Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias

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.

Keywords: Cognitive biases; causality bias; contingency judgements; debiasing; foreign language effect; illusion of causality.

Figure 1.

Screenshot of a training trial. In the upper panel, participants saw information about the presence or absence of the potential cause. The middle panel shows the predictive question that was used to maintain their attention. Once participants gave their response, the program showed the lower panel with information about the presence or absence of the outcome.

Figure 2.

Mean judgement of causality for Experiment 1 (left panel) and Experiment 2 (right panel). Experiment 1 was conducted with native English speakers, and Experiment 2 with native Spanish speakers. Error bars depict the 95% confidence intervals for the means.