Resumen de No foreign language effect in self-sacrificial moral dilemmas

Rafal Muda, Wojciech Milczarski, Anna Borkowska, Michał Białek

• Research questions:

  The Moral Foreign Language Effect is a phenomenon in which individuals exhibit lower moral engagement (i.e., are simultaneously less deontological and less utilitarian) when using a foreign language compared to their native language. This paper reports on three experiments involving bilingual participants to investigate the impact of foreign language on moral judgment in self-sacrifice dilemmas.

  Design:

  In three experiments, we asked N  = 425 participants whether they would self-sacrifice to save other people. In Experiment 1, the people to be saved were strangers. In Experiment 2, they were relatives. Experiment 3 replicated the first two with the addition of the control condition with the option to sacrifice a stranger instead.

  Data and analysis:

  Experiments 1 and 3 showed no effect of language on willingness to self-sacrifice. In Experiment 2, the participants using a foreign language were less willing to sacrifice themselves.

  Conclusions:

  Language has no consistent effect on participants’ willingness to sacrifice themselves or others.

  Originality:

  Contrary to previous studies on the issue, we controlled both for the beneficiaries (strangers vs. relatives) and the method of saving them (self-sacrifice vs. sacrifice of a stranger).

  Significance:

  Our results cast doubt on the robustness of the moral Foreign Language Effect.

  Limitations:

  We limited our research design to two language pairs. Failure to replicate Experiment 2 results in Experiment 3 could be an effect of the different language pairs used in both experiments.