When moral dilemmas are posed in a foreign language, people become more coolly utilitarian
当使用外语表述道德困境时，人们的选择更倾向于冰冷的功利主义
May 17th 2014 | From the print edition
“WOULD You Kill the Fat Man?” is the title of a recent book about a set of moral problems that philosophers like to ponder, and psychologists to put to their experimental subjects. In the canonical form, you are on a footbridge watching a trolley speeding down a track that will kill five unsuspecting people. You can push a fat man over the bridge onto the tracks to save the five. (You cannot stop the trolley by jumping yourself, only the fat man is heavy enough.) Would you do it?
一本新书名为《你会杀死那个胖子吗》。书中列举一组道德问题，这些问题是哲学家们喜欢思考的，也是心理学家喜欢向其试验受试者提出的。其标准形式是，你正在行人天桥上，看见一辆电车从轨道上加速驶下，就要撞上毫无戒心的五人。你可以把桥上的胖子推到电车轨道上，来挽救那五位的性命。(你自己跳下去，无济于事，只有胖子才重到足以使电车停下来）你会把胖子推下去吗？
Most people quail at the idea of shoving the man to his death. But alter the scenario a bit, and reactions change. People are more likely to throw a switch that would divert the trolley on to another track where it will kill only one person. The utilitarian calculation is identical—but the physical and emotional distance from the killing makes throwing the switch much more popular than throwing the man.
大多数人不愿接受把胖子推下去受死的想法。但是把情境稍作改变，反应便大不相同了。人们更可能愿意扳动开关，把电车牵引到另另一条轨道上，那样将只会使一个人丧命。功利主义的算计是一样的——但与杀人的身体和情感距离不同使扳动轨道比把人推下去更容易被接受。
There are other ways to nudge people’s judgments, too. A rather counter- intuitive one was reported in a paper published last month in PLOS ONE, a journal. In it, Albert Costa of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, and his colleagues, found that the language in which the dilemma is posed can alter how people answer. Specifically, when people are asked the fat-man question in a foreign language, they are more likely to kill him for the others’ sake.
还有其他方法来探察人们的道德判断机理。上个月发表在PLOS ONE杂志上的一篇论文，道出一个与人们的直觉相反的结论。论文的作者是西班牙的UPF大学的艾尔伯特·科斯塔及其同事，他们发现，表述道德困境所使用的语言会改变人们如何作答。具体而言，当用外语问及是否推下胖子的问题时，人们更可能会为了别人的利益而牺牲胖子。
Dr Costa and his colleagues interviewed 317 people, all of whom spoke two languages—mostly English plus one of Spanish, Korean or French. Half of each group were randomly assigned the dilemma in their native tongue. The other half answered the problem in their second language. When asked in their native language, only 20% of subjects said they would push the fat man. When asked in the foreign language, the proportion jumped to 33%.
科斯塔博士及其同事共面试了317人，他们都会讲两种语言——大多数是英语再加上西班牙语、韩语或法语中的一种。每组受试者有一半人被随机安排用母语问他们道德困难问题，另一半人用外语回答。当用母语问他们时，只有两成的受试说他们会把胖子推下去。而当用外语问他们时，比例上升到三分之一。
Dans le jardin of good and evil
善与恶的园地
Morally speaking, this is a troubling result. The language in which a dilemma is posed should make no difference to how it is answered. Linguists have wondered whether different languages encode different assumptions about morality, which might explain the result. But the effect existed for every combination of languages that the researchers looked at, so culture does not seem to explain things. Other studies in “trolleyology” have found that East Asians are less likely to make the coldly utilitarian calculation, and indeed none of the Korean subjects said they would push the fat man when asked in Korean. But 7.5% were prepared to when asked in English.
就道义而言，结果令人不安。表述道德困境所用的语言本不应该对人们的回答产生影响。语言学家想知道是不是因为不同的语言采用不同的假设来编排道德规则，以此来解释试验结果。但是该效应在研究人员观察的每种语言组合中都存在，因些文化差异解释不了实验结果。其他“电车学“研究发现，东亚人更少倾向于做冰冷的功利主义算计，当用韩语问韩国被试时，没有人会把胖子推下去。当用英语问韩国被试时，却有7.5%的被试打算把胖子推下去。
The explanation seems to lie in the difference between being merely competent in a foreign language and being fluent. The subjects in the experiment were not native bilinguals, but had, on average, begun the study of their foreign language at age 14. (The average participant was 21.) The participants typically rated their ability with their acquired tongue at around 3.0 on a five-point scale. Their language skills were, in other words, pretty good—but not great.
