????致各位首席執行官：當你的戰略團隊進行重大決策時，要求他們用外語來進行討論。

????這是《認知》（Cognition）期刊2月號上一篇文章的結論。

????這篇文章的題目是《三思而行：外語對決策的影響》（'Piensa' twice: On the foreign language effect in decision making）。文章發現，當人們用非母語交談時，他們做出的決定更符合邏輯，他們也會更少地受到情感傾向的影響。從某種意義上講，這時他們更接近約翰?斯圖爾特?米爾所說的理想型經濟人。

????這篇文章的主筆之一、巴塞羅那龐培法布拉大學（Pompeu Fabra University）語言產生和雙語研究小組負責人艾伯特?科斯塔說：“我們發現，幾乎所有經濟問題都摻雜了某種情緒。這時，直覺引導我們做出的決定并非上策，而說外語的人受到的影響則較小。”

????讓科斯塔和他的同伴們想到從經濟角度探索雙語決策問題的是《心理科學》（Psychological Science）期刊2012年刊登的一篇文章，撰寫這篇文章的是以芝加哥大學（University of Chicago）心理學教授博阿斯?凱薩爾為首的一批心理學家。

????這些心理學家在他們的研究中進行了一項名為《亞洲疾病問題》的“句子結構”測試。他們在這項測試中向懂兩種語言的測試對象提出了兩個問題。第一個問題是，你愿意開發藥品A還是藥品B：藥品A在60萬人中救活20萬人的可能性為100%；藥品B有33%的可能救活所有60萬人，但一個人也救不活的可能性為66.6%。第二個問題是，你愿意開發藥品A還是藥品B：使用藥品A，60萬人中有40萬人一定會死亡；使用藥品B，60萬人全都活下來的可能性為33%，全部死亡的可能性為66.6%。

????雖然這兩個問題中的數字完全相同，但用母語進行測試時，測試對象在回答第一個問題時更多地選擇了藥品A，回答第二個問題時則更多地選擇了藥品B，原因是第二個問題的句子結構引起了測試對象的“厭惡損失”情緒。在這種情緒影響下，人們會冒更大的風險來避免損失，而不是爭取收益。

????而用外語提出這兩個問題時，測試對象的行為更符合邏輯，他們并沒有因為句子結構而改變答案。

????科斯塔和他的團隊在此基礎上更進了一步。首先，他們用經濟概念重復了這項測試（把“人”換成了“歐元”）。他們發現，用第二種語言提問時，受句子結構影響而改變答案的測試對象所占的比例從15%降到了6%。

????然后他們又進行了一項霍爾特-洛瑞測試，目的是考察人們在面臨風險和不確定局面時，厭惡損失的情緒對他們進行經濟決策的能力會造成什么樣的影響。在這項測試中，他們請測試對象在10組彩票中進行選擇，每組彩票有2種，中獎幾率和金額不同（在第一組中，彩票A贏2美元的可能性是10%，贏1.60美元的可能性是90%；彩票B贏3.85美元的可能性是10%，贏0.1美元的可能性是90%；第二和第三組彩票贏得同樣獎金的幾率分別是20%和80%以及30%和70%，依次類推。）

????合理計算預期收益后，人們應該在前四組中選彩票A，在后六組中選彩票B。但測試對象一般都更多地選擇了彩票A，因為他們“覺得”它更安全。至少，用母語進行測試時的結果是這樣。用外語進行測試時，厭惡損失情緒的影響減少，測試對象更早地開始選擇彩票B。

????Note to CEOs: When your strategy team is making a big decision, ask them to talk it over in their second language.

????That's the upshot of an article published in the February issue of the journal Cognition.

????The article, which was titled "'Piensa' twice: On the foreign language effect in decision making, found that when people use their non-native second language, the decisions they make are more logical and less affected by emotional biases. In a sense, they hew closer to John Stuart Mills' idealized homo economicus (economic man).

????"We found that in almost all economic problems that imply some kind of emotionality, in which intuition leads us to make decisions that aren't the best, people using a second language were less affected," said Albert Costa, one of the paper's lead authors and head of the Speech Production and Bilingualism group at Barcelona's Pompeu Fabra University.

????Costa and his cohort were inspired to look into the economic side of bilingual decision-making by a 2012 Psychological Science article by a group of psychologists led by Boaz Keysar of the University of Chicago.

????In that study, the authors used a "framing" test called the "Asian disease problem," in which bilingual subjects are asked two questions: First, whether they would develop Medicine A, which has a 100% chance to save 200,000 out of 600,000 people, or Medicine B, which has a 33% chance of saving all 600,000 people and a 66.6% chance of saving no one at all. Second, whether they would develop Medicine A, with which 400,000 of the 600,000 people will definitely die, or Medicine B, with which there is a 33.3% chance that no one will die and a 66.6% chance that all 600,000 will.

????Although the questions are statistically identical, subjects more often chose Medicine A in the first question and Medicine B in the second when they used their native language. That's because the framing of the question activates people's "loss aversion," an emotional bias that leads us to take more risks to avoid losses than to acquire gains.

????But when the subjects answered these questions in a second language, they did so more logically: They didn't change their answers based on how the question was framed.

????Costa and his team took this further. First, they repeated the "Asian disease problem" in economic terms (changing "lives" to "euros"). They found that in a second language, the number of people who changed their answer between frames fell from 15% to 6%.

????Then they ran a Holt-Laury Test, which examines how loss aversion affects our ability to make economic decisions under risk and uncertainty. In the test, subjects are asked to choose between two lotteries at 10 different odds (Lottery A, which offers a 1/10 chance to win $2.00 and 9/10 of $1.60, or Lottery B, which offers 1/10 of winning $3.85 and 9/10 of 10￠; the odds are then tilted to 2/10 and 8/10, 3/10 and 7/10, etc. until they are flipped).

????Figuring the expected payoff logically, one should choose Lottery A the first four times and Lottery B the last six. But people generally pick Lottery A several more times than they should because it "feels" safer. At least they do it that way in their native language. When Costa and his colleagues had participants use a second language, the emotional effect of "loss aversion" dropped and the subjects switched to Lottery B sooner.