Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/language-and-bias/

by gruseom • 14 years ago

98 38 14 years ago

jtheory2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

personlurking2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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/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.

Cushman• 14 years ago

Another likely influence is that you just aren't good at feeling strong emotions in the foreign language. Like a weaker side effect of how you almost always swear in your native language, however infrequently you use it. Anger is the emotion that tells you you need to be uncooperative and unreasonable, but your brain's not used to being angry in French, so you just... aren't.

I'd be curious if this would improve if you got together with a group of drinking buddies or something and try just hurling insults at each other for a couple hours.

xtracto3• 14 years ago

I agree with this. As a Mexican who studied for 3.5 years in the UK, sometimes it was challenging to "understand" that my fellow British colleagues were making sarcastic jokes (British humour and all that), I guess part of the reason was that they used a "sarcastic tone" which I was not aware of...

robomartin4• 14 years ago

I have to disagree with you. I think it is cultural much more so than language. I have lived in a couple of cultures and travelled extensively during the past ten years. At the risk of offending more than a few, there's what some have come to call the "feminization" of American men. Maybe it's a result of the ability to sue anyone for anything, I don't know. But there's a very distinct characteristic to men (an women) from other cultures that will place the uber-polite American men and women at a disadvantage in certain situations.

Here's an example that isn't really about what I am talking about but speaks to the cultural and environmental differences:

Here in Los Angeles it is not too uncommon to see people crossing a street without even looking right or left and without continuously scanning for cars as they cross the street. I've also seen (kids!!!!) crossing the street running. Now, go down to Buenos Aires and try that on for size. Or do it in Rome. Or cross a bike path in Amsterdam without looking. You'll land yourself in a hospital, if you are lucky.

It's the same out in Manhattan, of course.

Non-scientific, non-extensive observation, but I don't think the lack of assertiveness has anything to do with language but rather culture. I can be assertive in a few languages, but I spent most of my young life in a more, shall we say, "fire-y" culture.

carguy19833• 14 years ago

> Here in Los Angeles it is not too uncommon to see people crossing a street

I live in SM and work in West LA. Most of the crosswalks simply don't have lights. Not even the ones in the ground that flash yellow. If you don't go for it, you'll never cross because there's no reason for anyone to stop.

"Feminized" (and I disagree with this characterization because - have you met any females in latin or european countries? Quite assertive.) men would just stand there, waiting for traffic to stop. I see that here a lot from clueless people.

Locals like me just charge into traffic on foot, consequences be damned. I just walk in front of a 50MPH vehicle and stare them down and dare them to run me over. Hasn't happened yet. Try it some time, that's livin' ;)

personlurking2• 14 years ago

Why HN is my favorite site. People bring up viewpoints that I haven't even thought of, yet agree with.

I live in S. America and I see the same thing you're talking about in BsAs...but I actually prefer the way crossing the street is (I think it's safe to say anywhere) outside of the US because it makes people be aware. I've found myself many times taking chances with this because of my US attitude that I can just sue anyone that might hit me (as an aside, my cousin was hit by an ambulance in the US and won 250K, then invested smartly and turned it into 1 mil...at 21 yrs old). These days, this viewpoint of suing people in another country makes me chuckle.

jtheory2• 14 years ago

I can't speak generally, but in my case it's not primarily a cultural issue. I also spend a decent amount of time in urban Malaysia, and the cultural gap to that (from the east coast US, where I grew up) is a much further jump than I get coming here to France; but I'm interacting in English there, and I'm more comfortable if confrontation arises than when speaking French.

I've also traveled elsewhere (fairly widely in India), and the need for confrontation does arise (being a tourist in any hugely-trafficked area makes you a nice fat target if you can't stand up for yourself), but I got the hang of it -- again, speaking English. France is ridiculously tame, by comparison... but it's been here where I've had to relearn how not to get scammed.

