IBSS: The Impact of Foreign Languages on Problem Solving: An Interdisciplinary Study of Language and Society

外语交流已被证明对决策有很大的影响。随着通讯和交通技术日益“全球化”，越来越多的人使用母语以外的语言进行交流，无论是在商业、政治还是在日常生活中。这个跨学科的研究项目将使用多种方法来评估在一系列不同领域使用外语对个人和社会的影响。调查人员将评估外语在战略风险承担、拍卖市场效率、民意调查、创造性问题解决、科学发现、发明和创业方面的影响。该项目将通过对语言对智力活动(包括思维、大脑和社会制度的机制)的普遍影响提供新的见解，从而加强对语言改变思维和行为方式的基本理解。因此，该项目将在包括心理学、经济学、政治学和社会学在内的一系列学科中做出智力贡献。该项目还将产生深远的社会影响。例如，鉴于美国医院大约一半的内科住院医生是在外国出生的，医疗保健组织可以根据医生是否专业使用外语来更准确地预测他们的冒险趋势。情报界、外交官和企业将能够在与外国实体谈判和解决问题的情况下战略性地应用项目结果。该项目还将通过提供新的视角来评估移民的价值和随之而来的创新，从而帮助解决核心的社会问题。在教育方面，该项目将提供工具，以提高双语移民学生的教育和培训的有效性，并更好地预测双语教育对科学、技术、工程和数学表现的好处。该项目将侧重于语言改变思想和行为的方式。个人和机构行为的理论往往严格建立在学科范围内，通常忽略了语言的作用。该项目将通过拉近个人决策者和机构行为之间的鸿沟来改变这些方法。研究人员将采用一种新的跨学科方法，涉及心理学、经济学、社会学和政治学的研究人员之间的合作。他们将使用实验方法和调查来收集行为、生理和大脑活动的测量，比较用母语和外语进行的任务。他们还将对数以百万计的出版物和专利进行大规模的计算调查，以评估使用外语对科学和商业创新的影响。该项目通过NSF跨学科行为和社会科学研究(IBSS)竞赛得到支持。

Communication in a foreign language has been shown to strongly affect decision making. As communication and transportation technologies have increasingly "globalized" the world, more people communicate with one another using languages other than their native language, whether in business, politics, or casually. This interdisciplinary research project will use a variety of methods to evaluate the consequences of using a foreign language on individuals and society in a range of different domains. The investigators will assess the effects of foreign languages on strategic risk taking, auction market efficiency, public opinion surveys, creative problem solving, scientific discovery, invention, and entrepreneurship. The project will enhance basic understanding of the ways that language changes thought and behavior by providing new insights into the pervasive impact of language on intellectual activity, including mechanisms of mind, brain, and social institutions. As such, the project will make intellectual contributions across a range of the disciplines, including psychology, economics, political science, and sociology. The project also will have far-reaching social implications. For example, given that about one-half of the internal medicine residents in U.S. hospitals are foreign-born, health-care organizations can more precisely anticipate risk-taking trends among physicians depending on whether or not they use a foreign language professionally. Intelligence communities, diplomats, and businesses will be able to apply project findings strategically in negotiation and problem solving situations with foreign entities. The project also will help address central societal issues by providing new perspectives with which to assess the value of immigration and the innovation that accompanies it. With respect to education, the project will provide tools to increase the effectiveness of education and training for bilingual immigrant students and to better anticipate the benefits of bilingual education on performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.This project will focus on the ways through which language changes thought and behavior. Theories of individual and institutional behavior tend to be based strictly within disciplines and typically ignore the role of language. This project will transform these approaches by broaching the divide between individual decision makers and institutional behavior. The investigators will employ a novel interdisciplinary approach that involves collaboration among researchers from psychology, economics, sociology, and political science. They will use experimental methods and surveys to collect behavioral, physiological, and brain activity measures, comparing tasks performed in native and foreign languages. They also will engage in a large-scale, computational investigation of millions of publications and patents to evaluate the consequences of using a foreign language on innovations in science and business. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.