In fact, researchers at the University of Chicago have found that people are more likely to take favorable risks if they think in a foreign language.
"We know from previous research that because people are naturally loss-averse, they often forgo attractive opportunities. Our new findings demonstrate that such aversion to losses is much reduced when people make decisions in their non-native language.
"A foreign language provides a distancing mechanism that moves people from the immediate intuitive system to a more deliberate mode of thinking," lead researcher Boaz Keysar said in a release.
In one of the most telling experiments, they tested native English speakers at the University of Chicago who gained Spanish proficiency in the classroom, in order to see how loss aversion influenced their decision-making.
The experiment explored how likely the students were to take attractive bets depending on the language in which they considered their options. Each participant received US dollars 15 in dollar bills, from which they took US dollar one for each bet. (MORE) PTI MOT
