In a world where the majority of
analysts are bi- if not multi-lingual, the question of how language affects
both the analytic process and analytic product is an important one. Emotion, language
processing and cognitive biases aside, the intriguing question remains: Would
you make the same decision in English as you would in, say, Chinese? Most
analysts would likely answer yes to
this question, but recent research led by Boaz Keysar out of the University of
Chicago suggests otherwise.
The study, published in Psychological Science, concludes that
“people are not as loss averse in a foreign language as they are in their
native tongue.” Being less loss averse, that is more willing to take on risk,
might sound like a dangerous characteristic to possess from an intel analyst’s
perspective. In this case, however, being less risk averse means that people
more systematically assessed the problem and came to a more rational conclusion.
At the root of this finding is the conclusion that “people rely more on
systematic processes…when making decisions in a foreign language.” Regardless
of how accepting of risk we are as analysts, the ability to make decisions
driven more by rational thought and less by emotion is a capability to which
every analyst likely aspires.
In three studies, Keysar showed that
while participants made different decisions based on how the problem was framed
(as more or less risky), they made the same decision for both risk conditions
when using their foreign language. The three groups of participants had English
as a first language and Japanese as a second, Korean as a first language and
English as a second or English as a first language and French as a second,
indicating that this effect is replicable within and across language family
boundaries.
So why, then, do we make more
rational, less biased decisions in our second language than in our first? It
largely has to do with the lack of “emotional resonance” that we derive from
foreign language text. Literature on second language acquisition unanimously
agrees that people perceive messages delivered in their second language as less
emotional (and consequently less impactful) than messages delivered in their first
language; this concept applies to everything from political opinion to curse
words.
How we perceive emotion then ties
directly to our internal cognitive processes. According to Daniel Kahneman, the
most widely respected authority on these internal processes, we have two broad
systems of thinking – System 1 and System 2 thinking. System
1 is automatic (and often times uncontrollable) while System 2 is more
deliberate and rational. Think of System 1 as the mechanism driving impulse
buys and split second decisions, whereas System 2 is more like making a grocery
list in advance. Cognitive biases, or internal heuristics (shortcuts) that
influence both our analytic process and analytic product, originate in System 1
thinking. Examples of cognitive biases particularly relevant to intelligence
analysis are confirmation bias, anchoring bias and the framing effect
(addressed directly in Keysar’s article).
Cognitive biases originate in System
1 thinking along with our gut instincts, emotional reactions and a less credible
substantiation for intelligence analysis, intuition.
Consequently, it makes sense to pursue analysis derived from System 2 processes
as it will likely be less biased, more rational and more systematically
attained. The argument here is that conducting analysis within the domain of a second,
third or fourth language will lead to an increased reliance on System 2
processes, thereby reducing bias and ultimately resulting in more systematically-derived
analysis. The results of Keysar’s study, while still relatively new, support
this perspective.
In practice, with bilingualism now
practically a pre-requisite for analysis work, the benefit of this argument to
intelligence analysts is obvious (coupled with the other known benefits of
bilingualism). The traditional view is
that an analyst is at an automatic disadvantage when operating in a non-native
linguistic domain to conduct analysis, fearing the loss of meaning and context.
The argument in this article, however, sheds new light on the quality of the
analytic product obtained in a non-native language. Would you make the same decision in English as you would in, say,
Chinese? The answer is that you might not, and your Chinese decision just might
be more impartial.
