Do you wish to waive your rights? Affect and decision-making in multilingual speakers

Abstract

This paper reviews recent developments in the study of multilingualism and affect, with the focus on two active areas: affective processing and decision-making. The converging pattern of findings suggests that foreign (FL) and second language (L2) processing do not engage affect to the same extent as processing in the first language (L1). This decreased reliance on affect has been linked to the systematic finding that speakers dealing with moral dilemmas and financial scenarios in a foreign language are less concerned about negative consequences and less averse to risk. This finding, termed the foreign language effect, may have important implications for language policies in multilingual contexts but first future studies need to link them conclusively to affective processing and identify mechanisms that give rise to these effects.