Effect of language on morality

Abstract

It has been documented that the language that we choose to speak in has an impact in the thinking that we have. However the research till now has been mainly on bilinguals and on people who are from the western world. As a result while there is an understanding that the language effects the decisions and behavior, little understanding exists for Indian languages and what kind of behaviors and decisions are influenced. Given the large number of multi-linguals in India, the hypothesis of language impacting thinking can be verified more concretely. Hence a hypothesis was created based on the structural differences that exist between Hindi and English where in Hindi has the grammar to provide respect for the other person through tense while in English the respect has to be implied and in many a times lost. An experiment was designed and conducted on subjects of similar background and people who are fluent in both Hindi and English to determine if the respect provided to a stranger would change based on the language prime to which they are exposed to. The subjects were asked to take part in a morality game, an extended variant of the ultimatum game. The results of the experiment were analyzed and discussed below. It is found that there is no statistically significant evidence to disprove the null hypothesis that morality and language of instruction are independent.