
Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking - fortepianissimo
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/opinion/sunday/moral-judgments-depend-on-what-language-we-are-speaking.html?_r=0
======
mattfenwick
The paper
([http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094842))
is not an example of good science.

First: did they even find some kind of correlation, or is it just a
statistical aberration? Second: if they found a real correlation, is their
explanation of why that correlation exists correct?

IMHO, their evidence does not support their claims. Where are the controls?
What are the sampling biases? What are possible alternative explanations, and
why are those not considered? What is the relationship between a person's
response to a hypothetical situation and his/her actions in a real one?

They greatly overstate their findings in the discussion section. It's almost
painful to read:

> We have shown that people’s moral judgments and decisions depend on the
> native-ness of the language in which a dilemma is presented, becoming more
> utilitarian in a foreign language.

> Most likely, a foreign language reduces emotional reactivity, promoting
> cost-benefit considerations, leading to an increase in utilitarian
> judgments.

> This discovery has important consequences for our globalized world as many
> individuals make moral judgments in both native and foreign languages.
> Immigrants face personal moral dilemmas in a foreign language on a daily
> basis, sometimes dilemmas with even larger stakes such as when serving as a
> jury member in a trial.

> Given that what we have discovered is surprising and unintuitive, increasing
> awareness of the impact of using a foreign language may help us check our
> decision-making context and make choices that are based on the things that
> should really matter.

> Foreign languages are used in international, multilingual forums such as the
> United Nations, the European Union, large investment firms and international
> corporations in general. Moral choices within these domains can be explained
> better, and are made more predictable by our discovery.

Wait, what? When was that covered in the rest of the paper?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The premise had more potential. One set of individuals, evaluating a scenario
presented to them in their native tongue, were found to react in a
statistically significantly different way from a second set of individuals,
evaluating the same scenario in a language foreign to them.

The problem is the people in group one are not the same as those in group two.
Statistical controls can mitigate the risk of randomness crashing the party.
But there is an experimental solution: have the same people evaluate similar
situations in a foreign _and_ their native tongues. That said, something
gained if it inspires a more rigorous study.

~~~
marcosdumay
> have the same people evaluate similar situations in a foreign and their
> native tongues

Also does not work. You'll prime the test subject, and bias them.

------
tfinniga
I have a theory about why that is.

In the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" there are a number of experiments
described that show that human thought can roughly be separated into two
systems, one of which is intuitive, fast, heuristic, and low-energy, and the
other which is rational, analytical, uses more calories, and is only engaged
when necessary.

We use the first system most of the time, and only use the second system when
we really need to. They found that when people were given something to read in
a smaller font, their responses to it were more rational.

This might be the same effect - if the second system is already engaged due to
the difficulty of understanding the other language, the result is a more
rational response.

It's a very interesting book, and well done. It's a bit long, but thorough.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow)

------
infruset
I wonder if this might not be something else.

When you study a language in a classroom, you frequently engage in
conversations on various topics, whose sole purpose is to make you practice
much more than to actually have a well-thought conversation. As such (and here
I speak from my own experience only), it is much more common to defend
positions in which you don't actually believe, for the sake of argument or
maybe just because it is easier to express than the subtleties you might find
while thinking this over in your native language.

I think it may be a good idea to try to only ask bilingual people (as opposed
to people _studying_ a language), or at least to test the above hypothesis
before jumping to conclusions.

~~~
pmr_
Neither of the two languages a bilingual person speaks is considered foreign.
Otherwise the person would not be bilingual. What would be the result of such
a study? Keep in mind that in linguistics the difference between being a
native speaker and having learned a language after the critical period is
considered huge.

~~~
mercer
The critical period is until around the age of seven, right? The reason I'm
asking is that I started speaking/reading a lot of English from the age of 8
on, and as far as I can tell I'm bilingual. Could you explain why that would
not be the case, or how that's possible?

------
GFischer
I really liked being introduced to the Trolley Problem (especially the second
formulation), I hadn't heard of it before.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)

I spent more time than I should reading about several possible answers :)

for example:

[http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/t...](http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/thomsonTROLLEY.pdf)

some with a libertarian slant:

[http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/08/the-trolley-
non...](http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/08/the-trolley-non-problem/)

[http://freedomed.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-trolley-problem-
is...](http://freedomed.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-trolley-problem-is-
bullshit.html)

Edit: where is a good place to read about and/or discuss interesting
philosophical questions (preferrably not too far out :) )? Is it worth it to
take a course on philosophy? (I've had short courses on "moral education"
which were really awful).