I think the real problems were mentioned in other comments: added latency, and lack of gut emotional connection to the words. (Interestingly, the cultural-gap-doubt I mentioned -- "is this normal behavior?" -- applies to travel in places where I don't speak the language at all, like eastern Europe, but the latency doesn't, since I'm just sticking with English in my head).

Side note #1. I really bristle at the arguments (and terminology) about "feminization" of men; there uglier terms for this idea, but in any form it's offensive. The idea that any trend of men being less aggressive, dominating, and verbally or physically violent is NEGATIVE just blows my mind. There's a huge difference between calmly standing up for yourself (an admirable action in a man or woman) and strutting around with your fists always at the ready and a sneer on your mouth.

Societies in general are better places with fewer of the latter wandering around and breaking each others' noses. And most folks who are succeeding in life according to my definitions have far more social sophistication.

Side note #2: It's not that hard to cross a road in any country. If you've never been there before, just spend a few minutes observing people and cars, and do what works locally. Dunno how this has anything to do with gender or culture, though I do see Americans overseas who seem to think they haven't left America -- that may apply as a cultural failure.

keyle• 14 years ago

I am French native living in Australia for 11 years. I came all alone at 21 with a suit case of 21 kg. The rest is history.

I don't relate to this research at all. I found my reactive thinking has always been slower than most native.

In fact, when I go see comedians, I will quite often start laughing half a second after everyone else.

Somewhere deep down, there is a rewiring done and some latency added naturally. I believe.

I am used to live with it. In fact, thinking in French hurts my head now.

So I wonder if it's not about the fact that the person in a different language is mostly in a different place in his mind, and therefore more feels analytic, naturally.

That, or I'm just an edge case.

I've also felt at a strong disadvantage in arguments with others in the first 5 years, now I just yell French and go ape at them (not really.)

yyyt• 14 years ago

I can see that as I comprehend English more, tend to start being more offencive in it. 8 years ago I started Italian and now I know a deal of swear words, but not sure if I can produce them when, say, an Italian drops a thing on my foot. By the moment I can say something offencive, the peron will have 1-2 seconds to apologise.

I'd say new languages really disarm you. I can barely argue in Spanish, least to say an offencive word (although I've seen the famous Tano Pasman, el hincha del River), and not at all in Portugese.

Also, isn't it curious: we all know a bunch of swear words in our languages. We get to know them at early age, probably as soon as we have a need for them. But it takes years to get exposed to obscenities in a foreign language: books don't print them. Dictionaries often omit them. Radio and podcats also deliver correct content.

bmelton• 14 years 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

zitterbewegung• 14 years ago

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

JamesLeonis• 14 years 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-th...

robomartin4• 14 years ago

Interesting article, thanks for bringing it up.

crazygringo• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Previous discussion of the original paper:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695

skore• 14 years 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.

xtracto3• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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

replax• 14 years ago

previous discussion and link to the original paper here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876695

avalenciano• 14 years 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...).

hasenj• 14 years 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.

robatsu• 14 years 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_ivanov2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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_ivanov2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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."

hcarvalhoalves• 14 years ago

"Is it like words sounding in your head or something?" When you start learning a language, you start doing this kind of aloud mental translation - that is, you think a sentence in your native language, then you read it mentally, then you speak. That's why when you start speaking a foreign language there's an annoying amount of delay and back-and-forth. At some point, once you have acquired enough vocabulary, you stop doing this and start connecting ideas directly to language. It's like you create a "bypass" on your brain once you practice enough.

xtracto3• 14 years ago

I do it for English (my native language is Spanish). For me, the change came when I had a dream in English. I usually do all the work related stuff (programming, maths, statistics, scientific reading, etc) in English. So usually it is quite straight forward to think about what I am reading/programming/etc in this language.

For me it is exactly as you say, sometimes I am, say, writing a function, and I think about which parameters to pass, how to name those parameters, the name of the function and the documentation. All this I do in English in my head. And your description "words sounding in your head" is exactly as it seems to me.

Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational

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