To request permission, please send an email to [emailprotected]. Just go to the magnifying glass in the top right corner, click on it, and use the search function at the top of the page. In a lot of languages, there isn't. June 20, 2020 This week on Hidden Brain, research about prejudices so deeply buried, we often doubt their existence. It has to do with the word momentarily. 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? 4.62. Whats going on here? VEDANTAM: Our conversation made me wonder about what this means on a larger scale. 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. But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. If you, grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your. 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. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: (Speaking foreign language). MCWHORTER: Those are called contronyms, and literally has become a new contronym. VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly useful. You couldn't have predicted this I know-uh move-uh (ph). Hidden Brain: You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose on Apple Podcasts 51 min You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose Hidden Brain Social Sciences Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. Shankar Vedantam, host of the popular podcast "Hidden Brain" has been reporting on human behavior for decades. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. It goes in this pile. 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. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. You-uh (ph). Because it was. Whats going on here? 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. al (Eds. Sometimes you just have to suck it up. 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. For example, when we started talking about navigation, that's an example where a 5-year-old in a culture that uses words like north, south, east and west can point southeast without hesitation. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy. If a transcript is available, you'll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. And if you teach them that forks go with women, they start to think that forks are more feminine. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. 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. * Data source: directly measured on Listen Notes. Later things are on the right. 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. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. 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. ADAM COLE, BYLINE: (Singing) You put your southwest leg in, and you shake it all about. 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. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. This week on Hidden Brain, psychologist Adam Grant describes the magic th What techniques did that person use to persuade you? And there are consequences for how people think about events, what they notice when they see accidents. I decided it was very important for me to learn English because I had always been a very verbal kid, and I'd - was always the person who recited poems in front of the school and, you know, led assemblies and things like that. And if you don't have a word for exactly seven, it actually becomes very, very hard to keep track of exactly seven. I'm shankar Vedantam in the 2002 rom com. MCWHORTER: No, because LOL was an expression; it was a piece of language, and so you knew that its meaning was going to change. You can support Hidden Brain indirectly by giving to your local NPR station, or you can provide direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? So it's easy to think, oh, I could imagine someone without thinking explicitly about what they're wearing. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). My big fat greek wedding, an american woman of greek ancestry falls in love with a very vanilla, american man. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. They know which way is which. But if I give that same story to a Hebrew or an Arabic speaker, they would organize it from right to left. All episodes of Hidden Brain - Chartable Hidden Brain Episodes Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. Think back to the last time someone convinced you to do something you didn't want to do, or to spend money you didn't want to spend. Hidden Brain. They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. And you can even teach people to have a little bit of fun with the artifice. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. It's part of a general running indication that everything's OK between you and the other person, just like one's expected to smile a little bit in most interactions. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe watching Netflix or something. BORODITSKY: So quite literally, to get past hello, you have to know which way you're heading. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. And very competent adults of our culture can't do that. 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. You're also not going to do algebra. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. But actually, that's exactly how people in those communities come to stay oriented - is that they learn it, (laughter) right? It's too high. And then when I turned, this little window stayed locked on the landscape, but it turned in my mind's eye. Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. 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. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). 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. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. But if you prefer life - the unpredictability of life - then living language in many ways are much more fun. 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. And he started by asking Russian-speaking students to personify days of the week. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness can seem more el, When we want something very badly, it can be hard to see warning signs that might be obvious to other people. So they've compared gender equality, gender parity norms from the World Health Organization, which ranks countries on how equal access to education, how equal pay is, how equal representation in government is across the genders. MCWHORTER: Oh, yeah, I'm a human being. The fun example I give my students is imagine playing the hokey pokey in a language like this. 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. This is Hidden Brain. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. And they asked me all kinds of questions about them. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. They're more likely to see through this little game that language has played on them. These relationships can help you feel cared for and connected. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. And the way you speak right is not by speaking the way that people around you in your life speak, but by speaking the way the language is as it sits there all nice and pretty on that piece of paper where its reality exists. VEDANTAM: So all this raises a really interesting question. You have to do it in order to fit into the culture and to speak the language. There are different ways to be a psychologist. Hidden Brain - You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose Hidden Brain Aug 2, 2021 You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose Play 51 min playlist_add Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the. What turns out to be the case is that it's something in between - that bilinguals don't really turn off the languages they're not using when they're not using them. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. So earlier things are on the left. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? And you suddenly get a craving for potato chips, and you, realize that you have none in the kitchen, and there's nothing else you really want to, eat. Lera said there's still a lot of research to be done on this. This week, in the final . The best Podcast API to search all podcasts and episodes. