ABSTRACT

In decision-making people react differently to positive wordings than to negatives, which may be caused by negativity bias: a difference in emotional force of these wordings. Because emotions are assumed to be activated more strongly in one’s mother tongue, we predict a Foreign Language Effect, being that such framing effects are larger in a native language than in a foreign one. In two experimental studies (N = 475 and N = 503) we tested this prediction for balanced and unbalanced second language users of Spanish and English and for three types of valence framing effects. In Study 1 we observed risky-choice framing effects and attribute framing effects, but these were always equally large for native and foreign-language speakers. In our second study, we added a footbridge dilemma to the framing materials. Only for this task we did observe a Foreign Language Effect, indicating more utilitarian choices when the dilemma is presented in L2. Hence, across two studies, we find no Foreign Language Effect for three types of valence framing but we do find evidence for such an effect in a moral decision task. We discuss several alternative explanations for these results.

摘要

在决策过程中，人们对积极措辞的反应与对消极措辞的反应不同，这可能是由消极偏见引起的：这些措辞的情感力量不同。因为假设情绪在一个人的母语中被更强烈地激活，我们预测了外语效应，因为这种框架效应在母语中比在外语中更大。在两项实验研究中（N  = 475 和N = 503）我们针对西班牙语和英语的平衡和不平衡的第二语言用户以及三种类型的价框架效应测试了这一预测。在研究 1 中，我们观察到风险选择框架效应和属性框架效应，但对于母语和外语人士来说，这些效应总是一样大。在我们的第二项研究中，我们在框架材料中添加了一个人行桥困境。仅在这项任务中，我们确实观察到了外语效应，这表明当 L2 中出现困境时，有更多的功利性选择。因此，在两项研究中，我们发现三种类型的效价框架没有外语效应，但我们确实在道德决策任务中找到了这种效应的证据。我们讨论了这些结果的几种替代解释。