6 ms·

Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases

72 points by sakai 14y ago

losethos 14y ago
Jews considered gentile a different species--you guys are retards. God was backing me up. God on the topic of racism said "sports". All psychologists know races vary in IQ. God says... C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\SWIFT.TXT pate the reader with further descriptions of this kind, because I reserve them for a greater work, which is now almost ready for the press; containing a general description of this empire, from its first erection, through along series of princes; with a particular account of their wars and politics, laws, learning, and religion; their plants and animals; their peculiar manners and customs, with other matters very curious and useful; my chief design at present being only to relate such events and tr
rollypolly 14y ago
If someone has a native-level of fluency in more than one language, would the decision-making bias remain?
- hef19898 14y ago
  Good question, possibel that it goes the way as with dreams. Have to ask my girl-friend about it...
sakai 14y ago
Finally found a link to the full text PDF: http://portal.unitbv.ro/proxy/download.ashx?dec=1&url=uh4QwdELmSQKwh0PmD07tSpMxqiKsSZJmS0LvD4BvD3LtqfOvhALl9aNl8YM0cYN1cYM1noS0PAT09eN0dlOlnwUmCtRvgMKwg4CB6X http://portal.unitbv.ro/proxy/download.ashx?dec=1&url=uh...!
- AlexLegg 14y ago
  I wonder what percentage of the students had studied game theory and realised that the expected outcome of either medicine was the same...
personlurking 14y ago
Living abroad, half the time I find myself thinking in another language. I recently decided which foreign language I should spend my time on next. Turns out my teacher doesn't speak English so I'll be learning my fourth and final language via my third language. Confused? I am, though I suppose I'm making a sound decision...
- bitops 14y ago
  I learned some Spanish in English, which is not my native language. I've found the key is to think in whatever language you are using most as much as you can; at least in the beginning.
R_Symtex_II 14y ago
Agreed, to an extent. But I believe this is more a cultural deviation rather than a spontaneous cognitive divergence as alluded to in the abstract. When I speak in Japanese (as a non-Japanese and non-native speaker) I tend to exercise the cultural custom of 'kukiyomi' when in the presence of certain circles; this was instilled socially as I grew up around the Japanese culture via hobbies, then friends and external relationships. Its something that as a Westerner, of Western European ethnicity, I was not exposed to at home or any other cultural avenues so I tend to omit doing so when speaking in my native tongue(s) as my family and friends can attest.
hef19898 14y ago
Speaking English and french as foreign languages (germen being the mother language), I can largely agree with the OP, from my experience. While it's hard to explain why it is like that, for me it takes out some cultural biases you most of the time have when you think in your own language (profiency in said foreign language required).
aangjie 14y ago
My anecdotal experience says just having the ability to verbalize in different languages(3 in my case) makes you reason for a longer time. I suspect, that helps avoid some sort of biases, but might be a crippling factor in some situations(time-constrained decisions) .
- jgeralnik 14y ago
  In this case the experiment compared bilinguals who had the problem presented to them in their native tongue with bilinguals who had the problem presented to them in their second language. It found that answers were dependant on the language they had been presented in - when the answers were in a foreign language there was less decision bias. It seems that being bilingual did not prevent people from having this bias in their native tongue.
  - aangjie 14y ago
    Yep, read the paper. But am very uncomfortable calling this a decision bias. It's more specific than that. It's about aversion of risk and how framing a decision in loss terms vs gain terms leads people to decide differently(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring). Otherwise i agree the bilingual subjects do display the bias in their native tongue. Am gonna try reasoning in all three languages i know and see how that affects my decision making :-P
ajuc 14y ago
Kipling noticed this - in his book Kim (Indian) is thinking in English to overcome hypnosis :)
kenron 14y ago
this is absolutely true. having become fluent in french as a second language, i find that i seem to make decisions much more rapidly and with less consternation than in English. when i first noticed this, like the authors of the paper, i concluded that it did have a fair amount to do with being emotionally distanced from what i was saying, so awesome to see it formalized!
krollew 14y ago
Sounds reasonable. My experience (native polish, almost native english plus ukraininan and russian) says brain is rather unable (or it's not used) to use multiple languages at the same time. So if you think in foreign language (I mean: language you don't usualy think in) brain hasn't enough words (or is too lazy to look for them ;)) to make big analysis of problem so It doesn't do that.

