Impulse and inhibition: the complex ways bilingual brains balance reason with emotion

If you’re bilingual, moral choices can often feel more urgent and emotionally charged in one language yet distant and rational in another. This raises an intriguing question: does language merely shape how we express our thoughts, or can it also influence what we judge to be right or wrong? Our research team has explored this question, looking not just at how moral decision-making is influenced by the language a person uses, but also by their underlying cognitive and emotional abilities. By examining factors such as working memory and emotional intelligence along with language background, our research moves beyond the idea of a simplistic “foreign language effect” and offers a more nuanced picture of how bilingual minds navigate the balance between emotion and cognition when facing moral dilemmas. Reason vs emotion Moral decisions are rarely the result of cold calculation alone. When people confront dilemmas such as whether to harm one person to save several others, their judgements emerge from an interplay between deliberate reasoning and immediate emotional reactions. Feelings like guilt, empathy or aversion to harm are not side effects of moral thinking; they actively guide it, often pushing us toward choices that feel “right” rather than simply logical. This emotional component has played a central role in research on bilingual moral decision-making. Several studies have reported that people tend to arrive at more utilitarian solutions when reasoning in a second language rather than in their mother tongue. This phenomenon, known as the moral foreign language effect, has often been seen as a consequence of emotional detachment: using a less emotionally grounded language may dampen intuitive reactions and tip the balance toward more analytical judgements. However, our new research has found that the relationship is more complex than it initially seems. Read more: How speaking in a second language directly affects your moral judgement What we did differently Our most recent study went beyond simply asking whether bilinguals make different moral choices depending on the language they use. Instead, we focused on why these differences might occur by examining the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that support moral decision-making. Crucially, we also looked beyond language itself to consider individual language experiences. This includes factors like when people learned their second language, how proficient they are in it, and how long they have lived and been immersed in the language’s social and cultural environment. To do this, we asked 90 Chinese-English bilinguals to evaluate a series of moral dilemmas presented in both their first and second languages. For each dilemma, participants indicated what they would do and reported the emotional intensity they experienced while making their decision. To capture individual differences that are often overlooked, they also completed separate tasks assessing inhibitory control (the ability to suppress automatic or impulsive responses), mental updating (the ability to replace outdated information with new input), shifting ability (the ability to switch between tasks or ways of thinking), and emotional intelligence (the ability to reorganise, understand, and regulate emotions). Challenging assumptions Our results paint a nuanced picture of how bilinguals make moral decisions. First, we found no consistent evidence that moral judgements differ systematically between a first and a second language. This suggests that the moral foreign language effect may be less robust than previously assumed. Second, cognitive abilities played a central role in moral decision-making. Stronger mental updating skills were associated with more deontological choices (rooted in rules and obligation) in both the first and second language. By contrast, greater inhibitory control predicted more utilitarian judgements only when participants reasoned in their second language. Lastly, emotional intelligence and commonly studied language-related factors – such as age of second language acquisition, proficiency level or length of immersion – were not strong predictors of either moral choices or the intensity of emotional responses. Instead, it was differences in cognitive control that best explained how people approached moral dilemmas. Taken together, these findings suggest that how carefully or impulsively we think may matter more than the language we think in. Rather than language itself dampening emotional reactions, moral decision-making appears to also depend on the cognitive resources we can summon at the moment of choice, including our ability to update information and inhibit immediate, intuitive responses. Read more: Your personality changes when you speak another language, but that’s not always a bad thing Beyond the lab Our findings show that moral decision-making cannot be reduced to the language we use. Popular claims, such as the idea that thinking in a foreign language automatically leads to more utilitarian choices, overlook the role of individual cognitive differences and the broader language experiences of bilingual speakers. Our study suggests that moral reasoning depends less on emotional distancing caused by a second language, and more on the cognitive resources people bring to the decision itself – particularly their ability to maintain relevant information and regulate competing responses. These insights extend beyond bilingualism. They challenge widely held assumptions about how people reach moral decisions and suggest that ethical judgements cannot be explained by language context alone. This has major implications for education, where moral reasoning is often taught as a set of principles rather than as a process shaped by individual differences. It also matters for intercultural communication, where disagreements may reflect differences in how people process moral dilemmas rather than differences in values. Additionally, it raises questions for the development of technologies such as AI, which are increasingly used to make ethically sensitive decisions, and which may not consistently account for the cognitive variability involved in human moral reasoning. In an increasingly bilingual and multilingual world, moving beyond simplistic assumptions about language effects is essential for understanding how people make moral choices — regardless of whether they are thinking in English, Spanish, Greek, Chinese or any other language. A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. 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