Foreign Language Influences the Relative Contribution of Intentions and Outcomes to Moral

Foreign language influences the relative contribution of intentions and outcomes to moral judgment

Janet Geipel*, VUmc Medical Center Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Constantinos Hadjichristidis, Trento University, Italy and University of Leeds, UK.

Luca Surian, Trento University, Italy

Many decisions that carry important moral implications, such as those made by international organizations, involve communication in a foreign language. Moral evaluations imply the consideration of outcome information but crucially also the consideration of underlying intentions (Young, 2013). In the present study, we examined whether the use of a foreign language, as opposed to the native language, influences the relative weight placed on outcomes versus intentions in the moral evaluation of actions. Previous studies demonstrated that the use of a foreign language increases the acceptance of sacrificial actions that promote the aggregate benefit (e.g., Costa et al., 2014; Geipel, Hadjichristidis, & Surian, 2015). Presumably, the use of a foreign language attenuates action-based affect (i.e., the negative affect associated with the thought of killing one person) shifting attention to the outcomes (i.e., saving five people). Here we investigated whether this effect extends to actions that garner positive or negative affect through the underpinning intentions. To this end, in Study 1 we presented participants with moral actions that had positive outcomes but were motivated by questionable intentions, while in Study 2 with moral actions that had negative outcomes but were motivated by positive intentions. With respect to the foreign language, the use of a foreign language prompted higher moral goodness ratings in Study 1 and lower moral goodness ratings in Study 2. The present results suggest that when people make moral evaluations in a foreign language they place relatively more weight on outcomes versus intentions. The reason for this effect could be that foreign language attenuates the positive or negative affect triggered by the underlying intentions.

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