Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2020 Aug;149(8):1597-1602. doi: 10.1037/xge0000736. Epub 2020 Jan 13.
The current study examined whether use of a foreign language affects the manner in which people evaluate a criminal situation. We employed a range of crime scenarios, for which severity judgment scores were obtained. Crimes that were written in a foreign language were systematically evaluated as less severe compared with the same cases described in the native language. We propose that these differences may be due to attenuated emotional processing in a nonnative language. Crucially, this observed variation in severity judgment may also affect magistrates and police interrogators confronted with crime scenarios formulated in a foreign tongue. This in turn would have inevitable consequences for the penalty they will or will not exact on the suspect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
本研究旨在探讨使用外语是否会影响人们评估犯罪情况的方式。我们采用了一系列犯罪场景，并获得了严重程度判断分数。与用母语描述的相同案例相比，用外语书写的犯罪被系统地评估为情节较轻。我们提出，这些差异可能是由于非母语语言中情感处理的减弱。至关重要的是，这种严重程度判断上的差异也可能会影响到面对用外语表述的犯罪场景的治安法官和警方审讯员。这反过来又会对他们对嫌疑人施加或不施加的惩罚产生不可避免的后果。
