Though speakers and listeners monitor communication success, they systematically overestimate
it. We report an extreme illusion of understanding that exists even without shared language.
Native Mandarin Chinese speakers overestimated how well native English-speaking Americans
understood what they said in Chinese, even when they were informed that the listeners knew no
Chinese. These listeners also believed they understood the intentions of the Chinese speakers
much more than they actually did. This extreme illusion impacts theories of speech monitoring
and may be consequential in real-life, where miscommunication is costly.

AbstractVaccine hesitancy is a major global challenge facing COVID-19 immunization programs. Its main source is low public trust in the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. In a preregistered experimental study, we investigated how using a foreign language when communicating COVID-19 vaccine information influences vaccine acceptance. Hong Kong Chinese residents (N = 611) received COVID-19 vaccine information either in their native Chinese or in English. English increased trust in the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine and, as a result, reduced vaccine hesitancy. This indicates that language can impact vaccine attitudes and demonstrate the potential of language interventions for a low cost, actionable strategy to curtail vaccine hesitancy amongst bilingual populations. Language interventions could contribute towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of health and well-being.

Little is known about how healthy aging affects decision making. Here we studied how the social economic decisions of younger (19–39 years) and older (75–100 years) adults depend on the intentions of agents and the outcomes of their actions. Participants played the role of a responder (R) in an Ultimatum Game. A proposer (P) offered them a specific division of lottery tickets, which they could either accept or reject. Crucially, in each trial they were told that P was constrained to choose between two divisions of lottery tickets, resulting sometimes in an intended unfair offer and others in an unintended unfair offer. In the critical intended unfair offer, P kept 8 tickets and offered 2 to R, but he could have chosen a fair 5P/5R split. In the critical unintended unfair offer, P kept 8 tickets and offered 2 to R, but the alternative involved the same 8P/2R split. The unintended unfair offer was rejected by most of older adults (67 %), but only by a minority of younger adults (28 %). In general, older adults were less affected than younger adults by contextual constraints relevant to inferring P's intentions. These findings suggest that aging brings about an outcome bias in social economic decision making.

In three studies, we found that reading information in a foreign language can suppress common superstitious beliefs. Participants read scenarios in either their native or a foreign language. In each scenario, participants were asked to imagine performing an action (e.g. submitting a job application) under a superstitious circumstance (e.g. broken mirror, four-leaf clover) and to rate how they would feel. Overall, foreign language prompted less negative feelings towards bad-luck scenarios and less positive feelings towards good-luck scenarios, while it exerted no influence on non-superstitious, control scenarios. We attribute these findings to language-dependent memory. Superstitious beliefs are typically acquired and used in contexts involving the native language. As a result, the native language evokes them more forcefully than a foreign language.

We investigated whether moral violations involving harm selectively elicit anger, whereas purity violations selectively elicit disgust, as predicted by the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). We analysed participants’ spontaneous facial expressions as they listened to scenarios depicting moral violations of harm and purity. As predicted by MFT, anger reactions were elicited more frequently by harmful than by impure actions. However, violations of purity elicited more smiling reactions and expressions of anger than of disgust. This effect was found both in a classic set of scenarios and in a new set in which the different kinds of violations were matched on weirdness. Overall, these findings are at odds with predictions derived from MFT and provide support for “monist” accounts that posit harm at the basis of all moral violations. However, we found that smiles were differentially linked to purity violations, which leaves open the possibility of distinct moral modules.

This study examined age-related differences in the use of negligence information in moral judgment. A group of younger adults (18–36 years) and a group of older adults (75–98 years) were presented with a series of scenarios illustrating cases where an agent unintentionally causes harm. The scenarios also specified whether or not the agent acted with negligence. Participants were asked to rate how morally wrong was the agent's action. We found that older participants condemned the agents of accidental harms regardless of whether they acted with negligence, whereas younger participants condemned only the agents that acted with negligence. Subsequently, participants were presented with an accidental harm scenario in which negligence information was omitted, and were asked to morally evaluate the agent's action and to rate the extent to which the agent could be accused of negligence. Compared to younger adults, older adults condemned the agent's action more severely and rated the agent as more negligent. These results suggest that aging is associated with an increased tendency to assume that accidental harmdoers are negligent. This bias may help explain the intent-to-outcome shift occurring in old adults’ moral judgment.

The adoption of certain innovative products, such as recycled water, artificial meat and insect-based food, could help promote sustainability. However, the disgust these products elicit acts as a barrier to their consumption. Here, we show that describing such products in a foreign language attenuates the disgust these products trigger and heightens their intended as well as actual consumption.

