On how bilingualism improves decision making.

By now, you should have wondered whether you are better or not on taking some decisions using or in the context of a foreign language, or if, in contrast, your native language is more suitable for every case.

But you haven´t, have you?

Considering that this is a blog grounded on a bilingual issue, or, perhaps, on the relationship between two languages (soon three), this is a matter for me to step forward and point out some interesting facts.

We humans have serious a proclivity to make emotional choices. That is to say irrational, swift, biased and, accordingly, wrong choices.

The framing effect, for one, states that it is way more likely for someone to choose a solution, between two, fancying chance when the problem is verbaly framed in noxiousness, and favoring sure outcomes when that same problem is framed in positive terms.

Emotions interfere, as you can see.

And it turns out that, if the problem is embodied in a second language, to which we haven´t been attached in daily or intimate life, such effect fades away.

And thats just the beginning: our personalities and cognitive skills are deeply altered by the language we use. So yes: if you speak two or more languages, you might have multiple personalities. ¡Bienvenido al mundo de los locos! If you read that as well as you did with the rest of this text: it is true, welcome to the insanity realm.

Moreover, and for my delight, I think that I´ve thought about a new literary experience.

Just figure: what if a poem is written half in english and the rest in spanish. Or involving three or four languages. Wouldn´t that be amazing and delirious?

Not to say, first of all, how it could influence literature reading, which intends an emotional mood.

No offence to literature: many writters, as you might know, also make literature using non-maternal languages, and they actually feel the difference; far before scientist drawn these conclutions, Nabokov and Cioran were pointing how cold and insensible it felt to write in a foreign language.

The thesis that states a close relationship between thought and language first arrived, to science world, with Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Far ago, at mid 30s...

Well, for more on this, check out thess articles published at Scientific American and its spanish version, Investigación y Ciencia.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-way-with-words

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=foreign-language-improve-decisions

http://www.investigacionyciencia.es/mente-y-cerebro/numeros/2010/9/cerebros-bilinges-8348

http://www.investigacionyciencia.es/mente-y-cerebro/numeros/2012/3/hablar-con-afecto-8563


Cheers,