UC researcher receives 1.5 million euros to study the impact of the use of different languages in decision-making
The research will involve subjects from several different countries who are fluent in one or two languages, such as Castilian, Catalan, Basque, Turkish, German or Portuguese.
English version: Diana Taborda
The research project “TypoMetaLing: Effect of linguistic experience on metacognition in language tasks and transfer to non-linguistic behavior” aims to unveil how the knowledge and use of different languages affect decision-making in political, social and economic domains. The European Research Council (ERC) has allocated 1.5 million euros to the project led by UC researcher Leona Polyanskaya.
In this project, "we will study how native language and bilingualism influence the decisions we make, and how they influence our behaviour, especially decision or reasoning strategies", explains Leona Polyanskaya, the coordinator of the project. "We also want to find out what leads people to take different decisions, even when they have the same information", she adds. Polyanskaya highlights that "if we know how languages influence decision-making, this new knowledge will have the ability to prevent potential conflicts".
Researcher at the Centre for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT) of the UC Institute for Nuclear Sciences applied to Health (ICNAS) and also at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Coimbra (FPCEUC), Leona Polyanska has sought to explore this topic further over the past few years, and has been able to show in previous projects that bilinguals and monolinguals make decisions differently.
The study will involve participants from several countries who speak one or two languages fluently, such as Castilian, Catalan, Basque, Turkish, German or Portuguese. When asked about the diversity of people included in the study, the researcher says that this plurality will make it possible to explore "how different languages and cultural contexts influence decision-making". She further adds that “nowadays, people's mobility around the world has been increasing, so, speakers of different languages move from country to country, from continent to continent, leading to a constantly changing linguistic landscape. This change can affect decision-making both on an individual and collective level, and these dynamics can have an impact on politics, economics, and social development, with an impact on our future."