7 ms·

Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational

98 points by gruseom 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jtheory 15y ago
I have many years of first-hand experience; I'm an American who has lived in (mostly rural) France since 2006. This may well be true; but I've found that in actual, real-world interactions, the fact that I'm speaking a non-native language is mostly a disadvantage in decision-making. I'm normally relatively non-confrontational even when speaking English. But in French, I've found that this is hugely magnified, and I suffer for it. Even when people are being unacceptably rude to me or people around me, I'm stuck being polite and agreeable. In French, when someone calls me on the phone, trying to sell me something, I'm only now (after 6 years here) getting comfortable interrupting them. Not long after moving here, I had a clearly intoxicated man invite himself into my house (even though my wife & I had two visitors staying with us), and he eventually even asked to borrow one of my women (because apparently my wife plus the two women visiting were "mine"?!), and I eventually got rid of him, but I never said anything remotely impolite. I hired a local workman just starting his own construction business to replace the fence around our garden, and he persuaded me to pay in advance even though his incompetence was already becoming clear (and the end result was already falling apart by the time he "finished"). I never said anything confrontational. These are embarrassing stories to tell; I'd never let things like this happen if I were on my own turf, linguistically. In English I can be subtly cutting, or curt, or strongly rude, or whatever I want with no further thought, when the situation calls for it. In French, when someone insults me I'm still wondering if I may have misunderstood, or am missing social cues, or if I've accidentally offended them and their behavior is justified. In a confrontation, I immediately feel like I'm in over my head, and taking control of the situation is almost impossible. It's slowly improving -- my French is already quite good, and I'm relearning how to manage in difficult situations. But it's been a serious downside I hadn't expected before moving here, and if this is a general effect I imagine it would offset the advantages studied here pretty significantly.
- stevenbrianhall 15y ago
  Wow, I am 100% in agreement. I'm an American living in Mexico and find it much harder to be in confrontational situations in Spanish. My Spanish is good, but I've had almost the exact same "workman" situation happen to me. I'm positive that a native speaker would have picked up on the subtleties of the conversation and not made the same mistake, but pressure like that does not lend itself well to thinking things through carefully while trying to navigate the landscape of a non-native language. On top of that, I'm highly sensitive to the "Americans are loud and uncultured idiots" image that seems to persist in lots of places, so I tend to err on the side of being polite to counteract that, even to my occasional disadvantage.
- personlurking 15y ago
  As someone who has been living on and off outside the US since 2005, I've gone through similar experiences. Initially, I just believed it to be about your humor, in that you can't be yourself if you have lost your sense of humor. This is an easy and guaranteed thing to have happen when you are primarily using a foreign language. But it doesn't stop at something as light as humor. I've had a lot of people take advantage of me, business-wise, while overseas, yet I never allowed this back home. It reached the point where I just decided not to work under foreigners anymore because work ethics aren't clear cut and 'misunderstandings' abound. It doesn't help that I live in a culture where it's seen as a positive to be one step ahead of the other person (even if they are working for/with you).
- davidw 15y ago
  When we lived in Austria, where I never learned much German, things were a bit like that. Much to my regret, I never told any of the smokers in the cafes to fuck off, even though they thoroughly deserved it, lighting up around children and my pregnant wife. ( I've always loved this comic: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/Kaiser0929/que4/smoking.gif http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/Kaiser0929/que4/smoki... ) Having lived on and off in Italy for far longer, and with a much more thorough grasp of the language, I don't hesitate to snap back at people when they deserve it. Although, truth be told, lately I've just been answering the telemarketers in English - I think it must be at least novel for them to hear a foreign language in what must otherwise be a fairly boring job, even though my interaction is pretty much limited to explaining that I'm not interested, thanks, bye. I don't know about decision making processes though, I can't say I can recall which languages various decisions in my family were discussed in. I wonder if there's a threshold above which the language is not 'foreign' enough to cause the effect.
bmelton 15y ago
I suspect (but have no real insight) that this is similar to the wisdom we gain from Rubber Duckie coding[1]. For those unaware, the process is simply to explain what you're coding to a rubber duck. The duck, being an inanimate object, obviously has to be talked to like a moron, so you end up explaining it "like it's five". What I've often found happens though, is that in the process of explaining it, or just in organizing the logic in my head enough that it can be explained -- is that you find logic flaws in the application you may not have been aware of. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
- zitterbewegung 15y ago
  The study says it reduces the framing effect. The idea of Rubber Duck debugging is to reduce cognitive dissonance.
JamesLeonis 15y ago
This article sounds eerily like one I read last night about a study centered around religious belief and critical thinking [1]. It sounds like deliberate use of heavily analytical thinking displaces the "gut check" in the decisions we make. [1] http://news.discovery.com/human/religious-belief-critical-thinking-120426.html http://news.discovery.com/human/religious-belief-critical-th...
- robomartin 15y ago
  Interesting article, thanks for bringing it up.
crazygringo 15y ago
