Judgement and Decision Making

According to Keysar, Hayakawa and An’s study (2012), there are two opposing theories regarding how L2 affects decision making. On one hand, the ‘decreased systematicity’ theory states that the difficulty of L2 acquisition and usage increases cognitive load, reducing reliance on more systematic cognitive processes for the user. This in turn, causes reliance on affective and intuitive cognitive processes to increase, thereby aggravating certain decision biases. On the other hand, the ‘increased systematicity’ theory proposed that the L2 would reduce affective processes and reduce emotional responses, thereby increasing reliance on analytic processes for decision making. This is due to the L2 being less grounded in the emotion system as compared to the L1, particularly since the L2 is less automatically processed as compared to the L1. Hence, this theory proposes that the effect of decision biases are reduced when using an L2.

In Keysar, Hayakawa and An’s study (2012), some relevant findings were presented with regard to these two theories. In their study, bilingual participants with different L1s and L2s were selected for each experiment (within each experiment itself, participants shared the same L1 and L2). In Experiment 1, participants’ risk preferences were investigated to see if they changed depending on whether the experiment was conducted in their L1 or L2. Participants were presented with identical problems in Experiment 1, modified from the original “Asian disease” problem. The original problem gave participants two options: use Medicine A to save 200,000 people, or use Medicine B, which has a 33.3% chance to save 600,000 people and a 66.6% chance that none would be saved. When faced with such a problem, participants often show risk aversion in the domain of gains, but become risk-seeking in the domain of losses. For example, participants would rather choose Medicine A than risk saving no lives at all. However, if the choice was framed in terms of lives lost, participants tend to become risk-seeking. Hence, the effect of L2, if any, was investigated with regard to this reversal in risk preferences. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated related issues on loss aversion (the tendency to prefer avoiding losses as oppose to acquiring gains) and consequential investment behaviour, tweaking the original problem to better fit into the selected scope.

Interestingly, the results from all of the experiments generally support the ‘increased systematicity’ theory. Participants demonstrated an increased reliance on systematic processes when making decisions in their L2 as compared to decision-making in their L1. The possible reason for this is that L2 usage weakens emotional responses and reactions, making choices more comparable across their gains and losses. This L2 effect is also observed to occur across the experiments, regardless of what the L1 or L2 of the user was, and regardless of the context – whether the participants were in their native country or not.

The findings of this study result in two important implications. Firstly, since L2 usage can result in a systematic effect, it may be necessary to note if participants are using their L2 during a study. This would have implications on the results of the study, or could be a potential confounding factor that affects the effectiveness of the results obtained. Secondly, people can consider using their L2 for decisions regarding areas such as savings, retirement, investments since L2 usage would lead them to be more systematic and analytic in their thinking process, while reducing any decision biases caused by their affective cognitive processes.

In the next section, the article will move on from L2 effects on cognition to L2 effects on language, or more specifically, the L1.

Language

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