What language does your heart speak? The influence of foreign language on moral judgements and emotions related to unrealistic and realistic moral dilemmas

ABSTRACT

Emotional attenuation in a second language is believed to be one of the main causes of the Moral Foreign Language effect (MFLe). However, evidence on the mediating role of emotion in the relationship between language and moral judgements is limited and mainly derives from unrealistic moral dilemmas. We conducted two studies to investigate (1) whether the MFLe is present in both unrealistic (Study 1) and realistic (Study 2) moral dilemmas, and (2) whether this effect can be attributed to reduced emotionality. In Study 1, the MFLe was found in the moral judgements made by Spanish-English bilinguals. However, the same pattern was not observed in Greek Cypriot-English bilinguals’ moral judgements, and this result was attributed to the prominent role of English in Cyprus. In Study 2, the MFLe extended to realistic moral dilemmas when the outcome of the action entailed the violation of a social norm. Study 1 and Study 2 also revealed that these bilinguals experienced a wide range of emotions in their L1 and L2, which did not differ significantly across languages. Mediation analyses further indicated that the MFLe was not mediated by emotional blunting, which made us consider alternative explanations for the MFLe.

KEYWORDS:

• Foreign language effect
• moral decision making
• emotion
• cultural influence
• bilingualism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr Stavroula Philippou for her valuable help with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of the project EMILIA (FFI2017-83166-C2-2-R) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe” and was also supported by the Community of Madrid and the European Social Fund (IN.MIGRA3-CM, ref. H2019/HUM5772).