JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt. Why researchers should think real-world: A conceptual rationale, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life, 2012. Listen on the Reuters app. VEDANTAM: This episode of HIDDEN BRAIN was produced by Rhaina Cohen, Maggie Penman and Thomas Lu with help from Renee Klahr, Jenny Schmidt, Parth Shah and Chloe Connelly. You know, lots of people blow off steam about something they think is wrong, but very few people are willing to get involved and do something about it. We'll also look at how languages evolve, and why we're sometimes resistant to those changes. And it's just too much of an effort, and you can't be bothered to do it, even though it's such a small thing. And, of course, you always have to wonder, well, could it be that speakers of these different languages are actually seeing different kinds of bridges? The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. Are the spoken origins of language one reason that words so often seem to be on the move? Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways w, Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. VEDANTAM: If languages are shaped by the way people see the world, but they also shape how people see the world, what does this mean for people who are bilingual? You can run experiments in a lab or survey people on the street. Each language comprises the ideas that have been worked out in a culture over thousands of generations, and that is an incredible amount of cultural heritage and complexity of thought that disappears whenever a language dies. So I think it's something that is quite easy for humans to learn if you just have a reason to want to do it. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. And MIT linguist Ken Hale, who's a renowned linguist, said that every time a language dies, it's the equivalent of a bomb being dropped on the Louvre. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kennon M. Sheldon, George Washington Law Review, 2015. Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. 585: In Defense of Ignorance - This American Life You know, endings are going to tend to drop off. I think that it's better to think of language as a parade that either you're watching, or frankly, that you're in, especially because the people are never going to stand still. Hidden Brain - You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose - Google Podcasts Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it. So I think it's an incredible tragedy that we're losing all of this linguistic diversity, all of this cultural diversity because it is human heritage. Hidden Brain. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: (Speaking foreign language). Rightly Crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating Goal Self-Concordance Prior to Selection Helps People Choose More Intrinsic Goals, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Mike Prentice, and Evgeny Osin, Journal of Research in Personality, 2019. So earlier things are on the left. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. Whats going on here? Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. My big fat greek wedding, an american woman of greek ancestry falls in love with a very vanilla, american man. He. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. We'll be back momentarily. How does that sound now? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). Maybe it's even less than a hundred meters away, but you just can't bring yourself to even throw your coat on over your pajamas and put your boots on and go outside and walk those hundred meters because somehow it would break the coziness. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. But then you start writing things down and you're in a whole new land because once things are sitting there written on that piece of paper, there's that illusion. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, Going the Distance on the Pacific Crest Trail: The Vital Role of Identified Motivation, Athletic Scholarships are Negatively Associated with Intrinsic Motivation for Sports, Even Decades Later: Evidence for Long-Term Undermining, Rightly Crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating Goal Self-Concordance Prior to Selection Helps People Choose More Intrinsic Goals, What Makes Lawyers Happy? We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. MCWHORTER: Yeah. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. 5.3 Misbehaving Hidden Brain NPR - HOURLY NEWS DONATE < Predictably Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, What Do You Do When Things Go Right? Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. Whats going on here? It seems kind of elliptical, like, would it be possible that I obtained? You're not going to do any of the things that are seen as a foundation of our technological society. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. Dictionaries are wonderful things, but they create an illusion that there's such thing as a language that stands still, when really it's the nature of human language to change. We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. One study that I love is a study that asked monolingual speakers of Italian and German and also bilingual speakers of Italian and German to give reasons for why things are the grammatical genders that they are. So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. VEDANTAM: I asked Lera how describing the word chair or the word bridge as masculine or feminine changes the way that speakers of different languages think about those concepts. But it is a completely crucial part of the human experience. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. This week, in the final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes what happens when we stop to savor the beauty in nature, art, or simply the moral courage of those around us. So what happens is that once literally comes to feel like it means really, people start using it in figurative constructions such as I was literally dying of thirst. There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. Hidden Brain. So that's an example of how languages and cultures construct how we use space to organize time, to organize this very abstract thing that's otherwise kind of hard to get our hands on and think about. Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Writing has come along relatively recently. VEDANTAM: How the languages we speak shape the way we think and why the words we use are always in flux. And so for example, if the word chair is masculine in your language, why is that? It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date. Athletic Scholarships are Negatively Associated with Intrinsic Motivation for Sports, Even Decades Later: Evidence for Long-Term Undermining, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Arlen C. Moller, Motivation Science, 2020. So maybe they're saying bridges are beautiful and elegant, not because they're grammatically feminine in the language, but because the bridges they have are, in fact, more beautiful and elegant. But it's so hard to feel that partly because our brains are on writing, as I say in the book. Hidden Brain Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Subscribe Visit website Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our. My Unsung Hero: A belated thank you : NPR And so somebody will say, well, who was it who you thought was going to give you this present? And why do some social movements take off and spread, while others fizzle? The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Speaking German). But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. I think that the tone that many people use when they're complaining that somebody says Billy and me went to the store is a little bit incommensurate with the significance of the issue. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? We call this language Gumbuzi. Each generation hears things and interprets things slightly differently from the previous one. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. The size of this effect really quite surprised me because I would have thought at the outset that, you know, artists are these iconoclasts. That said, if you hear one or two pieces of music that you really love, feel free to email us at [emailprotected] and well do our best to respond to your request. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. And what we find is that if you teach people that forks go with men grammatically in a language, they start to think of forks as being more masculine. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. What a cynical thing to say, but that doesn't mean that it might not be true. You're not going to do trigonometry. Imagine this. You would give a different description to mark that it was not intentional. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important, VEDANTAM: There isn't a straightforward translation of this phrase in English. It's never going to. What do you think the implications are - if you buy the idea that languages are a very specific and unique way of seeing the world, of perceiving reality, what are the implications of so many languages disappearing during our time? BORODITSKY: Well, there may not be a word for left to refer to a left leg. And what he found was kids who were learning Hebrew - this is a language that has a lot of gender loading in it - figured out whether they were a boy or a girl about a year sooner than kids learning Finnish, which doesn't have a lot of gender marking in the language. Please do not republish our logo, name or content digitally or distribute to more than 10 people without written permission. Thank you! BORODITSKY: Yeah. Whats going on here? Stay with us. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) If you're so upset about it, maybe you can think of a way to help her. If I give you a bunch of pictures to lay out and say this is telling you some kind of story and you - and they're disorganized, when an English speaker organizes those pictures, they'll organize them from left to right. VEDANTAM: I understand there's been some work looking at children and that children who speak certain languages are actually quicker to identify gender and their own gender than children who are learning other languages in other cultures. And there are consequences for how people think about events, what they notice when they see accidents. Marcus Butt/Getty Images/Ikon Images Hidden Brain Why Nobody Feels Rich by Shankar Vedantam , Parth Shah , Tara Boyle , Rhaina Cohen September 14, 2020 If you've ever flown in economy class. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? VEDANTAM: One of the ultimate messages I took from your work is that, you know, we can choose to have languages that are alive or languages that are dead. And if you don't have a word for exactly seven, it actually becomes very, very hard to keep track of exactly seven. Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. Who Do You Want To Be? - Hidden Brain (pdcast) | Listen Notes GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. But, if you dig a little deeper, you may find that they share much more: they might make the same amount of money as you, or share the, We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. Later things are on the right. And, I mean, just in terms of even sounds changing and the way that you put words together changing bit by bit, and there's never been a language that didn't do that. As you're going about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. For example, if you take seeds and put them in the ground, that's one thing. So one possibility for bilinguals would be that they just have two different minds inside - right? Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. We always knew that certain species of animals had abilities to orient that we thought were better than human, and we always had some biological excuse for why we couldn't do it. And if the word bridge is masculine in your language, you're more likely to say that bridges are strong and long and towering - these kind of more stereotypically masculine words. VEDANTAM: One of the points you make in the book of course is that the evolution of words and their meanings is what gives us this flowering of hundreds or thousands of languages. Bu Additional Resources Book: Decoding Emotions - Transcripts I said, you know, this weird thing happened. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. That's because change is hard. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. And as you point out, it's not just that people feel that a word is being misused. They're more likely to say, well, it's a formal property of the language. If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. They're more likely to see through this little game that language has played on them. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. VEDANTAM: The word chair is feminine in Italian. It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. And so what that means is if someone was sitting facing south, they would lay out the story from left to right. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. So it's easy to think, oh, I could imagine someone without thinking explicitly about what they're wearing. ), The Sourcebook of Listening Research: Methodology and Measures, 2018. This is NPR. Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. Read the episode transcript. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. But, in fact, they were reflecting this little quirk of grammar, this little quirk of their language and in some cases, you know, carving those quirks of grammar into stone because when you look at statues that we have around - of liberty and justice and things like this - they have gender. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. And so for me, that question was born in that conversation of are there some languages where it's easier to imagine a person without their characteristics of gender filled in? This is Hidden Brain. Now, in a lot of languages, you can't say that because unless you were crazy, and you went out looking to break your arm, and you succeeded - right? So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. But if you prefer life - the unpredictability of life - then living language in many ways are much more fun. This week, we launch the first of a two-part mini-series on the scie, If you think about the people in your life, it's likely that they share a lot in common with you. BORODITSKY: The way to say my name properly in Russian is (speaking foreign language), so I don't make people say that. I'm Shankar Vedantam. She once visited an aboriginal community in northern Australia and found the language they spoke forced her mind to work in new ways. Transcript - How language shapes the way we think by Lera Boroditsky.docx, The Singapore Quality Award requires organisations to show outstanding results, The following lots of Commodity Z were available for sale during the year, b The authors identify 5 types of misinformation in the abstract but discuss 7, 17 Chow N Asian value and aged care Geriatr Gerontol Int 20044521 5 18 Chow NWS, Writing Results and Discussion Example.docx, A 6 month old infant weighing 15 lb is admitted with a diagnosis of dehydration, ng_Question_-_Assessment_1_-_Proposing_Evidence-Based_Change.doc, The Social Security checks the Government sends to grandmothers are considered A, 03 If a covered member participates on the clients attest engagement or is an, AURETR143 Student Assessment - Theory v1.1.docx. Hidden Brain - Google Podcasts Of course that's how you BORODITSKY: And so what was remarkable for me was that my brain figured out a really good solution to the problem after a week of trying, right? So I think that nobody would say that they don't think language should change. VEDANTAM: I want to talk in the second half of our conversation about why the meanings of words change, but I want to start by talking about how they change. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. I'm Shankar Vedantam. To request permission, please send an email to [emailprotected]. Hidden Brain Claim By Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Podcasts RSS Web PODCAST SEARCH EPISODES COMMUNITY PODCASTER EDIT SHARE Listen Score LS 84 Global Rank TOP 0.01% ABOUT THIS PODCAST Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Not without written permission. In the second episode of our "Relationships 2.0" series, psychologist Do you ever struggle to communicate with your mom? Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. And so I set myself the goal that I would learn English in a year, and I wouldn't speak Russian to anyone for that whole first year. You would never know, for example, that - give you an example I've actually been thinking about. When we come back, we dig further into the way that gender works in different languages and the pervasive effects that words can play in our lives. Lost In Translation- Hidden Brain Podcast Transcript .pdf The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. It can be almost counterintuitive to listen to how much giggling and laughing you do in ordinary - actually rather plain exchanges with people. And in fact, speakers of languages like this have been shown to orient extremely well - much better than we used to think humans could. You're also not going to do algebra. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. And if you can enjoy it as a parade instead of wondering why people keep walking instead of just sitting on chairs and blowing on their tubas and not moving, then you have more fun. This week, we're going to bring you a conversation I had in front of a live audience with Richard Thaler, taped on Halloween at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D. Richard is a professor of behavioral sciences and economics at the University of Chicago and is a well-known author. VEDANTAM: Languages orient us to the world. Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-being, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Lawrence S. Krieger, Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2004. VEDANTAM: I love this analogy you have in the book where you mention how, you know, thinking that a word has only one meaning is like looking at a snapshot taken at one point in a person's life and saying this photograph represents the entirety of what this person looks like. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. A free podcast app for iPhone and Android, Download episodes while on WiFi to listen without using mobile data, Stream podcast episodes without waiting for a download, Queue episodes to create a personal continuous playlist, Web embed players designed to convert visitors to listeners in the RadioPublic apps for iPhone and Android, Capture listener activity with affinity scores, Measure your promotional campaigns and integrate with Google and Facebook analytics, Deliver timely Calls To Action, including email acquistion for your mailing list, Share exactly the right moment in an episode via text, email, and social media, Tip and transfer funds directly to podcastsers, Earn money for qualified plays in the RadioPublic apps with Paid Listens. So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. There are many scholars who would say, look, yes, you do see small differences between speakers of different languages, but these differences are not really significant; they're really small. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. The Effective Negotiator Part 1: The Behavior of Successful Negotiators and The Effective Negotiator Part 2: Planning for Negotiations, by Neil Rackham and John Carlisle, Journal of European Industrial Training, 1978. And it irritates people, but there's a different way of seeing literally. That's the way words are, too. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? Hidden Brain: You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose on Apple Podcasts And we teach them, for example, to say that bridges and apples and all kinds of other things have the same prefix as women. I think language can certainly be a contributor into the complex system of our thinking about gender. And you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it out. Hidden Brain Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Science 4.6 36K Ratings; Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. That is the direction of writing in Hebrew and Arabic, going from right to left. BORODITSKY: Well, you would be at sea at first. After claiming your Listen Notes podcast pages, you will be able to: Respond to listener comments on Listen Notes, Use speech-to-text techniques to transcribe your show and Let's start with the word literally. And the answer should be, north, northeast in the far distance; how about you? So you can't see time. Opening scene of Lady Bird Flight attendant Steven Slater slides from a plane after quitting Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode.