Table 1
Example of congruent and incongruent variant of a dilemma (from Conway and Gawronsky, 2013).
| INCONGRUENT | CONGRUENT |
|---|---|
| You are a police officer, and have recently caught a criminal you have been hunting for some time. He is allegedly responsible for rigging a series of explosive devices: some that have already gone off and some that have yet to detonate. He places explosives outside city cafes and sets them to go off at a time when people are drinking coffee on the patios. In this manner, he has injured many people and might injure many more. Now that the criminal is in custody, you want to know where the unexploded bombs are so you can defuse them. He refuses to talk, so you decide to use “aggressive interrogation techniques” like holding his head under water and beating him. Is it appropriate for you to use “aggressive interrogation techniques” in order to find and defuse the unexploded bombs? | You are a police officer, and have recently caught a criminal you have been hunting for some time. He is allegedly responsible for rigging a series of explosive devices: some that have already gone off and some that have yet to detonate. He places explosives outside city cafes and sets them to go off at a time when no one is around. His explosives are inside paint cans so that they spray nearby objects with paint. In this manner, he has sprayed many cafes with paint and might spray many more. Now that the criminal is in custody, you want to know where the unexploded bombs are so you can defuse them. He refuses to talk, so you decide to use “aggressive interrogation techniques” like holding his head under water and beating him. Is it appropriate for you to use “aggressive interrogation techniques” in order to find and defuse the unexploded bombs? |
Table 2
Gender (% females), mean age (N years), percentage of participants who acquired English/Venetian before age 5, mean self-estimated proficiency in English/Venetian, and mean percentage of use of English/Venetian, across groups and languages. Standard deviations are reported in parenthesis.
| GROUP | N | % FEMALES | AGE | BEFORE 5 YEARS | PROFICIENCYa | USEb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Italian-English | ||||||
| Tested in Italian | 175 | 77.1% | 28.5 (10.41) | 5.7% | 7.5 (1.60) | 30.9% (21.92) |
| Tested in English | 135 | 73.3% | 27.9 (9.93) | 3.0% | 7.8 (1.10) | 34.3% (19.97) |
| Italian-Venetian | ||||||
| Tested in Italian | 152 | 67.8% | 35.7 (15.29) | 75.7% | 7.7 (2.18) | 35.6% (26.31) |
| Tested in Venetian | 146 | 59.6% | 33.2 (13.54) | 7.9 (2.00) | 37.8% (26.51) | |
[i] a Self-rated proficiency rated on a 10-point scale (1 = no competence; 10 = perfect competence).
b Time (%) during which participants reported using the language, averaged across contexts.
Figure 1
Panel A. Number of participants who learned English (or Venetian) before the age of 5 in each bilingual group. Panel B. Mean percentage of time during which Italian-English bilinguals reported using English (upper chart) and Italian-Venetian bilinguals using Venetian (lower chart) in different everyday-life contexts. The time spent reading and watching movies and videos was not estimated for Venetian because this language is essentially oral and not used in the media. Bars indicate standard error.
Figure 2
D scores of Italian-English bilinguals and Italian-Venetian bilinguals as a function of the percentage of correct responses in tests assessing proficiency in English (left) and Venetian (right). Even when analyzed separately, both bilingual groups showed significant Language × Proficiency interactions (t and p values are reported in the bottom left portion of each panel).
Figure 3
Percentage of sacrificial responses in incongruent dilemmas as a function of group (Italian-English bilinguals and Italian-Venetian bilinguals) and language comparison (Italian vs. English and Italian vs. Venetian). Percentage of dilemmas in which participants accepted the sacrifice (black bar) relative to those in which they rejected it (grey bar).