The document summarizes 3 studies on how foreign language influences moral judgment. Study 1 found that scenarios were judged less harshly in a foreign versus native language. Study 2 found foreign language attenuated emotions for certain scenarios and promoted less harsh moral judgments. Study 3 provided further evidence that foreign language influences moral judgment through an automatic rather than controlled processing mechanism by attenuating emotions related to purity violations. The research suggests foreign language use could impact international policy decisions by muting moral intuitions.

1. “HOW FOREIGN
LANGUAGE SHAPES
MORAL JUDGMENT”
2015. J.Geipel, C.Hadjichristidis and L.Surian
Presented by: Marianne Craman and Martina Ondei

2. 2
Foreign
language
&
Native
language
Moral
judgment
whether
how
KEYWORDS:

3. BACKGROUND…
1980s. Several languages shouldn’t change moral judgment.
(Tversky, Kahneman, ’81; Arrow, ‘82)
2000s. Foreign languages influence moral judgment. (Dewaele, 2004;
Pavlenko, 2004; Caldwell-Harris, 2014)
 Trolley dilemma & Footbridge dilemma (from Foot, 1978 to
Cipolletti 2015)
3

4. TWO COMPETING HYPOTHESES
Previous studies bring to this two hypotesis:
1. Controlled-processing hypotesis: muted intuition could make the moral
machinery switch from the default automatic mode and this make focusing the
attention to the harmless consequences.
2. Automatic-processing hypotesis: moral machinery might remain on the
automatic mode, but nevertheless muted inuition would promote less harsh
moral judgment because of reduction of accessibility of social rules.
4

5. PREVIOUS STUDIES LIMITATIONS:
1. They concern contrived cases;
2. They involve a numerical tradeoff (one vs five);
3. There in no empirical support to discover if language has a cooling effect
on emotion or the cooling effect prompt controlled reasoning;
4. In-group vs out-group interpretation
5

6. To exceed these limitations, the researchers take three
studys…
6

7. STUDY 1
The researchers examined reading moral trasgression
in a foreign versus a native language influences
moral wrongness judgments.

8. PARTECIPANTS
1a
48 german students (18-70 years)
◦ 27 foreign language condition (english)
◦ 21 native language condition.
8
1b
64 italian students (18-24 years)
• 36 foreign language condition (english)
• 28 native language condition.

9. METHODS AND SCENARIOS
The partecipants were submitted to four scenarios:
◦ Dog (Frank eat his death dog)
◦ Incest (brother and sister )
◦ Exam (a student copies during an exam)
◦ Flag ( a woman cut national flag)
Partecipants were asked to judge the wrongness of each action on a scale ranging
from 0 to 9.
9

10. RESULTS
1a
The scenarios were judged less harshly in the
foreign language then in the native language.
There was also a significant main effect of
scenario.
The dog and the incest scenarios were value
significantly main wrong.
There was no language x scenario interaction.
10

11. 11
1b
◦ As in study 1a, the scenarios were judged less
harshly when presented in the foreign language.
◦ There was also a significant main effect of scenario.
◦ The dog, the incest and the exam scenario were
value significantly main wrong then flag scenario.
◦ There was no language x scenario interaction.
RESULTS

12. CONCLUSIONS
The studies 1a and 1b show that foreign language effect on moral judgment
generalizes to private violations that are offensive but involve relatively harmless
consequences.
The use of a foreign language promoted less harsh moral judgements.
12

13. STUDY 2
The researchers presented a new sample of late
Italian-English bilinguals with the same four
scenarios to rate their emotional reaction and moral
judgments.

14. Late italian-english bilinguals
78 partecipants (20-38 years)
◦ 42 foreign language condition (english)
◦ 36 native language condition (italian)
14
PARTECIPANTS

15. Following the same four scenarios (dog, incest, exam and flag), partecipants judged
the wrongness of the action that was depicted in it.
+
Partecipants have to rate on a 5-points scale how many upset, worried, disgusted, sad
and angry they felt reading each scenarios.
15
METHODS AND SCENARIOS

16. • There wasn’t main effect of language
• There was a main effect of scenario.
• There was a significant language x
scenario interaction. Foreign language
attenuated emotion in dog and incest
scenarios but not in exam and flag
scenario.
16
RESULTS: EMOTION RATINGS

17. RESULTS: MORAL JUDGEMENTS
17
• Researches predicted foreign language
would promote less harsh moral
judgement BUT only for dog and incest
scenarios.
• The findings were consistent with this
prediction. (dog and incest scenario in
foreign language promoted less harsh
moral judgement then in native
language.)

18. CONCLUSIONS
• Influences moral judgment by attenuating emotions.
• Contrary to controlled-processing hypotheses there is correlation between moral
judgement and emotional ratings in foreign and native language conditions.
Coherently with automatic-processing hypothesis in both language condition moral
judgement and emotional ratings are significantly correlated.
18
foreign
lenguage
attenuating
emotions
moral
judgment

19. STUDY 3
The researchers examined whether foreign language
influces moral judgement through purity violation.
A second aim of this study was to provide evidence to
distingish between controlled vs automatic-processing
hypotesis.

20. PARTECIPANTS
20
74 italian students (18-30 years):
◦ 37 foreign language condition (German)
◦ 37 native language condition (Italian)

21. 1The partecipants were submitted to six
scenarios:
1. Purity violation
◦ dog
◦ incest
2. Fairness violation
◦ exam
◦ bonus (two workers & equal bonus)
3. Non-moral scenarios
◦ brand ( Marco & generic brand medicine)
◦ train ( eurostar vs regionl train)
21
METHODS AND SCENARIOS
2 The partecipants recived two
tasks:
1. Moral judgement task
2. Emotion-rating task
How sure are you in your
evaluation? ( 1 to 7)

22. METHODS AND SCENARIOS
3The partecipants recieved:
◦ the Moses illusion task:
“how many animals of each kind did Moses take
on the ark?”
◦ subscale of the identification with all
humanity scale.
22
4 Partecipants were asked:
“ how close do you feel to each of the following
groups?
• People in my community
• Italians
• People around the world”
5 Partecipants evaluated 15 violation of everyday moral and norms.
Es: Fail to keep minor promises; drive after having one drink

23. RESULTS
◦ Both moral judgement task and emotion-rating task confirm scenarios effect on
moral judgement. Morover emotional rating task show a marginally significant
main effect of purity violation, because of the dog scenario in foreign language
attenuated emotion.
◦ If foreign language promotes analytics reasoning, as the controlled–processing
hypothesis claims, then it should increase the frequency of correct responses in this
task. It did not.
How sure are you in your evaluation? The results confirmed the automatic
processing hypothesis.
23

24. RESULTS
◦ No effects were found by identification with all humanity scale.
◦ In everyday violations moral and social norms the researchers found less harsh
moral judgement in foreign language then in the native language. (13 to 15)
24

25. 25

26. CONCLUSIONS
The third study support resoundingly the automatic-processing hypothesis more then
controlled processing hypothesis.
Furthermore this study views the non-existence of in-group/out-group effect in
moral judgement.
26

27. GENERAL CONCLUSION
◦ The present research extends the foreign language effect to harmless-but-
offensive actions but also to relatively harmfull and harmless violations of
everyday social norms.
◦ The final verdict might be in the theoretical arena, studying how foreign language
influences moral judgement is of applied interest, as international public policy
involves communicating and processing materials in a foreign language before
taking decision that impact on the population of many countries.
27

28. THE END
Thanks for the attention
Corso di laurea in Teoria e Tecnologia della comunicazione
Corso di Cognizione e linguaggio