Foreign Language does not Affect Gambling-Related Judgments

Previous work has demonstrated that peoples’ gambling-related judgments (e.g., perceived likelihood of winning) are often biased by non-diagnostic unclaimed prize information (i.e., the number of prizes still available to be won) resulting in non-optimal scratch card preferences. Another line of research suggests that people make less biased decisions (e.g., are less affected by the framing of a gamble) when using a foreign language. In the current study, we investigated whether using a foreign language (as opposed to one’s native language) reduced the biasing effects of unclaimed prize information and consequently led to more optimal scratch card preferences. Across three experiments (N = 409), we found that people were equally biased by unclaimed prize information regardless of whether they completed our scratch card gambling task in their native (Polish) or foreign (English) language. In conclusion, it appears that using a foreign language does not help people be less biased in utilizing gambling-related information, and consequently does not lead to more optimal scratch card preferences.