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Does using a foreign language result in forming different moral decisions than
using our mother tongue? Two studies were conducted to investigate whether there is a rela-
tionship between foreign language effects (differences between native vs. foreign language
conditions) and psychological distance. Study 1 tested four moral dilemmas adapted from
Greene et al. (Cognition 107: 1144–1155, 2008). Non-fluent Korean–English bilingual par-
ticipants (N = 161) indicated decisions regarding four moral dilemmas in either Korean or
English languages. The study found that for personal moral conflict situations, in which
emotion and automatic intuition were more important than deliberation, there were signif-
icant differences in ratios of utilitarian decisions between the native language (L1) and the
foreign language (L2) conditions. The participants tended to make more utilitarian decisions
in L2 than in L1, which implies reduced emotionality in L2. Study 2 examined whether the
psychological distance increased using the foreign language (English) utilizing an automatic
self-test. Nonproficient Korean–English bilinguals (N = 26) formed associations between
three kinds of geometric shapes (ellipses, rectangles and triangles) and three kinds of labels
(‘me’, ‘friends’ and ‘others’). The results of the study found the self-bias effect decreased
when labels were presented in the foreign language (in English). This implies that the foreign
language effect resulted from the reduced emotional response, and deliberation in decision
making which may result from increased psychological distance.