[infruset]

I wonder if this might not be something else.

When you study a language in a classroom, you frequently engage in conversations on various topics, whose sole purpose is to make you practice much more than to actually have a well-thought conversation. As such (and here I speak from my own experience only), it is much more common to defend positions in which you don't actually believe, for the sake of argument or maybe just because it is easier to express than the subtleties you might find while thinking this over in your native language.

I think it may be a good idea to try to only ask bilingual people (as opposed to people studying a language), or at least to test the above hypothesis before jumping to conclusions.

[pmr_]

Neither of the two languages a bilingual person speaks is considered foreign. Otherwise the person would not be bilingual. What would be the result of such a study? Keep in mind that in linguistics the difference between being a native speaker and having learned a language after the critical period is considered huge.

[mercer]

The critical period is until around the age of seven, right? The reason I'm asking is that I started speaking/reading a lot of English from the age of 8 on, and as far as I can tell I'm bilingual. Could you explain why that would not be the case, or how that's possible?

[barry-cotter]

tl:dr It's fluency that impacts utilitarianism, not nativeness.

Being able to communicate in two languages is not the same as being bilingual. The study in question suggests that thinking/communicating in a language that one is less than fluent in leads to more utilitarian decisions.

The important thing here is fluency, not nativeness. I am fluent in German but I started learning it at 12. German is not a native language for me but I am fluent in it. As such the study suggests I should be equally utilitarian in it and English, my mother tongue. But my French and Mandarin are both quite bad so I should be more utilitarian in them because I must be more deliberate.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Right. Presumably for a bilingual person (where both languages are native), both languages they speak would have equal emotional impact.

[emodendroket]

That would rather defeat the purpose of the study... if neither language is really foreign to you how could we look at the difference using a foreign language makes?

[infruset]

Ok, you're right. I was trying to compensate the fact that the language is learned in a classroom as opposed to in real life. I guess I had the intuition that bilingual people still have a language that is "more native" than the other, but I don't know if that is true.

However, I don't understand the downvote?