First or Second Language? Bilinguals’ Language Selection at the Time of Happiness

Bilingualism affects many cognitive and emotional processes, and studies have shown emotional arousal statements influence language, specifically language selection. The present quasi-experimental research was accomplished with the aim of surveying the language selection of Turkish-Persian bilinguals at the time of processing happiness. For this purpose, using targeted sampling, we selected 20 Turkish-Persian sequential bilinguals (with an average age of 26) among university students of Tehran. Participants were first asked to fill language history, General Health, Handedness, and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule questionnaires; then they responded to a computerized task designed to induce happiness and determined the meaningfulness of Turkish and Persian words and non-words. By examining the performance of the participants in the test through repeated measures analysis of variance, it was revealed that individuals significantly spent more time on determining the meaningfulness of words in happiness inducing condition comparing to the normal one. Also, regarding the comparison of two languages in both conditions separately, paired comparison results demonstrated that participants’ reaction time to Turkish words in happiness inducing condition was significantly longer (Ps<0/05). As a result, it can be proposed that Turkish-Persian bilinguals are more involved with their first language in emotional states, especially happy state, and that Turkish has more and deeper emotional associations for them, and their emotional involvement is stronger for their native language than for their second language.