Language Selection at the Time of Processing Anger: A Case Study of Turkish-Persian Bilinguals

Recent research has indicated the influence of bilingualism on many cognitive and emotional processes. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of bilingualism in processing anger in Turkish-Persian bilinguals’ first (L1) and second (L2) language. To achieve this goal, 18 Turkish-Persian sequential bilingual students with an average age of 26 from different universities in Tehran were selected with targeted sampling to participate in this quasi-experimental research. Participants completed the language history questionnaire, the General Health questionnaire, and the Positive and Negative affect schedule questionnaire, in addition to a computerized task designed to induce anger and determine the meaningfulness of Turkish and Persian words and non-words. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the participants significantly spent more time on determining the meaningfulness of words when they were induced with anger in comparison to the normal condition. Moreover, they were significantly slower in selecting Turkish words compared to Persian ones. Regarding the comparison of the two languages in both conditions separately, paired comparison results demonstrated that participants’ reaction time to Turkish words in anger inducing conditions was significantly longer. Thus, it could be proposed that Turkish-Persian bilinguals are more involved in their first language in emotional states, specifically anger states, and the Turkish language has more and deeper emotional associations for them, hence their emotional involvement is stronger for their mother tongue than for their second language.