Not all bilinguals are the same: A meta-analysis of the moral foreign language effect

• Published in: Brain and language Vol. 227; p. 105082
• Main Authors: Stankovic, Michelle, Biedermann, Britta, Hamamura, Takeshi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier Inc 01.04.2022; Academic Press
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Decision-making; Foreign language; Humans; Language; Language proficiency; Linguistics; Meta-analysis; Moral judgement; Morals; Reading; Second language learning; Decision-making; Bilingualism; Foreign language; Moral judgement
• ISSN: 0093-934X; 1090-2155; 1090-2155
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2022.105082

•A meta-analysis confirmed the moral Foreign Language Effect within footbridge dilemmas.•Those with higher proficiency are less likely to make a utilitarian choice.•This may be due to emotional attachment in the FL, not comprehension. Emerging evidence shows bilinguals employ different decision-making strategies in their foreign language compared to their native language (known as the Foreign Language Effect). When completing moral dilemmas, accumulating research findings indicate that bilinguals are more likely to endorse the utilitarian option. We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate whether linguistic variables (proficiency, immersion, and language similarity) moderate utilitarian responding to moral dilemmas in a foreign language. A systematic literature search extracted experiments comparing binary responses to moral dilemmas among bilingual participants. Analyses confirmed a moral Foreign Language Effect within personal dilemmas, though this effect was moderated by self-reported reading proficiency, whereby bilinguals with higher self-reported reading proficiency were less likely to make a utilitarian choice. Our findings suggest that not all bilinguals may experience a Foreign Language Effect, with low self-reported reading proficiency being the most likely indicator of whether their response tendencies to a moral dilemma change in the foreign language.