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Speaking German). VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. 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? So that, again, is a huge difference. BORODITSKY: Well, I think it's a terrible tragedy. And what's cool about languages, like the languages spoken in Pormpuraaw, is that they don't use words like left and right, and instead, everything is placed in cardinal directions like north, south, east and west. 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. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. 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. How does that sound now? Interpersonal Chemistry: What Is It, How Does It Emerge, and How Does it Operate? Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. And so language changed just like the clouds in the sky. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. MCWHORTER: Yes, Shankar, that's exactly it. I'm Shankar Vedantam. And if they were facing east, they would make the cards come toward them, toward the body. And, I mean, really, it sounds exactly like that. The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. How do certain memes go viral? But it's so hard to feel that partly because our brains are on writing, as I say in the book. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often untranslatable. VEDANTAM: Well, that's kind of you, Lera. 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. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). I saw this bird's-eye view, and I was this little red dot. That kind of detail may not appear. But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. And you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it out. People do need to be taught what the socially acceptable forms are. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. BORODITSKY: Well, you would be at sea at first. GEACONE-CRUZ: It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged, encapsulated way. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. It should be thought of as fun. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . As you're going about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. That's how much cultural heritage is lost. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Imagine this. When she was 12, her family came to the United States from the Soviet Union. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where. All of the likes and, like, literallies (ph) might sometimes grate on your nerves, but John McWhorter says the problem might be with you, not with the way other people speak. You can find all Hidden Brain episodes on our website. According to neuroscientists who study laughter, it turns out that chuckles and giggles often aren't a response to humorthey're a response to people. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. So we did an analysis of images in Artstor. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. John, you've noted that humans have been using language for a very long time, but for most of that time language has been about talking. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. They can be small differences but important in other ways. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. If you're a monolingual speaker of one of these languages, you're very likely to say that the word chair is masculine because chairs are, in fact, masculine, right? You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. For example, if you take seeds and put them in the ground, that's one thing. We lobby a neighbor to vote for our favored political candidate. 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? native tongue without even thinking about it. And that is an example of a simple feature of language - number words - acting as a transformative stepping stone to a whole domain of knowledge. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-being, Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-being: The Self-Concordance Model, Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. This week, we continue our look at the science of influence with psychologist Robert Cialdini, and explore how th, We all exert pressure on each other in ways small and profound. 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. Put this image on your website to promote the show -, Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through, Report inappropriate content or request to remove this page. Whats going on here? In this favorite 2021 episode, psychologistAdam Grantpushes back against the benefits of certainty, and describes the magic that unfolds when we challenge our own deeply-held beliefs. VEDANTAM: Lera now tries to understand languages spoken all over the world. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. I'm . This week, in the final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes what happens when we stop to sav, Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. There's a way of speaking right. And as soon as I saw that happen, I thought, oh, this makes it so much easier. 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. Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-being, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Lawrence S. Krieger, Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2004. He. It's inherent. So it's mendokusai. If you still cant find the episode, try looking through our most recent shows on our homepage. We'll be back momentarily. Hidden Brain - Transcripts Hidden Brain - Transcripts Subscribe 435 episodes Share Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Writing has come along relatively recently. 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). The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. 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. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Languages are not just tools. And then he would take a Polaroid of the kid and say, well, this is you. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. BORODITSKY: That's a wonderful question. 437 Episodes Produced by Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Website. Let's start with the word literally. And so somebody will say, well, who was it who you thought was going to give you this present? So these speakers have internalized this idea from their language, and they believe that it's right. The only question was in which way. Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, by Philip Tetlock, Psychology Review, 2002. Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: (Speaking Italian). A brief history of relationship research in social psychology, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of the History of Social Psychology, 2011. Read the episode transcript. VEDANTAM: (Laughter) All right, I think it might be time for me to confess one of my pet peeves. Now I can stay oriented. 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? Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." What do you do for christmas with your family? But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? What Makes Lawyers Happy? Newsletter: 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. Our team includes Laura Kwerel, Adhiti Bandlamudi and our supervising producer Tara Boyle. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. 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? It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. VEDANTAM: Around the world, we often hear that many languages are dying, and there are a few megalanguages that are growing and expanding in all kinds of ways. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. But we have plenty of words like that in English where it doesn't bother us at all. So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. 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 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. And then if you are going to be that elliptical, why use the casual word get? 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. It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. 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.