Humans speak to each other with an abundance of different languages, but does hearing something said in a different language change the way we view the situation? If a friend is using your computer and the computer breaks as he is using it, would you say "You broke my computer", or would you say "My computer was broken". The answer to this is depended on the language spoken by the person being asked. Most English speakers named the friend the responsible party whether or not it was actually their fault. People from Japan or Spain usually just said something like "It broke".
More videos were shown to the people where a person intentionally and accidentally broke eggs. Every time the person intentionally broke the egg people of every language remembered the person's name and described him as the egg breaker. When the eggs were broken accidentally most English speaking subjects set blame on the man anyway. Subjects speaking other languages would just say the egg broke, because it was an accident so they had no reason to remember the details of the person who broke it.
When people are told about a situation, the wording of that situation shapes the way we look at it. A study was done using the Super Bowl with the Janet Jackson flashing. Subjects were given a report on what happened and told to come up with a punishment. One of the reports said Justin Timberlake ripped the costume, but the other said the costume was ripped. It didn't matter that they had all the details and had all seen the video, the people who got the first report levied fines 50 percent higher.
Boroditsky, By Lera. "Does Language Influence Culture? - WSJ.com." Business News & Financial News -
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