~~~
innguest
> where is a good place to read about and/or discuss interesting philosophical
> questions

You should explore similar books to these:

\- The Pig That Wants to be Eaten

\- The Duck That Won the Lottery

~~~
GFischer
Thank you :) . Will do.

Edit: I've also had a recommendation of watching Michael Sandel's videos:

[http://www.justiceharvard.org/](http://www.justiceharvard.org/)

------
thret
When I first heard this problem, it was told in a heart-wrenching first-person
'this actually happened' way. Roughly as follows:

"A man who worked the gears for a train line took his son to work. His son ran
off to play and when it came time for him to divert a train (not doing so
would cause a head on collision) he couldn't see his son, but he heard him cry
out - he was stuck in the gears. Diverting the train would kill his son. So he
does the right thing, sacrifices his son to save hundreds of lives."

This was a Sunday School story, meant to illustrate how God So Loved The World
that he sacrificed his son. So I've actually always unhesitatingly believed
that the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few, or the one.

As an adult and upon deeper reflection, I find that this holds true for
strangers, but if I am completely honest my life and the lives of those I hold
dear are worth more to me than the lives of basically any number of strangers.

~~~
rayiner
As a parent, not only would I not hit the switch, I'd blame Congress for the
passenger deaths for not funding modernization of the switching
infrastructure.

~~~
philh
If blame is a meaningful thing to assign, I'm going to assign at least some of
it to you for not watching your son, and quite a lot of it to you for not
flipping the switch.

I much prefer a world where you are sad and your son is dead, to a world where
hundreds of people are dead, all their families are sad, and your son is
alive.

(That said, it's at least somewhat plausible that if I was in that situation,
I would also make the wrong decision. That doesn't make it right.)

~~~
thret
I'm confident most people would do the 'wrong' thing. A train-load of
strangers is abstract, and it is difficult to comprehend. I think it is like
in Schindler's List. 6 million Jews - who can grasp that? It is a number that
makes no sense, a horror you cannot attach a face to. But we all are
immediately choked up over the little girl in red.

------
Fice
Pushing the large man is risky, you can't be 100% sure that it will work, and
you can't be absolutely sure that five people will die if you don't do it. So
it could be the willingness to take chances rather than the moral judgments.

~~~
krisgee
In the context of the thought problem it works 100% of the time.

~~~
chroma
Even if I am confident that pushing a fat man onto some tracks will stop a
trolley and save lives, it is much more likely that I have gone insane than
that actually being the case. If this dilemma happened in real life, hopefully
I would recognize my insanity and not push the fat man.

------
wvh
Interesting. I speak 6 languages and actively think in 3–4 of those, and I
notice slight changes in my attitudes and behaviour depending on the active
language in my head. It might be interesting to experiment and find out if not
just the fact that it's a foreign language matters, but also the influence of
the actual choice of language.

~~~
Aqueous
Wow, that's amazing. Did you learn all of those languages when you were a
young child or did you learn them as you were getting older? Also, are you
from a country that is bordered by a lot of other countries with native
languages but doesn't have a native language of its own, like Switzerland?

------
simula67
> in general people react less strongly to emotional expressions in a foreign
> language

As a non-native English speaker, I wonder if this affects programming. Do
English-speaking people find beautiful programs written in English more
beautiful than others ? Anyone here programmed in both their mother tongue and
one other language ?

~~~
realusername
(French native speaker here).

From the developers I know (and that is still my case to some extent) people
refer to the keywords as their function rather than their meaning. So when you
see a 'while' or a 'for' loop, you just interpret it as a loop regardless of
the original meaning of the word, it's not English anymore, it's just code
blocks.

But I'm wondering how it's interpreted from the point of view of a native
speaker.

~~~
eatitraw
Russian native speaker here. I too never think of keywords as words in english
language.

As for function/variable/type/etc names and comments -- in Russia english is
the standard. Russian is rarely used in comments, and using russian in code is
frowned upon, so it (almost) never happens.

> But I'm wondering how it's interpreted from the point of view of a native
> speaker.

In Russia, we have company called 1C. One of the software products of this
company is "1C: Enterprise". This product has some built-in language(for
automatizing common accountant tasks or something like that). And keywords in
this language are russian words.

I've never programmed in this language. And code in it looks really horrible
to me, to the point of being repulsive. Here is hello world program, in case
anyone is interested:

[https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Встроенный_язык_программирован...](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Встроенный_язык_программирования_1С:Предприятие#.D0.9F.D1.80.D0.B8.D0.BC.D0.B5.D1.80_.D0.BF.D1.80.D0.BE.D0.B3.D1.80.D0.B0.D0.BC.D0.BC.D1.8B)

~~~
icebraining
We have a similar language here in Portugal (I believe it's a copy of Delphi)
and I also find it extremely unpleasant to even read it.

------
spodek
> Extreme moral dilemmas are supposed to touch the very core of our moral
> being. So why the inconsistency?

This question doesn't seem scientific.

I would say, "We didn't predict this outcome, what's wrong with our theory?"

If you're observing something in nature, in this case people, calling nature
inconsistent doesn't make sense. Nature is consistent. Your theory has
problems if it calls nature inconsistent.

~~~
icebraining
I wouldn't say they're calling nature inconsistent. They're calling the
_supposition_ inconsistent. Which is more or less the same as saying the
theory is inconsistent.

------
hartator
Maybe when you ask native people in a foreign language, they perceive it as a
game and are less serious?

Maybe this "results" are nothing to do with moral judgment?

I am a native french speaker and live in the U.S. "Moral" decisions feel the
same for me at least. I will be more influenced by the culture around me than
a choice of words...

------
soneca
If you want to play with the trolley problem:
[http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/trolleyproblem/TrolleyProble...](http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/trolleyproblem/TrolleyProblem.html)

~~~
bluecalm
It doesn't work for me in neither Firefox nor Chrome. The space doesn't work
on level 0 and 1 (training and 3 people vs 1) but it does work with fat
person.

------
mcv
Despite English not being my native language, I would object to pushing the
man in front of the train. Does that mean my mastery of English is sufficient
that it can touch me on the same level as my native language?

~~~
boomlinde
If you read the numbers this isn't exactly exceptional. You share the opinion
of the majority of the participants of the study.

------
cyphunk
hmm psychology is fun but... I wont trust the results of this study until they
ask the same set of train-switch-murderous-multilingual users to also choose
between chocolate cake or fruit salad [1].

1: [http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/fruit-salad-
cho...](http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/fruit-salad-chocolate-
cake-cognitive-control-and-poverty)

------
mathattack
Gives new meaning to "Are you speaking my language?" It can have moral
overtones too.

------
shittyanalogy
_Our Personal Predictions about Moral Judgments in Contrived Hypothetical
Situations while Being Observed by a Third Party Depend on What Language We
're Reading_

I mean seriously, if you're going to test the slight difference in people's
moral attitudes based on the method of information consumption at least find
it important to consistently distinguish between oral and written.

That aside, this article, unless you ignore what was actually tested and just
imagine it to be what you want, is saying absolutely nothing.

------
ExpiredLink
Correlation vs.causation. Here we go again ...

~~~
mattfenwick
That's right. And it's not even clear that they found a correlation that would
hold up in different experimental conditions.

The paper is at
[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094842)
, and unfortunately has the provocative title "Your Morals Depend on
Language", instead of a more accurate title like "There's a possibility that
some people's morals are correlated with language, but we're not sure and
we're also not sure if that's true for everybody because our sampling is
insufficient to allow us to draw such a conclusion".

------
lutusp
A quote: "But it does help us predict and explain some moral choices."

Predict, yes. Explain, no. Many such studies can predict that something is
going to happen, that a correlation exists, but far fewer even attempt to
offer a testable explanation, a way to turn a correlation into a cause-effect
relationship. Science commentators as far back as Aristotle have described
science as a way to craft explanations for observations, not merely describe
the observations and their outcomes, which is that this study does.

