Sorry, this project has finished.

Please contact 2415209C@student.gla.ac.uk with any questions about this study.

Thank you for taking the time to partake in this study!

The purpose of this research was to study the foreign language effect on moral decision making when faced with a personal vs impersonal moral dilemma, whereby people appear to make more emotional decisions in the personal dilemma but also appear to make less emotional decisions in their foreign language.

The vignette you were asked to read investigated the variation of emotional engagement which has been shown to influence moral judgements. According to this, people are less likely to take action that is more emotionally salient, compared to an action that is emotionally removed, even when the consequences of the action or inaction are identical.

Thus, the study included two conditions of moral judgement; an impersonal vignette where the participant must decided where to pull a lever to save 5 people on a train track and kill one, compared to a personal vignette where the participant must decide whether to push a stranger onto the train track to save 5 but kill one. The two possible outcomes are the same across both vignettes.

Each participant is given only one version of the vignette to read and answer. The answers are then compared between native language speakers and foreign language speakers. The native language group speaks English as their native language, and the foreign language group speak English as their non-native language.

We are investigating whether exposure to the dilemma in a foreign language will lead to a decline in emotional engagement and our prediction is that foreign language speakers will be more likely to take action in both the personal and impersonal dilemmas, than native speakers.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the study, please feel free to to contact the researchers:

Georgie Pickford - 2412632p@student.gla.ac.uk Bonnie Campbell - 2415209C@student.gla.ac.uk Kashish Gupta - 2428118g@student.gla.ac.uk Saif Awan - 2406519a@student.gla.ac.uk Olivia Gube - 2407380g@student.gla.ac.uk