Younger (21-39 years) and older (63-90 years) adults were presented with scenarios illustrating either harmful or helpful actions. Each scenario provided information about the agent's intention, either neutral or valenced (harmful/helpful), and the outcome of his or her action, either neutral or valenced. Participants were asked to rate how morally good or bad the agent's action was. In judging harmful actions, older participants relied less on intentions and more on outcomes compared to younger participants. This age-related difference was associated with a decline in older adults' theory of mind abilities. However, we did not find evidence of any significant age-related difference in the evaluations of helpful actions. We argue that the selective association of aging with changes in the evaluation of harmful but not helpful actions may be due also to motivational factors and highlight some implications of the present findings for judicial systems.

Volk, Köhler, & Pudelko (JIBS 45:862-885, 2014) propose that foreign language use depletes cognitive resources, thus hindering individual decision making and self-regulation. The present commentary highlights studies showing that foreign language use can also improve decision making and self-regulation. We propose that these benefits derive from two psychological factors. The first concerns the timing of cognitive depletion. Foreign language use involves an increase of memory load in the early phases of information processing, which has been shown to reduce the capture of attention by tempting stimuli. The second factor concerns the nature of human memory. Experiences and their associated emotions are coded in the language in which they occur, and thus are more accessible when the same language is used at retrieval. Therefore certain mental constructs, such as stereotypes, which have been shaped by years of cultural learning in a native language context, may exert less influence when processing a foreign language. The present treatment indicates value in extending Volk et al.'s conceptual model, and can help develop language strategies that may ultimately improve organizational decision making.

We examine whether the use of a foreign language, as opposed to the native language, influences the relative weight intentions versus outcomes carry in moral evaluations. In Study 1, participants were presented with actions that had positive outcomes but were motivated by dubious intentions, while in Study 2 with actions that had negative outcomes but were motivated by positive intentions. Participants received the materials either in their native or a foreign language. Foreign language prompted more positive moral evaluations in Study 1 and less positive evaluations in Study 2. These results show that foreign language reduces the relative weight placed on intentions versus outcomes. We discuss several theoretical accounts that are consistent with the results such as that foreign language attenuates emotions (triggered by intentions) or it depletes cognitive resources.

We investigated whether and how processing information in a foreign language as opposed to the native language affects moral judgments. Participants judged the moral wrongness of several private actions, such as consensual incest, that were depicted as harmless and presented in either the native or a foreign language. The use of a foreign language promoted less severe moral judgments and less confidence in them. Harmful and harmless social norm violations, such as saying a white lie to get a reduced fare, were also judged more leniently. The results do not support explanations based on facilitated deliberation, misunderstanding, or the adoption of a universalistic stance. We propose that the influence of foreign language is best explained by a reduced activation of social and moral norms when making moral judgments. We investigated whether and how foreign language influences moral judgment. Foreign language prompted more lenient judgments for moral transgressions. Foreign language reduced confidence in people's moral evaluations. Violations of everyday norms were judged less harshly in a foreign language. Foreign language might act through a reduced activation of social and moral norms.

As a result of globalization, policymakers and citizens are increasingly communicating in foreign languages. This article investigates whether communicating in a foreign language influences lay judgments of risk and benefit regarding specific hazards such as "traveling by airplane," "climate change," and "biotechnology." Merging findings from bilingual and risk perception research, we hypothesized that stimuli described in a foreign language, as opposed to the native tongue, would prompt more positive overall affect and through that induce lower judgments of risk and higher judgments of benefit. Two studies support this foreign language hypothesis. Contrary to recent proposals that foreign language influences judgment by promoting deliberate processing, we show that it can also influence judgment through emotional processing. The present findings carry implications for international policy, such as United Nations decisions on environmental issues.

We investigated whether and why the use of a foreign language influences moral judgment. We studied the trolley and footbridge dilemmas, which propose an action that involves killing one individual to save five. In line with prior work, the use of a foreign language increased the endorsement of such consequentialist actions for the footbridge dilemma, but not for the trolley dilemma. But contrary to recent theorizing, this effect was not driven by an attenuation of emotions. An attenuation of emotions was found in both dilemmas, and it did not mediate the foreign language effect on moral judgment. An examination of additional scenarios revealed that foreign language influenced moral judgment when the proposed action involved a social or moral norm violation.We propose that foreign language influences moral judgment by reducing access to normative knowledge.