Recent research has revealed that people’s preferences, choices, and judgments are affected by whether information is presented in a foreign or a native language. Here, we review this evidence, focusing on various decision-making domains and advancing a variety of potential explanations for this foreign-language effect on decision making. We interpret the findings in the context of dual-system theories of decision making, entertaining the possibility that foreign-language processing reduces the impact of intuition and/or increases the impact of deliberation on people’s choices. In closing, we suggest future research directions for progressing our understanding of how language and decision-making processes interact when guiding people’s decisions.

This study was partially funded by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance (PSI2013-42091-P), the Government of Catalonia (2014 SGR 1210), and the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework (FP7/2007 2013 Cooperation Grant Agreement 613465-AThEME). Marc–Lluís Vives was supported by a grant from the Government of Spain (BES-2015-071581). Joanna D. Corey was supported by a grant from the Government of Catalonia (FI-DGR).