No Evidence for Decreased Foreign Language Effect in Highly Proficient and Acculturated Bilinguals: A Commentary on Cavar and Tytus (2018)

Bilinguals who consider moral problems in their foreign language tend to endorse causing harm to others if that leads to good outcomes more than they do in their native language. Cavar and Tytus [2018. "Moral Judgement and Foreign Language Effect: When the Foreign Language Becomes the Second Language. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development" 39 (1): 17-28] reported that this effect disappears when the decision maker is highly acculturated. We challenge the latter conclusion. Specifically, the experiment reported by Cavar and Tytus (2018) utilised unvalidated and potentially unreliable materials, was underpowered, and lacked a control group. Moreover, a re-analysis of their statistical test shows that it fails to convincingly support the reported null finding. We conclude that further examination of the moral foreign language effect is needed to test its boundaries.