72 points by sakai 14y ago

Jews considered gentile a different species--you guys are retards. God was backing me up. God on the topic of racism said "sports". All psychologists know races vary in IQ. God says... C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\SWIFT.TXT pate the reader with further descriptions of this kind, because I reserve them for a greater work, which is now almost ready for the press; containing a general description of this empire, from its first erection, through along series of princes; with a particular account of their wars and politics, laws, learning, and religion; their plants and animals; their peculiar manners and customs, with other matters very curious and useful; my chief design at present being only to relate such events and tr

rollypolly 14y ago

If someone has a native-level of fluency in more than one language, would the decision-making bias remain?

hef19898 14y ago
Good question, possibel that it goes the way as with dreams. Have to ask my girl-friend about it...

sakai 14y ago

Finally found a link to the full text PDF: http://portal.unitbv.ro/proxy/download.ashx?dec=1&url=uh4QwdELmSQKwh0PmD07tSpMxqiKsSZJmS0LvD4BvD3LtqfOvhALl9aNl8YM0cYN1cYM1noS0PAT09eN0dlOlnwUmCtRvgMKwg4CB6X http://portal.unitbv.ro/proxy/download.ashx?dec=1&url=uh...!

AlexLegg 14y ago
I wonder what percentage of the students had studied game theory and realised that the expected outcome of either medicine was the same...

personlurking 14y ago

Living abroad, half the time I find myself thinking in another language. I recently decided which foreign language I should spend my time on next. Turns out my teacher doesn't speak English so I'll be learning my fourth and final language via my third language. Confused? I am, though I suppose I'm making a sound decision...

bitops 14y ago
I learned some Spanish in English, which is not my native language. I've found the key is to think in whatever language you are using most as much as you can; at least in the beginning.

R_Symtex_II 14y ago

Agreed, to an extent. But I believe this is more a cultural deviation rather than a spontaneous cognitive divergence as alluded to in the abstract. When I speak in Japanese (as a non-Japanese and non-native speaker) I tend to exercise the cultural custom of 'kukiyomi' when in the presence of certain circles; this was instilled socially as I grew up around the Japanese culture via hobbies, then friends and external relationships. Its something that as a Westerner, of Western European ethnicity, I was not exposed to at home or any other cultural avenues so I tend to omit doing so when speaking in my native tongue(s) as my family and friends can attest.

hef19898 14y ago

Speaking English and french as foreign languages (germen being the mother language), I can largely agree with the OP, from my experience. While it's hard to explain why it is like that, for me it takes out some cultural biases you most of the time have when you think in your own language (profiency in said foreign language required).

aangjie 14y ago

My anecdotal experience says just having the ability to verbalize in different languages(3 in my case) makes you reason for a longer time. I suspect, that helps avoid some sort of biases, but might be a crippling factor in some situations(time-constrained decisions) .

jgeralnik 14y ago
In this case the experiment compared bilinguals who had the problem presented to them in their native tongue with bilinguals who had the problem presented to them in their second language. It found that answers were dependant on the language they had been presented in - when the answers were in a foreign language there was less decision bias. It seems that being bilingual did not prevent people from having this bias in their native tongue.
- aangjie 14y ago
  Yep, read the paper. But am very uncomfortable calling this a decision bias. It's more specific than that. It's about aversion of risk and how framing a decision in loss terms vs gain terms leads people to decide differently(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring). Otherwise i agree the bilingual subjects do display the bias in their native tongue. Am gonna try reasoning in all three languages i know and see how that affects my decision making :-P

ajuc 14y ago

Kipling noticed this - in his book Kim (Indian) is thinking in English to overcome hypnosis :)

kenron 14y ago

this is absolutely true. having become fluent in french as a second language, i find that i seem to make decisions much more rapidly and with less consternation than in English. when i first noticed this, like the authors of the paper, i concluded that it did have a fair amount to do with being emotionally distanced from what i was saying, so awesome to see it formalized!

krollew 14y ago

Sounds reasonable. My experience (native polish, almost native english plus ukraininan and russian) says brain is rather unable (or it's not used) to use multiple languages at the same time. So if you think in foreign language (I mean: language you don't usualy think in) brain hasn't enough words (or is too lazy to look for them ;)) to make big analysis of problem so It doesn't do that.