Abstract

A rational agent acts with deliberation and intention. They allow risk, utility, costs and benefits—both realized and expected—to inform their decision-making in a consistently logical way. Above all else, they are self-interested. But to what extent is this classical model of a decision-maker variable? What if a central factor in a decision is not the expected value but rather a process unrelated to the terms of the decision? What if decision-making depends on the foreignness of the language in which the decision is considered? For a rational agent, it should not matter if information is presented in a foreign or native tongue. All else equal, with comprehension assured, decisions should rely on a consistent, internal metric of analysis that weighs outcomes without regard to the medium in which they are presented. There is mounting evidence to suggest, however, that not only do decisions depend on language, but also that something as fundamental as a rational agent’s self-interest may depend on language. In order to investigate the relationship between preference and language, two experiments were conducted in two universities, with two central variables informing the inquiry: the nativity of a language and how a choice is framed. The primary experiment focused on whether there would be a statistically significant deviation in utilitarian preference between people that used a non-native language (Spanish) and a native language (English). As long as comprehension is assured, and native Spanish users do not factor into the results, the outcome should be comparable. Praxeology insists that humans are systematically purposeful thinkers, driven by information. If this is true, then the nativity or foreignness of a language should not change the information itself, and choice (normally distributed) should remain consistent. Throughout the investigation, the study will be related back to utility theory and game theory, to give some concrete weight to something that might appear, superficially, as a strictly academic exercise. While the study will take place in an academic environment, it has meaningful, real-world implications. This is especially true as the number of non-native speakers of English continues to grow, and English cements its position as the international language of commerce. Multivariate regression analysis will be used to determine the relationship between a foreign language and utilitarian preference. Goodman and Kruskal’s lambda will be employed to proportionally reduce the error and make a reasonable inference about the variance, in spite of a modest sample size.

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