VEDANTAM: Our conversation made me wonder about what this means on a larger scale. But what most people mean is that there'll be slang, that there'll be new words for new things and that some of those words will probably come from other languages. But if you ask bilinguals, who have learned two languages and now they know that some genders disagree across the two languages, they're much less likely to say that it's because chairs are intrinsically masculine. Perceived Partner Responsiveness Scale (PPRS), by Harry T. Reis et. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). That hadn't started then. For example, if you take seeds and put them in the ground, that's one thing. I just don't want to do it. 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 UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. BORODITSKY: Yeah. So some languages don't have number words. There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, by Shannon M. Smith & Harry Reis, Personal Relationships, 2012. Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. And they suggest that differences across languages do, in fact, predict some of these measures of gender equality across countries. And so for example, if the word chair is masculine in your language, why is that? - you would have to say something like, my arm got broken, or it so happened to me that my arm is broken. If you dont see any jobs posted there, feel free to send your resume and cover letter to [emailprotected] and well keep your materials on hand for future openings on the show. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. And they said, well, of course. If you can speak more than one language, does this mean that you're also simultaneously and constantly shifting in your mind between different worldviews? She once visited an aboriginal community in northern Australia and found the language they spoke forced her mind to work in new ways. MCWHORTER: Yeah. BORODITSKY: Well, you would be at sea at first. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. 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. Because were a small team, we dont have a publicly-available list of every piece of music that we use. It's too high. And we're all going to have feelings like that. Whats going on here? Look at it. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. So when the perfect woman started writing him letters, it seemed too good to be true. And nobody wishes that we hadn't developed our modern languages today from the ancient versions. native tongue without even thinking about it. 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. MCWHORTER: Yeah, I really do. If you're just joining us, I'm talking to John McWhorter. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Shelly. Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. So earlier things are on the left. We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. I had this cool experience when I was there. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. out. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. (LAUGHTER) VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. 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. Languages are not just tools. But actually, that's exactly how people in those communities come to stay oriented - is that they learn it, (laughter) right? Listen on the Reuters app. Can I get some chicken? But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. In a lot of languages, there isn't. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. How big are the differences that we're talking about, and how big do you think the implications are for the way we see the world? 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. And as soon as I saw that happen, I thought, oh, this makes it so much easier. They're more likely to say, well, it's a formal property of the language. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Hidden Brain: The NPR Archive : NPR - NPR.org Refusing to Apologize can have Psychological Benefits, by Tyler Okimoto, Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick, European Journal of Social Psychology, 2013. You know, there's no left leg or right leg. Now I can stay oriented. Hidden Brain - Transcripts UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking foreign language). Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy | Hidden Brain Media Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. That is utterly arbitrary that those little slits in American society look elderly, but for various chance reasons, that's what those slits came to mean, so I started wearing flat-fronted pants. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). MCWHORTER: No, because LOL was an expression; it was a piece of language, and so you knew that its meaning was going to change. Hidden Brain on Apple Podcasts VEDANTAM: Would it be possible to use what we have learned about how words and languages evolve to potentially write what a dictionary might look like in 50 years or a hundred years? And a girl goes in this pile. FAQ | Hidden Brain Media UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). That's how much cultural heritage is lost. Whats going on here? Hidden Brain Host Explains Why We Lie to Ourselves Every Day Of course, you also can't experience anything outside of time. Well never sell your personal information. 4.62. I'm . Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. And I did that. VEDANTAM: I understand that if you're in a picnic with someone from this community and you notice an ant climbing up someone's left leg, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to tell that person, look, there's an ant on your left leg. And so, for example, can I get a hamburger? It's not necessarily may I please have, but may I have, I'll have, but not can I get a. I find it just vulgar for reasons that as you can see I can't even do what I would call defending. And after listening to you, I realize I might have to finally give in. Flight attendant Steven Slater slides from a plane after quitting. You couldn't have predicted this I know-uh move-uh (ph). Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. You can't touch time. MCWHORTER: Exactly. The size of this effect really quite surprised me because I would have thought at the outset that, you know, artists are these iconoclasts. It's never happened. And some people would say it's a lot more because it's, you know, irrecoverable and not reduplicated elsewhere. Whereas speakers of a language like Spanish might not be quite as good at remembering who did it when it's an accident, but they're better at remembering that it was an accident. Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. Take the word bridge - if it's feminine in your language, you're more likely to say that bridges are beautiful and elegant. (Speaking Japanese). BORODITSKY: It's certainly possible. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. VEDANTAM: The word chair is feminine in Italian. And why do some social movements take off and spread, while others fizzle? and pick the featured episodes for your show. And this is NPR. Bu Shankar Vedantam, host of the popular podcast "Hidden Brain" has been reporting on human behavior for decades. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. There's a way of speaking right. Elon Musk's brain chips, starvation in Somalia and Greek anguish Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. Stay with us. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. (Speaking Japanese). We can't help, as literate people, thinking that the real language is something that sits still with letters written all nice and pretty on a page that can exist for hundreds of years, but that's not what language has ever been. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, Refusing to Apologize can have Psychological Benefits, The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, The Effective Negotiator Part 1: The Behavior of Successful Negotiators, The Effective Negotiator Part 2: Planning for Negotiations, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. Google Podcasts - hidden brain That kind of detail may not appear. Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. GEACONE-CRUZ: It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged, encapsulated way. And to our surprise, 78 percent of the time, we could predict the gender of the personification based on the grammatical gender of the noun in the artist's native language. 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. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? It should just be, here is the natural way, then there's some things that you're supposed to do in public because that's the way it is, whether it's fair or not. So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. Going the Distance on the Pacific Crest Trail: The Vital Role of Identified Motivation, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Motivation Science, 2020. Not without written permission. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, What Do You Do When Things Go Right? ROB LOWE: (As Chris Traeger) Dr. Harris, you are literally the meanest person I have ever met. In this favorite episode from 2021, Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow explains why purpose isnt something to be found its somethi, It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). You're also not going to do algebra. That is exactly why you should say fewer books instead of less books in some situations and, yes, Billy and I went to the store rather than the perfectly natural Billy and me went to the store. 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. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. And if they were facing east, they would make the cards come toward them, toward the body. That is the direction of writing in Hebrew and Arabic, going from right to left. And I can't help surmising that part of it is that the educated American has been taught and often well that you're not supposed to look down on people because of gender, because of race, because of ability. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. So to go back to the example we were just talking about - people who don't use words like left and right - when I gave those picture stories to Kuuk Thaayorre speakers, who use north, south, east and west, they organized the cards from east to west. But what I am thinking is, you should realize that even if you don't like it, there's nothing wrong with it in the long run because, for example, Jonathan Swift didn't like it that people were saying kissed instead of kiss-ed (ph) and rebuked instead of rebuk-ed (ph). To request permission, please send an email to [emailprotected]. You know, I was trying to stay oriented because people were treating me like I was pretty stupid for not being oriented, and that hurt. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. VEDANTAM: You make the case that concerns over the misuse of language might actually be one of the last places where people can publicly express prejudice and class differences. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. 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. All rights reserved. It's not something that you typically go out trying to do intentionally. VEDANTAM: So all this raises a really interesting question. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. BORODITSKY: Actually, one of the first people to notice or suggest that this might be the case was a Russian linguist, Roman Jakobson. So that's a measurement difference of 100 percent of performance. I saw this bird's-eye view, and I was this little red dot. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. How come you aren't exactly the way you were 10 years ago? How do certain memes go viral? This is Hidden Brain. So - but if I understand correctly, I would be completely at sea if I visited this aboriginal community in Australia because I have often absolutely no idea where I am or where I'm going. So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. Another possibility is that it's a fully integrated mind, and it just incorporates ideas and distinctions from both languages or from many languages if you speak more than two. Lera, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. Who Do You Want To Be? | Hidden Brain Media 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. 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. Persuasion: Part 1 - Transcripts And so he suggested it might be the case that the arbitrarily assigned grammatical genders are actually changing the way people think about these days of the week and maybe all kinds of other things that are named by nouns. When language was like that, of course it changed a lot - fast - because once you said it, it was gone. But they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. Newer episodes are unlikely to have a transcript as it takes us a few weeks to process and edit each transcript. BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. BORODITSKY: That's a wonderful question. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. But if you seed a watermelon, nobody assumes that you're taking seeds and putting them in the watermelon, you're taking them out. Hidden Brain on RadioPublic If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. As soon as you move the leg, it becomes a different leg. I want everybody to have the fun I'm having. And what he noticed was that when people were trying to act like Monday, they would act like a man. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. Hidden Brain. And you say that dictionaries in some ways paint an unrealistic portrait of a language. So you may start with moving your southwest leg in, but then you have to move your northeast leg out. You can find all Hidden Brain episodes on our website. Let's start with the word literally. So we did an analysis of images in Artstor. Which I think is probably important with the reality that this edifice that you're teaching is constantly crumbling. I'm Shankar Vedantam. For more on decision-making, check out our episode on how to make wiser choices. And you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it out. BORODITSKY: And Russian is a language that has grammatical gender, and different days of the week have different genders for some reason. podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9rd1djMGxoZg==, open.spotify.com/show/20Gf4IAauFrfj7RBkjcWxh. You're not going to do trigonometry. And there are all kinds of interesting, useful, eye-opening ideas that exist in all of the world's languages. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. This week, in the final . Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Stay with us. 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? something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PARKS AND RECREATION"). Copyright 2018 NPR. Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. But the reason that it seems so elusive is because we don't really think about the, quote, unquote, "meaning" of things like our conversation-easing laughter. ), Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy, 2004. Transcript Speaker 1 00:00:00 this is hidden brain. VEDANTAM: My guest today is - well, why don't I let her introduce herself? Languages are not just tools to describe the world. And so to address that question, what we do is we bring English speakers into the lab, and we teach them grammatical genders in a new language that we invent. Our team includes Laura Kwerel, Adhiti Bandlamudi and our supervising producer Tara Boyle. VEDANTAM: So I find that I'm often directionally and navigationally challenged when I'm driving around, and I often get my east-west mixed up with my left-right for reasons I have never been able to fathom. So for example, you might not imagine the color shirt that he's wearing or the kinds of shoes that he's wearing. Accuracy and availability may vary. 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