Thinking in a foreign language makes you less superstitious, study finds

Hearing superstitions in a foreign language evokes less strong emotions

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Thinking in a foreign language makes you less superstitious, studies have found.

The reason for this is that we learn superstitions in our mother tongues, so when you hear them in a foreign language they evoke a less strong reaction.

Researchers from the University of Trento, Italy, found that thinking in a foreign language can suppress common superstitious beliefs, making people feel better about situations such as walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror.

However, it works the other way too - thinking in a foreign tongue makes people feel less positive about ‘good luck’ scenarios like finding a four-leaved clover.

In one experiment, participants read scenarios either in their native or a foreign language.

In each scenario, they were asked to imagine performing an action (such as submitting a job application) under a superstitious circumstance (for example, after breaking a mirror or picking a four-leaf clover) and to rate how they would feel.

Overall, foreign language resulted in less negative feelings towards bad-luck scenarios, less positive feelings towards good-luck scenarios, and it had no effect on non-superstitious, control scenarios.

“We attribute these findings to language-dependent memory,” the researchers said.

“Superstitious beliefs are typically acquired and used in contexts involving the native language. As a result, the native language evokes them more forcefully than a foreign language.”

Previous research has shown that speaking in a second language makes you think more rationally.