Navigating the Cognitive Labyrinth When Thinking in a Foreign Language: Social Norms, Response Bias, Mouse Tracking, and Metacognition

This thesis investigates the impact of the Foreign Language Effect (FLE) on decision-making across four psychological domains: social norms, acquiescence, moral reasoning, and meta-reasoning. Through a series of experimental studies, it explores how reasoning in a foreign language influences social perceptions, cognitive processes, emotional responses, and metacognitive experiences, particularly in contexts involving lies, acquiescence, moral dilemmas, and self-monitoring during decision-making. The findings reveal that participants are more likely to conform to social norms and exhibit acquiescence in their native language, while foreign language use tends to increase utilitarian decision-making in morally complex scenarios, often reducing emotional engagement and promoting deliberation. However, foreign language use also introduces cognitive disfluency, leading to greater cognitive load, slower decision times, and more complex mouse trajectories of decisions. An additional and alternative hypothesis for this effect could be metacognitive, diminished feeling of rightness (FOR) prompts increased deliberation but does not always lead to more accurate or optimal decisions. By integrating social, cognitive, and metacognitive dimensions, this thesis provides a comprehensive understanding of the FLE and its potential to influence human behavior in an increasingly globalized world.