Language and moral judgements: (Eye)Tracking emotions and decisions (bLaME)
This project investigates bilinguals’ moral judgements and emotions in response to different moral dilemmas.
The project runs from January 2024 to December 2025 and is funded by the British Academy.
Background
We live in a multilingual and multicultural world. According to the United Nations, the number of people worldwide living and working outside their countries of origin reached 281 million in 2020. The rapid pace of globalisation has brought with it an increasing demand for people to use languages that they acquired later in life:
- to express themselves, and
- to make decisions.
Evidence suggests that bilinguals tend to make more utilitarian (rational) choices in response to emotionally charged moral dilemmas presented in their second language (L2). Meanwhile, using their first language (L1) leads them to make more deontological and thus more emotional decisions.
This project uses:
- psycholinguistic (eye-tracking, keystroke-logging) methods, and
- both quantitative and qualitative (content analysis) approaches.
It aims to investigate bilinguals’ moral judgements and emotions in response to different moral dilemmas. Furthermore, it examines their writing behaviours (speed fluency, pausing, revision) when:
Methodology
The project involves L1 Chinese–L2 English bilingual speakers who read a series of moral dilemmas while their eye movements are recorded. After reading each dilemma, participants have to indicate:
- the emotional intensity they experienced, and
- their moral decision.
Then they are asked to explain their emotions and to justify their decision in the written mode. While they do this, their writing behaviours are assessed via keystroke-logging software. Additional variables we assess in the project include:
Team
Project leader
Co-investigator
Research assistants
- Xin Rong (IOE UCL)
- Ting Zeng (IOE UCL)
External collaborators
Related links
Contact us
Please contact us if you have any questions about our research.
