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The language we speak may influence not only our thoughts, but our implicit preferences as well.

Change languages, shift responses
Study of bilinguals suggests such switches can help to shape preferences
“Charlemagne is reputed to have said that to speak another language is to possess another soul,” said Harvard graduate student Oludamini Ogunnaike, co-author of a paper on research that found that bilingual individuals’ opinions of different ethnic groups were affected by the language in which they took a test probing their biases and predilections.

Recent research has shown that these attitudes are quite malleable, susceptible to factors such as the weather, popular culture, or, now, by the language people speak.

“The IAT bypasses a large part of conscious cognition and taps into something we’re not aware of and can’t easily control,” Banaji said.

“Can we shift something as fundamental as what we like and dislike by changing the language in which our preferences are elicited?” asked co-author Mahzarin R. Banaji, the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard.

Change languages, shift responses
Study of bilinguals suggests such switches can help to shape preferences
“Charlemagne is reputed to have said that to speak another language is to possess another soul,” said Harvard graduate student Oludamini Ogunnaike, co-author of a paper on research that found that bilingual individuals’ opinions of different ethnic groups were affected by the language in which they took a test probing their biases and predilections.

Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf first posited in the 1930s that language is so powerful that it can determine thought.

Change languages, shift responses
Study of bilinguals suggests such switches can help to shape preferences
“Charlemagne is reputed to have said that to speak another language is to possess another soul,” said Harvard graduate student Oludamini Ogunnaike, co-author of a paper on research that found that bilingual individuals’ opinions of different ethnic groups were affected by the language in which they took a test probing their biases and predilections.

Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf first posited in the 1930s that language is so powerful that it can determine thought.

Change languages, shift responses
Study of bilinguals suggests such switches can help to shape preferences
“Charlemagne is reputed to have said that to speak another language is to possess another soul,” said Harvard graduate student Oludamini Ogunnaike, co-author of a paper on research that found that bilingual individuals’ opinions of different ethnic groups were affected by the language in which they took a test probing their biases and predilections.

“The IAT bypasses a large part of conscious cognition and taps into something we’re not aware of and can’t easily control,” Banaji said.

Implicit attitudes, positive or negative associations that people may be unaware that they possess, have been shown to predict behavior toward members of social groups.

This new study suggests that Whorf’s idea, when not caricatured, may generate interesting hypotheses that researchers can continue to test.

Recent research has shown that these attitudes are quite malleable, susceptible to factors such as the weather, popular culture, or, now, by the language people speak.

In the Moroccan test, participants saw “Moroccan” names (such as Hassan or Fatimah) or “French” names (such as Jean or Marie) flash on a monitor, along with words that are “good” (such as happy or nice) or “bad” (such as hate or mean).

Ogunnaike, Banaji, and Yarrow Dunham, now at the University of California, Merced, used the well-known Implicit Association Test (IAT), where participants rapidly categorize words that flash on a computer screen or are played through headphones.

Our work hints that language creates and shapes our thoughts and feelings as well.”

The researchers administered the IAT in two settings: once in Morocco, with subjects who spoke Arabic and French, and again in the United States, with Latinos who spoke English and Spanish.