BORODITSKY: Well, there may not be a word for left to refer to a left leg. And nobody wishes that we hadn't developed our modern languages today from the ancient versions. John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. 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. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. al (Eds. Thank you! Languages are not just tools to describe the world. FDA blocks human trials for Neuralink brain implants. And I thought, wow, first of all, it would be almost impossible to have a conversation like that in English where you hadn't already revealed the gender of the person because you have to use he or she. Hidden Brain. How to Foster Perceived Partner Responsiveness: High-Quality LIstening is Key, Perceived Partner Responsiveness Scale (PPRS), Toward Understanding Understanding:The Importance of Feeling Understood in Relationships, Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, Perceived Partner Responsiveness Minimizes Defensive Reactions to Failure, Assessing the Seeds of Relationship Decay: Using Implicit Evaluations to Detect the Early Stages of Disillusionment. BORODITSKY: It's certainly possible. Just saying hello was difficult. MCWHORTER: Yes, Shankar, that's exactly it. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. and pick the featured episodes for your show. And then if you are going to be that elliptical, why use the casual word get? Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. I know-uh (ph) is there, or something along the lines of babe-uh (ph). UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Speaking Russian). This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The best Podcast API to search all podcasts and episodes. People do need to be taught what the socially acceptable forms are. So we did an analysis of images in Artstor. Transcript 585: In Defense of Ignorance Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy | Hidden Brain Media 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. I'm Shankar Vedantam. And if it was feminine, then you're likely to paint death as a woman. 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? We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. This week, in the final . NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. Well never sell your personal information. Hidden Brain. 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. VEDANTAM: Our conversation made me wonder about what this means on a larger scale. As someone who works in media, I often find that people who can write well are often people who know how to think well, so I often equate clarity of writing with clarity of thought. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through. In this favorite episode from 2021, Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow explains why purpose isnt something to be found its something we can develop from within. So act like Monday. If you are a podcaster, the best way to manage your podcasts on Listen Notes is by claiming your Listen Notes You can find all Hidden Brain episodes on our website. 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. VEDANTAM: So I want to talk about a debate that's raged in your field for many years. So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Hidden Brain: You, But Better on Apple Podcasts 50 min You, But Better Hidden Brain Social Sciences Think about the resolutions you made this year: to quit smoking, eat better, or get more exercise. This week, in the second installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Todd Kashdan looks at the relationship between distress and happiness, and ho, Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. 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. 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. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? 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? But somehow they've managed, not just by randomly bumping into each other. There's a way of speaking right. They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. So I think that nobody would say that they don't think language should change. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). You may also use the Hidden Brain name in invitations sent to a small group of personal contacts for such purposes as a listening club or discussion forum. We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. But it is a completely crucial part of the human experience. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. 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. Who Do You Want To Be? - Hidden Brain (pdcast) | Listen Notes And then 10 years later when they're 49, you say, well, that picture of you at 39 is what you really are and whatever's happened to you since then is some sort of disaster or something that shouldn't have happened. Learn more. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. We don't want to be like that. 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). MCWHORTER: Yeah, I really do. Google Podcasts - hidden brain MCWHORTER: Exactly. Hidden Brain | Hidden Brain Media Now, many people hear that and they think, well, that's no good because now literally can mean its opposite. That is the direction of writing in Hebrew and Arabic, going from right to left. Whats going on here? MCWHORTER: Language is a parade, and nobody sits at a parade wishing that everybody would stand still. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. And I kind of sheepishly confessed this to someone there. Are the spoken origins of language one reason that words so often seem to be on the move? And we're all going to have feelings like that. It's testament to the incredible ingenuity and complexity of the human mind that all of these different perspectives on the world have been invented. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. You may link to our content and copy and paste episode descriptions and Additional Resources into your invitations. Transcript Speaker 1 00:00:00 this is hidden brain. Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Persuasion: Part 1 - Transcripts How to Really Know Another Person - Transcripts Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? That hadn't started then. And dead languages never change, and some of us might prefer those. Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. 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. VEDANTAM: My guest today is - well, why don't I let her introduce herself? My big fat greek wedding, an american woman of greek ancestry falls in love with a very vanilla, american man. Which pile do you go in, right? But if I give that same story to a Hebrew or an Arabic speaker, they would organize it from right to left. But I find that people now usually use the word to mean very soon, as in we're going to board the plane momentarily. Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Of course, eventually, the Finnish kids also figured it out because language isn't the only source of that information, otherwise it would be quite surprising for the Finns to be able to continue to reproduce themselves. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. I'm . But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) I'm willing to get involved. For more of our Relationships 2.0 series, check out one of our most popular episodes ever about why marriages are so hard. So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. 