Link: Study finds that using a foreign language changes moral decisions
In the new study, two experiments using the well-known “trolley dilemma” tested the hypothesis that when faced with moral choices in a foreign language, people are more likely to respond with a utilitarian approach that is less emotional.
The researchers collected data from people in the U.S., Spain, Korea, France and Israel. Across all populations, more participants selected the utilitarian choice—to save five by killing one—when the dilemmas were presented in the foreign language than when they did the problem in their native tongue.
The article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140428120659.htm
The publication:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094842
Seems like a special case of using a non-transparent communication medium to activate System 2 by delaying and/or muting a System 1 response. Similarly discussing an awkward subject feels less embarrassing in a foreign language… until you master it. Have you noticed how people tend to use clinical/scientific terms to avoid connotations when trying to stay “rational”?
Probably a good general rationality technique. Maybe the UN should stop real-time interpreting services and make everyone learn Latin, Esperanto or Lojban?
What other non-transparent communication media are out there? By “non-transparent” I mean one that requires a conscious effort to imbue or tease out a meaning.
Communicating via blurry text or using a hard-to-read font is a well known one.
I don’t think that either Esperanto or Lojban is the perfect language. Expressing an idea in either of those languages usually takes 1.5 the amount of time as it does in English.
I think there room for a new constructed language that does things better.
In this case it would be a feature, not a bug.
If a unproductive language is what you want you could go for Toki Pona. It’s even easier to teach than esperanto.
The point would be the opposite: to make it hard but usable.
Latin it is! I’ll bet some people won’t enjoy the return of a world-spanning political authority communicating in a language no normal person knows though.
That’s their problem.
Although it sounds profound.
This at first looks like a repost of the link in http://lesswrong.com/lw/bxn/learn_a_foreign_language_to_reduce_bias/ but it isn’t. This is another study with differnt tests.
Abstract:
Funny: Greater proficiency in the foreign language seems to reduce the effect. (figure 3 in the publication)
Makes sense. The more fluent you are the less “foreign” the language is to you.
This fits in with the recent post about the need to first ‘believe’ something before rejecting it (can’t find it). The better you get in a (foreign) language the less you consciously reflect on it’s content and thus the less chance to reject it you get.
Some hypotheses: 1) Words in the foreign language are not tainted with morality. Using more neutral words in the problem description would have a similar effect.
2) The extra time taken to parse the foreign language description forces more time to think about the problem. Saying the problem slowly, or writing with a huge font, would have a similar effect.
3) The distraction of translating has an effect. Giving the subjects an additional task to do would have a similar effect.
Other studies showed an effect of language helping to discriminate between things like two different colors (aided if your language uses different words for them). That seemed like a different thing, perhaps an effect of categories and practice.
Some other ways to tell which of these worlds we’re living in …
Test a blunt description (“The trolley will hit the five people and kill them”) versus a more verbose one, possibly with extraneous technical detail (“The vehicle, whose mass is N metric tons, will collide with the five individuals with a force of M newtons. Every similar collision on record has resulted in instant fatality.”)
Occupy the subjects’ working memory by asking them to memorize a phone number or pattern of symbols before the question.
Occupy the subjects’ attention by asking them the question while bouncing a basketball, or balancing on one foot, or doing some other activity that requires continuous physical attention.
Another thing to look into is how much giving the people names changes things. Or even back stories.
“Will you let Bob Naylor, a 48-year-old mechanic who is working overtime on the trolley track to save up to pay for his daughter’s wedding, die, or will you spare him by swerving the trolley into...”