Immanent justice thinking refers to the tendency to perceive causal connections between an
agent’s bad (good) deeds and subsequent bad (good) outcomes, even when such connections
are rationally implausible. We asked bilinguals to read scenarios written either in their native
language or in a foreign language and examined how ...
Immanent justice thinking refers to the tendency to perceive causal connections between an
agent’s bad (good) deeds and subsequent bad (good) outcomes, even when such connections
are rationally implausible. We asked bilinguals to read scenarios written either in their native
language or in a foreign language and examined how language influences immanent justice
endorsements. In five pre-registered, randomized experiments involving 1,875 participants
from two bilingual populations, we demonstrate that foreign language use increases
immanent justice endorsements. This effect was largely unrelated to foreign language
proficiency, emerged only for problems that could trigger immanent justice intuitions, and
was eliminated by a prompt to think rationally. These results suggest that using a foreign
language increases immanent justice endorsements by reducing awareness of the conflict
between intuition and rational reasoning.
