Robertson Cole, Roberts Seán G, Majid Asifa, Dunbar Robin I M
Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2025 May 27;20(5):e0317422. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0317422. eCollection 2025.
Previous studies have found cross-cultural correlations between linguistic obligations for talking about future events and economic decisions like saving money. The hypothesis is that a grammatical obligation to use the future tense (e.g. will) causes speakers to perceive future rewards as temporally distal and therefore less valuable ("temporal discounting"). However, no studies have tested whether speakers actually temporally discount as a function of the extent to which they use the future tense. We present two studies which use a novel language-elicitation paradigm to do this, involving speakers of English (which obliges the future tense) and Dutch (which does not). We used mediation analysis to test how language-level differences in the grammatical obligation to use the future tense impact economic decisions via individual language use habits. However, we found that English speakers who habitually make greater use of the future tense actually discount less, not more. These results suggest obligatory future tense use is not responsible for previously-reported cross-cultural correlations. Instead, we suggest that a better explanation involves modal notions of certainty (the probability of an event occurring) rather than temporal distance (when an event will occur). Future tenses express high certainty, which makes the correct prediction that obligatory tense marking should cause less discounting. In contrast, the cross-cultural differences may be driven by variation in other aspects of future time reference, such as low-certainty modal terminology (e.g. may, might).
先前的研究发现，在谈论未来事件的语言义务与诸如存钱等经济决策之间存在跨文化关联。其假设是，使用将来时态（如will）的语法义务会使说话者将未来奖励视为在时间上较远，因此价值较低（“时间贴现”）。然而，尚无研究测试说话者是否真的会根据他们使用将来时态的程度进行时间贴现。我们进行了两项研究，使用一种新颖的语言诱导范式来做到这一点，研究对象包括说英语的人（英语要求使用将来时态）和说荷兰语的人（荷兰语不要求）。我们使用中介分析来测试在使用将来时态的语法义务方面的语言层面差异如何通过个人语言使用习惯影响经济决策。然而，我们发现习惯性更多使用将来时态的英语使用者实际上贴现较少，而非更多。这些结果表明，强制性使用将来时态与先前报道的跨文化关联无关。相反，我们认为更好的解释涉及确定性的模态概念（事件发生的概率）而非时间距离（事件何时发生）。将来时态表达高确定性，这正确地预测了强制性时态标记应该导致较少的贴现。相比之下，跨文化差异可能由未来时间参照的其他方面的变化驱动，例如低确定性模态术语（如may、might）。
