Undergraduate Research: An Archive - 2022 Program
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Katherine Ross ’22<br />
ECONOMICS<br />
Certificate in Environmental Studies<br />
ENVIRONMENTAL<br />
POLICY AND SOCIETY<br />
THESIS TITLE<br />
You Versus Me: The<br />
Effect of Primary<br />
Language Verb<br />
Conjugation on<br />
Tolerance Attitudes and<br />
Altruistic Behaviours<br />
ADVISER<br />
Alessandro Lizzeri,<br />
Professor of Economics<br />
Language is a critical means of communicating<br />
thoughts and emotions, but we still have much<br />
to learn about the extent to which a person’s<br />
linguistic background can influence the way they<br />
think about and perceive the world. Evidence<br />
in favor of the linguistic relativity hypothesis<br />
has found that language influences people’s<br />
color perception, open-mindedness, and saving<br />
behavior. My research sought to contribute to<br />
this debate by using responses from the most<br />
recent World Values Survey to test whether the<br />
structure of verb conjugation in a respondent’s<br />
primary language shapes how they relate to<br />
other people, in this case measured as their<br />
reported tolerance attitudes and altruistic<br />
behavior. I found that speakers of languages<br />
that do not distinguish between persons in<br />
their verb conjugation tend to be more likely to<br />
value unselfishness, less averse to living next to<br />
people who are different from themselves, more<br />
accepting of immigrants, and more likely to care<br />
about the environment. Except for the finding<br />
related to the environment, my results remained<br />
robust at the within-country level and when<br />
controlling for cultural confounds.<br />
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