Question

The language we use affects the decisions we make, according to a new study. Participants made more reasonable decisions when money-related choices were given in a foreign language that they had learned in a classroom setting than when they were asked in a native tongue.

To study how language affects reasoning, University of Chicago psychologists looked at a well-known phenomenon: people are more risk-taking when a decision irrelevant to their own feelings (such as which medicine to give to a sick elephant) is presented in terms of a potential gain than when it is framed as a potential loss even when the outcomes are the same. In the study, native English speakers who had learned Japanese, native Korean speakers who had learned English and native English speakers studying French in Paris all showed the expected tendency when they were asked the question in their native tongue. In their foreign language, however, the tendency disappeared.

A second set of experiments tested another cognitive (認知的) prejudice –we expect a personal loss will be more painful than the same amount of gain will be pleasant, so the benefit of winning must be disproportionately large for us to take a bet(打賭) (such as gambling with our own money). Again, the foreign-language effect was obvious in two different experiments, one with native Korean speakers and one with native English speakers. The Koreans took more theoretical bets in English than Korean, and the native English speakers took more real bets in Spanish than they did in English.

“When people use a foreign language, their decisions tend to be less prejudiced, more analytic, more systematic, because the foreign language provides psychological distance,” lead author Boaz Keysar suggests. Cognitive prejudices are rooted in emotional reactions, and thinking in a foreign language helps us disconnect from these emotions and make decisions in a more economically reasonable way. This study did not consider, however, the cases in which emotional engagement improves, rather than prevents, our choices: “We have an emotional system for a good reason,” Keysar says.

1.What is the foreign language effect discussed in this passage?

A. People make more reasonable decisions in a foreign language than in their native tongues.

B. Foreign languages play more important roles in making decisions than native languages do.

C. Emotional engagement can prevent reasonable decision makings but improve them as well.

D. Cognitive prejudices are more likely to appear in a foreign language than in a native tongue.

2.What does the underlined sentence mean?

A. People need to win a large sum of money before they decide to take a bet.

B. People are advised not to take a bet if they are not ready for the pain of losing.

C. People don’t take a bet unless they would win much more than they would lose.

D. People will feel more pleasant winning a bet than winning a large sum of money.

3.According to Keysar, what is the reason of the foreign language effect in this research?

A. Foreign languages have great effect on decision makings.

B. People are less prejudiced when thinking in a foreign language.

C. People are more risk-taking in a foreign language environment.

D. Personal feelings have little influence in foreign language thinking.

Answer 1