This reminds me of how ridiculous TV ads look in foreign countries. It's not like they're any more ridiculous in your own country, but when they're presented in a new way and a new language with new products, they just seem so... inane, and you can't believe anyone would be persuaded by them. But of course, we all are...
- UnFleshedOne 15y ago
  Interestingly enough, I find ads in my own language (russian) way more ridiculous than similar ads in english (not that I often see either). So it is possible that you are looking at objectively more ridiculous ads. A similar effect happens with code -- any language with syntax localized to russian looks funny to me.
saraid216 15y ago
It's really important to recognize that the causal link is very, very specific here: thinking in a foreign language reduces the framing effect. That's the whole of the claim. Expecting it to make all of your other decision-making events more rational is more than a little silly.
ma2rten 15y ago
Previous discussion of the original paper: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695
skore 15y ago
Being German, my native tongue has sort of a reputation for being overly analytical and rational. Still, English has long since become at least an equal partner in my own head, and when developing or even just sitting at my computer, it has long surpassed German in usage. I find English in itself to be very comfortable to think in, but this article made me realize that it may be more about not having to think in German than it is having the privilege to think in English.
- xtracto 15y ago
  For me (native Spanish speaker), English is the language of work. That's mainly because I used it for my MSc, PhD and a postdoc. During that time I only used Spanish to speak to my wife. Moreover, all the technology reading I do is in English. Now that I am back in Mexico, I feel funny discussing work related issues in Spanish.
sakai 15y ago
Full text of the original paper: http://portal.unitbv.ro/proxy/download.ashx?dec=1&url=uh4QwdELmSQKwh0PmD07tSpMxqiKsSZJmS0LvD4BvD3LtqfOvhALl9aNl8YM0cYN1cYM1noS0PAT09eN0dlOlnwUmCtRvgMKwg4CB6X http://portal.unitbv.ro/proxy/download.ashx?dec=1&url=uh...
replax 15y ago
previous discussion and link to the original paper here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695
avalenciano 15y ago
Just as a note: Published in one of the journals (Psychological Science) that was mentioned a few days ago in another article about trying to replicate psychological experiments as part of the Open Science Framework ("Is Psychology About to Come Undone?" http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about-to-come-undone/29045 http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about-to...).
hasenj 15y ago
When I was religious, I noticed a very strange thing going on in my mind: when religious ideas were expressed in English, they sounded stupid, hilariously stupid, but when the same idea was expressed in Arabic, it sounded very normal.
- Jebus 15y ago
  Lol! The same happened to me with Spanish/English.
robatsu 15y ago
I spend 1/2 time in Japan because my wife is Japanese. Our 8 year old is bilingual, my wife is fluent in english but learned as an adult, and my japanese is rudimentary. Some of the comments disagreeing with the research, I can sympathize with from my perspective in Japan - certainly I feel at a disadvantage due to my language limitations. However, I think the presumption in the research is that the subjects understand the language, that this disadvantage is removed. The thesis is that if one is fluent in a second language (or not disadvantaged by non-understanding of linguistic constructs), one is freed of cultural constraints that attend to native speakers of the language. Going from personal experience observing my wife debate in english, and again, she is fluent, the language is much more of a coldly analytic tool for her - the words all have their nominal meaning. However, over the years, as she has grown more culturally fluent, I've observed this effect declining. Just anecdotal observations.
mike_ivanov 15y ago
How do you folks think in a language? I don't understand it and it really pisses me off... How is it possible at all? What is the process of such verbal thinking? How it feels like? Is it like words sounding in your head or something?
- gruseom 15y ago
  Is it like words sounding in your head or something? I would say it's close to that, except there isn't the feeling of a sound. It's more as if language were a muscle and you were exercising it silently, producing words. Not that all thoughts come in complete sentences or even with words, but some mental processes definitely involve language. I'd be surprised if you didn't have this as well. Hard to say, of course. But you may catch yourself "thinking in words" someday and then realize you do it all the time. Random tangential statement: I predict that Sapir-Whorf will come back into fashion and be thoroughly rehabilitated.
  - mike_ivanov 15y ago
    > I'd be surprised if you didn't have this as well. No, I don't. Neither the people I asked. Everyone I asked agrees there are two separate processes: thinking and translating thoughts into words. > "thinking in words" someday and then realize you do it all the time. No, I do not. Moreover, I don't even have to. I clearly remember myself at the age when I didn't talk, yet I was able to think and I still can do it.
- awfabian2 15y ago
  I believe I think in words even more than average. I don't know if anyone can say how. I don't know how my brain puts together words. It's no effort for me to make a sentence; it's like they come out of a mysterious black box. But it happens all of the time, so it doesn't feel mysterious. If the black box is very central to how your brain works, it seems like the pressure of feeling and thinking, rather than erupting into images or sounds, erupts into words. Say a scary bug lands on you, and you want to swat it away. You have an immediate need to swat, and you don't think. You won't decide whether to use your right hand, or your left; you'll use your hands without thinking about it at all. Even normal actions and movements are like that, if you look; there is some small pressure with a less sudden eruption into thought or movement. So, to reiterate, that's what it seems like to me; if you miss someone, if you think in words, when the pressure builds up into a representation of your mind, it won't be a picture of the person's face, it will be words instead, "I miss Person."

