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Will Using a Foreign Language Attenuate the Neophobia?
1School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University, No. 122# Ninghai Road, Nanjing, 210097, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
In two experiments, we tested whether using a foreign language attenuates neophobia at the lexical (Experiment 1) and discoursal (Experiment 2) levels in comparison to using a native language. A total of 687 native Chinese speakers participated in Experiment 1, and 693 in Experiment 2. All of them learned English as a foreign language. They performed paper-and-pencil tasks for measuring their neophobia toward innovative products described in either Chinese or English at the lexical and discoursal levels. Our results suggest that using a foreign language at the discoursal levels can obviously attenuate the neophobia toward innovative products. Moreover, Dual-process Model could explain the mechanisms of neophobic attenuation induced by foreign language use.
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