受试者外语差强人意还是非常流利的，其间的差别似乎是解释试验结果的关键所在。试验中的受试都不是天生会说两种语言的人，平均而言，他们都从十四岁开始学习外语的（参与者的平均年龄是二十一岁）。参与者一般认为其外语能力在五分制下为三分左右。换句话说，他们语言能力还不错，但还不够好。
Several psychologists, including Daniel Kahneman, who was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2002 for his work on how people make decisions, think that the mind uses two separate cognitive systems—one for quick, intuitive decisions and another that makes slower, more reasoned choices. These can conflict, which is what the trolley dilemma is designed to provoke: normal people have a moral aversion to killing (the intuitive system), but can nonetheless recognise that one death is, mathematically speaking, better than five (the reasoning system).
包括因为研究人们如何决策而获得2002年经济学诺奖的丹尼尔·卡尼曼在内，不少心理学家认为理智使用两个分离的认知系统——一个快速，靠直觉来决策，而另一个缓慢，更多靠理性选择。他们会彼此冲突，那也正是电车困境所激起的：正常人会对杀人有道德嫌恶（直觉系统），但从数学计算而言，也会认识到死一个比死五个要好些（推理系统）。
This latest study fits with other research which suggests that speaking a foreign language boosts the second system—provided, that is, you don’t speak it as well as a native. Earlier work, by some of the same scholars who performed this new study, found that people tend to fare better on tests of pure logic in a foreign language—and particularly on questions with an obvious-but-wrong answer and a correct answer that takes time to work out.
该项最新的研究与其他研究契合，那些研究表明说外语会促进第二个系统——也就是说，就算你说得没有当地人那么好，（也会有作用）。部分进行该项最新研究的学者，他们的早期的研究发现，当使用外语时，人们的纯粹逻辑测试会表达更好——尤其是在答案明显但错误和答案正确但要花时间解决的问题上。
Dr Costa and his colleagues hypothesise that, while fluent speakers can form sentences effortlessly, the merely competent must spend more brainpower, and reason much more carefully, when operating in their less-familiar tongue. And that kind of thinking helps to provide psychological and emotional distance, in much the same way that replacing the fat man with a switch does. As further support for that idea, the researchers note that the effect of speaking the foreign language became smaller as the speaker’s familiarity with it increased.
科斯塔博士及其同事提出假说认为，当使用他们不太熟悉的语言时，说得流利的人可以毫不费力地造句，而外语差强人意者必须花费更多脑力，推理更加细心。那种思考会拉开心理和情感的距离，类似于把推下胖子换成扳开轨道。为给此想法提供更多支持，研究人员发现，随着说外语者更熟悉外语，这种说外语的效应在变小
Regardless of the exact mental mechanism behind the team’s findings, they could have big implications. Boaz Keysar, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and one of the study’s authors, talks of investigating the impact on medical or legal decision-making. Meanwhile, globalisation is boosting the number of bilinguals. There are more non-native English speakers (500m, by one estimate) than native ones (perhaps 340m). Big firms are making English their internal language, even if it is not the native tongue of most of their workers. Meetings of international organisations like the United Nations or the European Union are often conducted in languages that are not the preferred ones of most of those attending. Perhaps it is reassuring to think they may be more coolly rational than meetings of monoglots—unless, that is, you are the metaphorical fat man about to be pushed under a train.
先不管其背后确切的精神机制，该团队的这些发现有巨大的影响。芝大的心理学家、该研究的作者之一波兹·柯赛，谈到调查其对医疗及法律决策的影响。同时，全球化进程提高了使用两种语言者的数量。如今说英语的外国人（据估计，有五亿人）比以英语为母语的人（ 约3.4亿）还多。大公司以英语为内部交流语言，尽管英语不是大多数员工的母语。国际组织如联合国或欧盟，其会议语言也不是大多数与会者所偏爱的语言。或许这样可以保证比使用单一语言时更冷静理性——除非你是隐喻中那个将要被推到火车底下的胖子。
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