98 points by gruseom 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

I have many years of first-hand experience; I'm an American who has lived in (mostly rural) France since 2006. This may well be true; but I've found that in actual, real-world interactions, the fact that I'm speaking a non-native language is mostly a disadvantage in decision-making. I'm normally relatively non-confrontational even when speaking English. But in French, I've found that this is hugely magnified, and I suffer for it. Even when people are being unacceptably rude to me or people around me, I'm stuck being polite and agreeable. In French, when someone calls me on the phone, trying to sell me something, I'm only now (after 6 years here) getting comfortable interrupting them. Not long after moving here, I had a clearly intoxicated man invite himself into my house (even though my wife & I had two visitors staying with us), and he eventually even asked to borrow one of my women (because apparently my wife plus the two women visiting were "mine"?!), and I eventually got rid of him, but I never said anything remotely impolite. I hired a local workman just starting his own construction business to replace the fence around our garden, and he persuaded me to pay in advance even though his incompetence was already becoming clear (and the end result was already falling apart by the time he "finished"). I never said anything confrontational. These are embarrassing stories to tell; I'd never let things like this happen if I were on my own turf, linguistically. In English I can be subtly cutting, or curt, or strongly rude, or whatever I want with no further thought, when the situation calls for it. In French, when someone insults me I'm still wondering if I may have misunderstood, or am missing social cues, or if I've accidentally offended them and their behavior is justified. In a confrontation, I immediately feel like I'm in over my head, and taking control of the situation is almost impossible. It's slowly improving -- my French is already quite good, and I'm relearning how to manage in difficult situations. But it's been a serious downside I hadn't expected before moving here, and if this is a general effect I imagine it would offset the advantages studied here pretty significantly.

