ArticleQuarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)2019
Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias.
Article in Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The foreign language effect on decision-making: A meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2021Pooled it
- The Impact of Foreign Language on Meta-Reasoning in Moral Decisions.Journal of cognition · 2026Article
- Comparing AI and human moral reasoning: context-sensitive patterns beyond utilitarian bias.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2025Article
- Inside the kaleidoscope: unravelling the "feeling different" experience of bicultural bilinguals.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Thinking in a Non-native Language: A New Nudge?Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- The limits of the foreign language effect on decision-making: The case of the outcome bias and the representativeness heuristic.PloS one · 2018Article
- Illusions of causality: how they bias our everyday thinking and how they could be reduced.Frontiers in psychology · 2015Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of a foreign language on the causality bias (i.e., the illusion that two events are causally related when they are not). We predict that using a foreign language could reduce the illusions of causality. A total of 36 native English speakers participated in Experiment 1, 80 native Spanish speakers in Experiment 2. They performed a standard contingency learning task, which can be used to detect causal illusions. Participants who performed the task in their native tongue replicated the illusion of causality effect, whereas those performing the task in their foreign language were more accurate in detecting that the two events were causally unrelated. Our results suggest that presenting the information in a foreign language could be used as a strategy to debias individuals against causal illusions, thereby facilitating more accurate judgements and decisions in non-contingent situations. They also contribute to the debate on the nature and underlying mechanisms of the foreign language effect, given that the illusion of causality is rooted in basic associative processes.
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Registered trials
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