Moral decision-making in the context of written and oral code-switching: A new context for the Foreign Language Effect


Thematic Section: Morals and social norms in multilingual performance: Looking beyond the foreign language effect

language choice, foreign language effect, social norms, moral decision-making

Meagan Y. Driver, Michigan State University
 
The current presentation outlines two individual studies which explore the implications of bilingualism and language on moral decision-making in the written and oral modes. Study 1 expands the literature on the Foreign Language Effect by investigating differences in moral judgment in the written mode for 280 English-Spanish late bilinguals when processing the button and bridge moral scenarios of the canonical trolley dilemma (Thomson, 1985) in an online questionnaire in either a native (NL), foreign (FL), or code-switched (CS) language environment. Study 2 parallels the goals and procedure of the first study and explores the Foreign Language Effect on moral decision-making in the oral mode for 200 additional English-Spanish late bilinguals making judgment again in a NL, FL, or CS context. Both studies furthermore examine the effects of emotion on moral standards across the three language contexts, analyzing self-reports of individuals’ emotions following their moral decisions. In the written mode, moral judgments in the CS and NL conditions patterned similarly for both dilemmas, while, in line with previous studies, the FL condition elicited an increased percentage of utilitarian decisions in the high-conflict bridge scenario. Moral judgments made orally in Study 2 patterned similarly to those of Study 1. Unique emotions did not vary significantly across language contexts in either scenario, and no reduction in emotion was seen in participants’ FL. However, an interaction between language condition and emotion in the high- conflict dilemma suggests that the ratio and relative ranking of various emotions, and not just the degree of emotionality, may have an influence on moral evaluations. The presentation illuminates the previously neglected variable of moral decision processing in the context of written and oral code-switching and discusses cognitive and emotional explanations for the Foreign Language Effect.