stevenbrianhall 15y ago
Wow, I am 100% in agreement. I'm an American living in Mexico and find it much harder to be in confrontational situations in Spanish. My Spanish is good, but I've had almost the exact same "workman" situation happen to me. I'm positive that a native speaker would have picked up on the subtleties of the conversation and not made the same mistake, but pressure like that does not lend itself well to thinking things through carefully while trying to navigate the landscape of a non-native language. On top of that, I'm highly sensitive to the "Americans are loud and uncultured idiots" image that seems to persist in lots of places, so I tend to err on the side of being polite to counteract that, even to my occasional disadvantage.
personlurking 15y ago
As someone who has been living on and off outside the US since 2005, I've gone through similar experiences. Initially, I just believed it to be about your humor, in that you can't be yourself if you have lost your sense of humor. This is an easy and guaranteed thing to have happen when you are primarily using a foreign language. But it doesn't stop at something as light as humor. I've had a lot of people take advantage of me, business-wise, while overseas, yet I never allowed this back home. It reached the point where I just decided not to work under foreigners anymore because work ethics aren't clear cut and 'misunderstandings' abound. It doesn't help that I live in a culture where it's seen as a positive to be one step ahead of the other person (even if they are working for/with you).
davidw 15y ago
When we lived in Austria, where I never learned much German, things were a bit like that. Much to my regret, I never told any of the smokers in the cafes to fuck off, even though they thoroughly deserved it, lighting up around children and my pregnant wife. ( I've always loved this comic: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/Kaiser0929/que4/smoking.gif http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/Kaiser0929/que4/smoki... ) Having lived on and off in Italy for far longer, and with a much more thorough grasp of the language, I don't hesitate to snap back at people when they deserve it. Although, truth be told, lately I've just been answering the telemarketers in English - I think it must be at least novel for them to hear a foreign language in what must otherwise be a fairly boring job, even though my interaction is pretty much limited to explaining that I'm not interested, thanks, bye. I don't know about decision making processes though, I can't say I can recall which languages various decisions in my family were discussed in. I wonder if there's a threshold above which the language is not 'foreign' enough to cause the effect.

bmelton 15y ago

I suspect (but have no real insight) that this is similar to the wisdom we gain from Rubber Duckie coding[1]. For those unaware, the process is simply to explain what you're coding to a rubber duck. The duck, being an inanimate object, obviously has to be talked to like a moron, so you end up explaining it "like it's five". What I've often found happens though, is that in the process of explaining it, or just in organizing the logic in my head enough that it can be explained -- is that you find logic flaws in the application you may not have been aware of. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

zitterbewegung 15y ago
The study says it reduces the framing effect. The idea of Rubber Duck debugging is to reduce cognitive dissonance.

JamesLeonis 15y ago

This article sounds eerily like one I read last night about a study centered around religious belief and critical thinking [1]. It sounds like deliberate use of heavily analytical thinking displaces the "gut check" in the decisions we make. [1] http://news.discovery.com/human/religious-belief-critical-thinking-120426.html http://news.discovery.com/human/religious-belief-critical-th...

robomartin 15y ago
Interesting article, thanks for bringing it up.

crazygringo 15y ago

This reminds me of how ridiculous TV ads look in foreign countries. It's not like they're any more ridiculous in your own country, but when they're presented in a new way and a new language with new products, they just seem so... inane, and you can't believe anyone would be persuaded by them. But of course, we all are...

UnFleshedOne 15y ago
Interestingly enough, I find ads in my own language (russian) way more ridiculous than similar ads in english (not that I often see either). So it is possible that you are looking at objectively more ridiculous ads. A similar effect happens with code -- any language with syntax localized to russian looks funny to me.

saraid216 15y ago

It's really important to recognize that the causal link is very, very specific here: thinking in a foreign language reduces the framing effect. That's the whole of the claim. Expecting it to make all of your other decision-making events more rational is more than a little silly.

ma2rten 15y ago

Previous discussion of the original paper: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695

skore 15y ago

Being German, my native tongue has sort of a reputation for being overly analytical and rational. Still, English has long since become at least an equal partner in my own head, and when developing or even just sitting at my computer, it has long surpassed German in usage. I find English in itself to be very comfortable to think in, but this article made me realize that it may be more about not having to think in German than it is having the privilege to think in English.

