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Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

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Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#41

Post by throwaway7808 »

colechristensen wrote: post #36
yongjik wrote: post #16

Out of curiosity, just checked the referenced paper[1] and there is no Korean/Japanese/French version of the questionnaire they used. It's disappointing. We all know these kinds of polls can be easily gamed by subtle (or not-so-subtle) phrasing, and without the questions actually used, I have no way of knowing if the "Foreign Language Effect" actually exists or if their choice of words in the translation affected the…

Psychology studies are (in my general opinion) notoriously poor science to the point that the vast majority of them are worthless fluff useful only for sensational headlines.

Still, I would advice not to disregard this study completely and at least be careful about making decisions when using a foreign language. It well might be true that the emotional and other subsystems are somewhat inhibited when thinking in a foreign language and that might have both positive and negative consequences.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#42

Post by DerpDerpDerp »

saraid216 wrote: post #35
001sky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "all" as a modifier to 600k is not in the text; see for eg: And here is the problem framed in terms of gains: If you choose Medicine A, 200,000 people will be saved. If you choose Medicine B, there is a 33.3% chance that 600,000 people will be saved and a 66.6% chance that no one will be saved. Which medicine do you choose? Although the number of certain deaths is the same in both versions of the problem, pe…

The "Asian Disease problem" is a very standard experimental psychology/economics problem. It's alternatively phrased as this: "Would you like receive 4 dollars, or would you like a 40% chance to receive 10 dollars?" The entire article is just a layer over this showing the supposed effects of asking the question in a foreign language (other comments have explained the likely problems of the experiment), and then anoth…

> It's alternatively phrased as this: "Would you like receive 4 dollars, or would you like a 40% chance to receive 10 dollars?"

The problem is that the rational answer to this depends on a huge amount of background information, eg, the value of certainly having some money, versus the benefit of the additional money.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#43

Post by poulsbohemian »

It's certainly possible that this research shows correlation between less emotional thinking and language use, but it seems to me like Mandela's quote in the article is really a reframing of Goethe's observation that "The border of our world is the border of our language." It's no different really than the Romans and various "barbarian" tribes exchanging youth to grow up in each other's culture - know your "enemy," speak his language, etc. That explains more about Mandela's cognizant motivations in this case, though the vignette makes for a nice article.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#44

Post by pandler »

enra wrote: post #19
emilga wrote: post #14

It's the same thing with foreign units of measurement (in, ft, F, stones, etc.). Although I know there is a one-to-one mapping between meters and feet, I only grok a measurement given in meters. There's probably some conditioning behind this: every day you are reminded that a pack of salami is 200g, while a pack of flour is 1kg, and so on ... so that for each measurement you just access your library of memories that…

Coming from the metric systems, I've been starting to learn the US measurements, eg. I have memories and know how much is "a pound of meat". I still don't get cups or the fluid measurements though, except that 12 oz a beer bottle and 16 oz is a medium soda bottle (medium in European terms).

Some imperial measurements are pretty random (1 mile = 1720 yards, 1 yard = 3 feet?), but many of the commonly used ones are just based on fractions or convenient values instead of everything being base 10.

Maybe this will help with the fluids. Looking at a table of fluid measurements, it is easy to see it is just a base 2 system.

2^-1 oz = .5 oz = 1 tablespoon

2^0 oz = 1 oz = 1 oz (2 tablespoons)

2^1 oz = 2 oz = 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons)

2^2 oz = 4 oz = 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons)

2^3 oz = 8 oz = 1 cup (16 tablespoons)

2^4 oz = 16 oz = 1 pint (2 cups)

2^5 oz = 32 oz = 1 quart (4 cups)

2^6 oz = 62 oz = 1/2 gallon (8 cups)

2^7 oz = 128oz = 1 gallon (16 cups)

I think it is quite beautiful in a way. That doesn't explain why we have 12 oz beers though.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#45

Post by jvm »

colechristensen wrote: post #36
yongjik wrote: post #16

Out of curiosity, just checked the referenced paper[1] and there is no Korean/Japanese/French version of the questionnaire they used. It's disappointing. We all know these kinds of polls can be easily gamed by subtle (or not-so-subtle) phrasing, and without the questions actually used, I have no way of knowing if the "Foreign Language Effect" actually exists or if their choice of words in the translation affected the…

Psychology studies are (in my general opinion) notoriously poor science to the point that the vast majority of them are worthless fluff useful only for sensational headlines.