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. How To Breathe Correctly For Optimal Health, Mood, Learning UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking foreign language). The size of this effect really quite surprised me because I would have thought at the outset that, you know, artists are these iconoclasts. Relationships 2.0: What Makes Relationships Thrive | Hidden Brain Media I'm Shankar Vedanta. If you, grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your. But actually, that's exactly how people in those communities come to stay oriented - is that they learn it, (laughter) right? If a transcript is available, you'll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. Reframing Your Reality: Part 1 | Hidden Brain Media I'm shankar Vedantam in the 2002 rom com. Assessing the Seeds of Relationship Decay: Using Implicit Evaluations to Detect the Early Stages of Disillusionment, by Soonhee Lee, Ronald D. Rogge, and Harry T. Reis, Psychological Science, 2010. If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . This is HIDDEN BRAIN. 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. Hidden Brain - Transcripts But if he just bumped into the table, and it happened to fall off the table and break, and it was an accident, then you might be more likely to say, the flute broke, or the flute broke itself, or it so happened to Sam that the flute broke. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. All sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain are managed by SXM Media. And why do some social movements take off and spread, while others fizzle? But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. Hidden Brain I had this cool experience when I was there. Decoding Emotions - Transcripts Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. MCWHORTER: Thank you for having me, Shankar. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. 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. It's never going to. Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. You 2.0: How to Open Your Mind | Hidden Brain Media Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. 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. Stay with us. 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. And so for example, if the word chair is masculine in your language, why is that? Lera, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. Could this affect the way, you know, sexism, conscious or unconscious, operates in our world? edit transcripts, Improve the presence of your podcasts, e.g., self-service, If you share your Listen Notes page and at-mention. So one possibility for bilinguals would be that they just have two different minds inside - right? They're more likely to say, well, it's a formal property of the language. 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 turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. to describe the world. If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter. Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. But I think that we should learn not to listen to people using natural language as committing errors because there's no such thing as making a mistake in your language if a critical mass of other people speaking your language are doing the same thing. He didn't like that people were shortening the words. They believe that their language reflects the true structure of the world. And I don't think any of us are thinking that it's a shame that we're not using the language of Beowulf. But I don't think that it's always clear to us that language has to change in that things are going to come in that we're going to hear as intrusions or as irritating or as mistakes, despite the fact that that's how you get from, say, old Persian to modern Persian. Well, if you have a word like that and if it's an intensifier of that kind, you can almost guess that literally is going to come to mean something more like just really. And very competent adults of our culture can't do that. So if the word for death was masculine in your language, you were likely to paint death as a man. So to give you a very quick wrap-up is that some effects are big, but even when effects aren't big, they can be interesting or important for other reasons - either because they are very broad or because they apply to things that we think are really important in our culture. 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. 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? They're supposed to be painting something very personal. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. 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. 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. It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. So you have speakers of two different languages look at the same event and come away with different memories of what happened because of the structure of their languages and the way they would normally describe them. Look at it. BORODITSKY: And when they were trying to act like Wednesday, they would act like a woman BORODITSKY: Which accords with grammatical gender in Russian. But we have plenty of words like that in English where it doesn't bother us at all. I've always found that a very grating way to ask for something at a store. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. That's the way words are, too. 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. Laughter: The Best Medicine | Hidden Brain : NPR BORODITSKY: That's a wonderful question. What Do You Do When Things Go Right? Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Accuracy and availability may vary. 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? It goes in this pile. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. Newer episodes are unlikely to have a transcript as it takes us a few weeks to process and edit each transcript. It's inherent. BORODITSKY: Thank you so much for having me. In this favorite 2021 episode, psychologist Adam Grant pushes back against the benefits of certainty, and describes the magic that unfolds when we challenge our own deeply-held beliefs. 5.3 Misbehaving Hidden Brain NPR - HOURLY NEWS DONATE < Predictably MCWHORTER: Those are called contronyms, and literally has become a new contronym. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking foreign language). 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. There was no way of transcribing an approximation of what people said and nobody would have thought of doing it. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. Those sorts things tend to start with women. And I did that. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. This is a database with millions of art images. There are different ways to be a psychologist. In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. When language was like that, of course it changed a lot - fast - because once you said it, it was gone. And so what that means is if someone was sitting facing south, they would lay out the story from left to right. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. When she was 12, her family came to the United States from the Soviet Union. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) If you're so upset about it, maybe you can think of a way to help her. Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at Hidden Brain telling the stories of . And so, for example, can I get a hamburger? 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. 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. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, by Adam Grant, 2021. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. I just don't want to do it. And so I was trying to keep track of which way is which. BORODITSKY: Well, I think it's a terrible tragedy. 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.