xtracto 15y ago
For me (native Spanish speaker), English is the language of work. That's mainly because I used it for my MSc, PhD and a postdoc. During that time I only used Spanish to speak to my wife. Moreover, all the technology reading I do is in English. Now that I am back in Mexico, I feel funny discussing work related issues in Spanish.

sakai 15y ago

Full text of the original paper: http://portal.unitbv.ro/proxy/download.ashx?dec=1&url=uh4QwdELmSQKwh0PmD07tSpMxqiKsSZJmS0LvD4BvD3LtqfOvhALl9aNl8YM0cYN1cYM1noS0PAT09eN0dlOlnwUmCtRvgMKwg4CB6X http://portal.unitbv.ro/proxy/download.ashx?dec=1&url=uh...

replax 15y ago

previous discussion and link to the original paper here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695

avalenciano 15y ago

Just as a note: Published in one of the journals (Psychological Science) that was mentioned a few days ago in another article about trying to replicate psychological experiments as part of the Open Science Framework ("Is Psychology About to Come Undone?" http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about-to-come-undone/29045 http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-psychology-about-to...).

hasenj 15y ago

When I was religious, I noticed a very strange thing going on in my mind: when religious ideas were expressed in English, they sounded stupid, hilariously stupid, but when the same idea was expressed in Arabic, it sounded very normal.

Jebus 15y ago
Lol! The same happened to me with Spanish/English.

robatsu 15y ago

I spend 1/2 time in Japan because my wife is Japanese. Our 8 year old is bilingual, my wife is fluent in english but learned as an adult, and my japanese is rudimentary. Some of the comments disagreeing with the research, I can sympathize with from my perspective in Japan - certainly I feel at a disadvantage due to my language limitations. However, I think the presumption in the research is that the subjects understand the language, that this disadvantage is removed. The thesis is that if one is fluent in a second language (or not disadvantaged by non-understanding of linguistic constructs), one is freed of cultural constraints that attend to native speakers of the language. Going from personal experience observing my wife debate in english, and again, she is fluent, the language is much more of a coldly analytic tool for her - the words all have their nominal meaning. However, over the years, as she has grown more culturally fluent, I've observed this effect declining. Just anecdotal observations.

mike_ivanov 15y ago

How do you folks think in a language? I don't understand it and it really pisses me off... How is it possible at all? What is the process of such verbal thinking? How it feels like? Is it like words sounding in your head or something?

gruseom 15y ago
Is it like words sounding in your head or something? I would say it's close to that, except there isn't the feeling of a sound. It's more as if language were a muscle and you were exercising it silently, producing words. Not that all thoughts come in complete sentences or even with words, but some mental processes definitely involve language. I'd be surprised if you didn't have this as well. Hard to say, of course. But you may catch yourself "thinking in words" someday and then realize you do it all the time. Random tangential statement: I predict that Sapir-Whorf will come back into fashion and be thoroughly rehabilitated.
- mike_ivanov 15y ago
  > I'd be surprised if you didn't have this as well. No, I don't. Neither the people I asked. Everyone I asked agrees there are two separate processes: thinking and translating thoughts into words. > "thinking in words" someday and then realize you do it all the time. No, I do not. Moreover, I don't even have to. I clearly remember myself at the age when I didn't talk, yet I was able to think and I still can do it.
awfabian2 15y ago
I believe I think in words even more than average. I don't know if anyone can say how. I don't know how my brain puts together words. It's no effort for me to make a sentence; it's like they come out of a mysterious black box. But it happens all of the time, so it doesn't feel mysterious. If the black box is very central to how your brain works, it seems like the pressure of feeling and thinking, rather than erupting into images or sounds, erupts into words. Say a scary bug lands on you, and you want to swat it away. You have an immediate need to swat, and you don't think. You won't decide whether to use your right hand, or your left; you'll use your hands without thinking about it at all. Even normal actions and movements are like that, if you look; there is some small pressure with a less sudden eruption into thought or movement. So, to reiterate, that's what it seems like to me; if you miss someone, if you think in words, when the pressure builds up into a representation of your mind, it won't be a picture of the person's face, it will be words instead, "I miss Person."