> majority of them are worthless fluff useful only for sensational headlines

There's a sampling bias here. A similar dynamic goes on with Physics.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#46

Post by colechristensen »

throwaway7808 wrote: post #41
colechristensen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology studies are (in my general opinion) notoriously poor science to the point that the vast majority of them are worthless fluff useful only for sensational headlines.

Still, I would advice not to disregard this study completely and at least be careful about making decisions when using a foreign language. It well might be true that the emotional and other subsystems are somewhat inhibited when thinking in a foreign language and that might have both positive and negative consequences.

Being careful with what you speak and write is naturally good advice. A worthless scientific article doesn't make the opposite of it's conclusion true.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#47

Post by throwaway7808 »

colechristensen wrote: post #46
throwaway7808 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, I would advice not to disregard this study completely and at least be careful about making decisions when using a foreign language. It well might be true that the emotional and other subsystems are somewhat inhibited when thinking in a foreign language and that might have both positive and negative consequences.

Being careful with what you speak and write is naturally good advice. A worthless scientific article doesn't make the opposite of it's conclusion true.

For what it is worth, I have anecdotal evidence that thinking in a foreign language in fact does somewhat inhibit emotional and experiential (common sense) subsystems. So beware.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#48

Post by saraid216 »

DerpDerpDerp wrote: post #42
saraid216 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Asian Disease problem" is a very standard experimental psychology/economics problem. It's alternatively phrased as this: "Would you like receive 4 dollars, or would you like a 40% chance to receive 10 dollars?" The entire article is just a layer over this showing the supposed effects of asking the question in a foreign language (other comments have explained the likely problems of the experiment), and then anoth…

> It's alternatively phrased as this: "Would you like receive 4 dollars, or would you like a 40% chance to receive 10 dollars?" The problem is that the rational answer to this depends on a huge amount of background information, eg, the value of certainly having some money, versus the benefit of the additional money.

It's less of a problem when the effect is well known to hold in a variety of phrasings. It doesn't matter if it's people or dollars; it doesn't matter if it's 4 out of 10 or 8 out of 10.

Further, they account for stuff like that by using large sample sizes. Different people are choosing both options. It's just that the proportions hold despite this.

They've spent a good 30 years confirming this. If you really want to criticize it, it'd be worth putting together a list of studies investigating this and analyzing their methodologies for problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)#Frami...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology)

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#49

Post by losvedir »

ivarv wrote: post #3

Not really relevant to the point of the article, but worth mentioning: The article's commentary on the _Asian Disease_ problem which states "the number of certain deaths is the same in both versions of the problem.." is incorrect. In case A, the number of certain deaths is 400,000, in case B it's 0. Or am I reading it incorrectly ?

> Or am I reading it incorrectly ?

You're reading it incorrectly. It's saying that the number of certain deaths is the same, whether it's phrased as "400,000 deaths" or "saving 200,000 people".

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#50

Post by clamprecht »

pandler wrote: post #44
enra wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from the metric systems, I've been starting to learn the US measurements, eg. I have memories and know how much is "a pound of meat". I still don't get cups or the fluid measurements though, except that 12 oz a beer bottle and 16 oz is a medium soda bottle (medium in European terms).

Some imperial measurements are pretty random (1 mile = 1720 yards, 1 yard = 3 feet?), but many of the commonly used ones are just based on fractions or convenient values instead of everything being base 10. Maybe this will help with the fluids. Looking at a table of fluid measurements, it is easy to see it is just a base 2 system. 2^-1 oz = .5 oz = 1 tablespoon 2^0 oz = 1 oz = 1 oz (2 tablespoons) 2^1 oz = 2 oz = 1/4…

You have a bit flipped in 2^6, it should be 2^6 oz = 64 oz
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