Medin, 2012; Zezelj & Jokic, 2014).

These three explanations are not mutually exclusive and are probably complementary and related to each other to some extent. However, all of them stress that the foreign-language effect stems from changes in the weights that intuitive and deliberative processes have in the course of decision making.

Future Directions

The foreign-language effect on decision making is a very recent discovery, with most studies on the topic published in the last 3 years. Consequently, we are still far from having a good description of the phenomenon. We need to advance our knowledge of its generalizability and boundaries. Which decision-making contexts are sensitive to the language of presentation, and which ones are not? For example, up to now, the foreign-language effect has mostly been tested in contexts involving a certain emotional connotation. Hence, we do not yet know whether foreign-language use affects people’s response tendencies in domains that do not carry emotionally arousing information. This can be assessed by looking, for example, at the effect of language on certain emotionally neutral biases such as anchoring, hindsight bias, and the conjunction fallacy. In relation to the boundaries of the phenomenon, it is also critical to assess how foreign-language proficiency modulates the presence and magnitude of the phenomenon. It is reasonable to predict that when language proficiency approaches native-like levels, language status should have a minimal effect—although this may depend on the context of learning and use. On the other hand, much lower levels of language proficiency may pose too heavy a burden on processing, reducing the availability of the resources needed to engage in deliberation. Hence, the current observations, arguably from studies involving participants with medium-high levels of foreign-language proficiency, should be complemented with studies exploring the role of language proficiency in the interaction between intuition and deliberation.

This information would allow us to design more controlled experiments assessing the origin of the phenomenon and to determine more precisely the contributions of intuition and deliberative processing. Does using a foreign language both reduce intuitive processing and promote deliberative processing? If so, in which way are these processes affected? For example, foreign-language use may not prompt more deliberation per se; rather, it may shape the cues used by intuitive processes. Indeed, advancing in these explanations would require exploring the roles of cognitive fluency, cognitive load, emotional reactivity, and their interactions with foreign-language processing. This enterprise would benefit from a multidisciplinary approach, in which psychophysical (e.g., facial electromyographic responses, electrodermal activity, pupil dilation) and brain-imaging techniques would provide fundamental information. Furthermore, this research could also constrain current models of decision making in general, since it is not obvious how these models can capture the complexities of the phenomenon. Indeed, it is possible that the various models make different predictions about how language status affects our choices in different contexts.

Perhaps the greatest challenge would be the exploration of the foreign-language effect in the context of real-life decisions. Can we use language status as a lever to promote better decisions, at least in certain decision-making contexts? If foreign-language use can indeed help people engage in a colder, dispassionate, deliberative thinking style, then this might help promote self-control and avoidance of temptation. For example, it is possible that language could be used as a nudge to promote better choices, such as what to eat or how to evaluate the options for a clinical treatment (for preliminary evidence, see Klesse, Levav, & Goukens, 2015). This would be important for many choices that involve long-term beneficial outcomes but require current sacrifices. Finally, it is crucial to study the role of language in interactive contexts, such as interpersonal conflict and negotiation. At present, all the available evidence has come from studies in which people were presented with individual decision-making contexts, and we do not know whether the phenomenon will extend to interactive scenarios. And, indeed, the answer to this question is not obvious: Although foreign-language use can prompt a deliberative thinking mode, the cognitive load and anxiety often elicited when interacting in a foreign language may end up leading to more automatic and less thoughtful decisions.

We have reviewed how foreign-language use affects people’s choices. In several contexts, foreign- and native-language processing lead to differential recruitment of intuition and deliberation, with foreign-language processing prompting a more deliberative approach. But do not be mistaken—this evidence does not imply that people’s choices would always be better in foreign-language contexts. Indeed, sometimes it is good to go with our gut, and other times it is better to think twice and consider the options in a more thoughtful manner. Hence, finding out how our talking heads affect the likelihood of using one approach or the other is fundamental to understanding the decision-making machines that we are.