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by glymor 4481 days ago
It's worth noting here that they demonstrated this effect with language learners i.e. it's very likely that the students had to labouriously work out the foreign language questions.

Basically they've demonstrated that if people spend a lot more time on a question they answer less emotionally (which seems like it would be true independent of the language).

If they can demonstrate the effect still holds with 2nd language speakers with native level proficiency then this would be a lot more interesting result.

2 comments

It would be interesting to present the question in ROT13, have participants work out the question and then answer it.
Just an anecdote, I speak French with native proficiency and while I can see the emotional detachment in languages as English, in French it is certainly not there. So I think it also depends on language immersion.