Ιf you asked a multilingual friend which language they find more emotional, the answer would usually be their mother tongue – the one they used while growing up and probably still use at home. This does not mean they are incapable of expressing emotion in another language, but there is a clear link between first languages and stronger emotional expression.
This has a lot to do with where and how we learn a language. Our first language, which linguists call L1, is usually acquired in the emotionally charged settings of childhood and family. Second languages, known as L2, are often learned in more neutral contexts, such as schools and institutions, making them less emotionally intense.
Research has shown that this difference in emotional intensity may also impact our moral decision-making – bilinguals tend to make different decisions depending on which language they use.
In their L1, they make more deontological decisions (meaning they comply with a certain set of ethical rules or duties). In L2, however, their choices are often more rational, and aim to maximise well-being for the greatest number of people.
This phenomenon is known as the moral foreign language effect. Our team has conducted a series of studies into this phenomenon, in order to better understand the relationship between the fundamental human experiences of language, emotion, and moral judgements.
Language influences moral decisions
In one of our studies, we gathered data from 204 Spanish speakers who started learning English after the age of three in instructional settings, such as schools or private language centres. We asked them to solve a moral dilemma, justify their decision, and describe the emotions they experienced.
They were presented with the footbridge dilemma, where people must decide whether they would push an innocent man off a footbridge, thereby killing him, in order to stop a train that is about to kill five people who are tied to the tracks. Half of the participants read and replied in Spanish and the other half did so in English.
Our participants not only made more emotional decisions in their L1, but also used more emotional words to justify these decisions, providing arguments such as “I can’t kill a person” or “it’s a homicide, it would make me a murderer”. They also appeared to be more concerned about breaking the law, and felt guiltier when speaking in their L1.
By contrast, the use of the L2 was associated with more rational arguments such as “I don’t want to become a passive murderer” or “allowing mass death to occur is impermissible”. These arguments included a substantially lower number of emotional words than those in the L1.
