We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. But what if it's not even about lust? GEACONE-CRUZ: It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged, encapsulated way, and you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it. So there are these wonderful studies by Alexander Giora where he asked kids learning Finnish, English and Hebrew as their first languages basically, are you a boy or a girl? In this month's Radio Replay, we ask whether the structure of the languages we speak can change the way we see the world. Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. You would give a different description to mark that it was not intentional. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through. It is the very fabric, the very core of your experience. So it's mendokusai. VEDANTAM: Languages seem to have different ways of communicating agency. It's too high. 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. VEDANTAM: Languages orient us to the world. But I understand that in Spanish, this would come out quite differently. 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. 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. 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. So it's easy to think, oh, I could imagine someone without thinking explicitly about what they're wearing. podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9rd1djMGxoZg==, open.spotify.com/show/20Gf4IAauFrfj7RBkjcWxh. What Makes Lawyers Happy? But somehow they've managed, not just by randomly bumping into each other. And the answer should be, north, northeast in the far distance; how about you? Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. You can run experiments in a lab or survey people on the street. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? You can find all Hidden Brain episodes on our website. Hidden Brain - You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose - Google Podcasts JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. They are ways of seeing the world. al (Eds. But does a person who says that really deserve the kind of sneering condemnation that you often see? 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. 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. In the final episode of our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. Sometimes you just have to suck it up. I said, you know, this weird thing happened. Imagine this. Parents and peers influence our major life choices. Official Website Airs on: SUN 7pm-8pm 55:27 Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Feb 27 Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. 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. 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. This week on Hidden Brain, psychologist Adam Grant describes the magic th In The Air We Breathe : NPR Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. He says that buying into false beliefs, in other words, deluding ourselves can . And so what that means is if someone was sitting facing south, they would lay out the story from left to right. Hidden Brain | Hidden Brain Media They shape our place in it. You couldn't have predicted this I know-uh move-uh (ph). In this episode, we explore how long-term relationships have changed over time and whether we might be able to improve marriage by asking less of 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. Trusted by 5,200 companies and developers. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. When the con was exposed, its victims defended the con artists. 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. So we've done a lot of studies looking at how speakers of Spanish and German and Russian actually think about objects that have opposite grammatical genders. 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. You can also connect directly with our sponsorship representative by emailing [emailprotected]. But actually, it's something that's not so hard to learn. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. And they said, well, of course. Why researchers should think real-world: A conceptual rationale, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life, 2012. ROB LOWE: (As Chris Traeger) Dr. Harris, you are literally the meanest person I have ever met. Accuracy and availability may vary. And so for example, if the word chair is masculine in your language, why is that? In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. I had this cool experience when I was there. And it irritates people, but there's a different way of seeing literally. Well never sell your personal information. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. 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. If you liked . BORODITSKY: Thank you so much for having me. They are ways of seeing the world. 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. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. There was no way of transcribing an approximation of what people said and nobody would have thought of doing it. 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. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . I'm Shankar Vedantam. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Speaking foreign language). It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. VEDANTAM: How the languages we speak shape the way we think and why the words we use are always in flux. There are different ways to be a psychologist. Now I can stay oriented. Toward Understanding Understanding:The Importance of Feeling Understood in Relationships, by Harry Reis, Edward P. Lemay Jr, and Catrin Finkenauer, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2017. 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. 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. 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. But they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. So you may start with moving your southwest leg in, but then you have to move your northeast leg out. People who breathe too much put their bodies in a hypoxic state, with not enough oxygen to the brain How breath moves in the body: air comes in through the nose and mouth; the larynx (rigid tube to avoid closing) brings air from the nose and mouth to the lungs Lungs can expand and contract to bring in or expel air Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. And all of a sudden, I noticed that there was a new window that had popped up in my mind, and it was like a little bird's-eye view of the landscape that I was walking through, and I was a little red dot that was moving across the landscape. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, by Philip Tetlock, Psychology Review, 2002. And there are consequences for how people think about events, what they notice when they see accidents. All sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain are managed by SXM Media. Those sorts things tend to start with women. It has to do with the word momentarily. And we're all going to have feelings like that. VEDANTAM: Many of us have dictionaries at home or at work, John. I'm Shankar Vedantam. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. That kind of detail may not appear. So for example, English speakers, because they're very likely to say, he did it or someone did it, they are very good at remembering who did it, even if it's an accident. They're more likely to say, well, it's a formal property of the language. In this week's My Unsung Hero, Sarah Feldman thanks someone for their gift more than 20 years ago. It goes in this pile. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. ), Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy, 2004. 5.3 Misbehaving Hidden Brain NPR - HOURLY NEWS DONATE < Predictably And they suggest that differences across languages do, in fact, predict some of these measures of gender equality across countries. 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. Shankar Vedantam, host of the popular podcast "Hidden Brain" has been reporting on human behavior for decades. podcast pages. If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. And you can even teach people to have a little bit of fun with the artifice. He didn't like that people were shortening the words. All rights reserved. Hidden Brain on RadioPublic If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. So even if I'm speaking English, the distinctions that I've learned in speaking Russian, for example, are still active in my mind to some extent, but they're more active if I'm actually speaking Russian. 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: The NPR Archive : NPR - NPR.org That's what it's all about. But, you know, John, something gnaws at me every time I hear the word used wrong. I'm Shankar Vedantam. MCWHORTER: Thank you for having me, Shankar. Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? 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. So for example, if Sam grabbed a hammer and struck the flute in anger, that would be one description, like, Sam broke the flute. So LOL starts out as meaning hardy-har-har (ph), but then it becomes something more abstract. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. We're speaking today with cognitive science professor Lera Boroditsky about language. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where. 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. I just don't want to do it. If you still cant find the episode, try looking through our most recent shows on our homepage. MCWHORTER: Language is a parade, and nobody sits at a parade wishing that everybody would stand still. 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. All rights reserved. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. But it's exactly like - it was maybe about 20 years ago that somebody - a girlfriend I had told me that if I wore pants that had little vertical pleats up near the waist, then I was conveying that I was kind of past it. And this is NPR. You're also not going to do algebra. FDA blocks human trials for Neuralink brain implants. ADAM COLE, BYLINE: (Singing) You put your southwest leg in, and you shake it all about. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. They believe that their language reflects the true structure of the world. 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? VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? 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. These relationships can help you feel cared for and connected. Does a speaker of a language, like Spanish, who has to assign gender to so many things, end up seeing the world as more gendered? Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. There are signs it's getting even harder. The size of this effect really quite surprised me because I would have thought at the outset that, you know, artists are these iconoclasts. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: (Speaking Italian). It's as if you saw a person - I'm not going to say at 4 because then the person is growing up, and if I use that analogy then it seems like I'm saying that language grows up or it moves toward something or it develops. You're not going to do trigonometry. edit transcripts, Improve the presence of your podcasts, e.g., self-service, If you share your Listen Notes page and at-mention. We'll also look at how languages evolve, and why we're sometimes resistant to those changes. 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. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Of course, you also can't experience anything outside of time. I saw this bird's-eye view, and I was this little red dot. 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. So LOL was an internet abbreviation meaning laugh out loud or laughing out loud, but LOL in common usage today doesn't necessarily mean hysterical laughter. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often untranslatable. It's inherent. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. So that's a measurement difference of 100 percent of performance. I'm Shankar Vedantam, and you're listening to HIDDEN BRAIN. You know, endings are going to tend to drop off. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. And when I listen to people having their peeves, I don't think, stop it. I think language can certainly be a contributor into the complex system of our thinking about gender. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. BORODITSKY: Well, you would be at sea at first. 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? In many languages, nouns are gendered. 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. ), The Sourcebook of Listening Research: Methodology and Measures, 2018. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. 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. Hidden Brain - Google Podcasts 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. Our team includes Laura Kwerel, Adhiti Bandlamudi and our supervising producer Tara Boyle. 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. There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. 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. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. And to arrive in a new place where you can't tell a joke and can't express an idea - oh, it's just really painful because you feel like your whole self is hiding inside and no one can see it. What we think of today as a word undergoing some odd development or people using some new construction is exactly how Latin turned into French. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. VEDANTAM: John McWhorter, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." 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. And very competent adults of our culture can't do that. 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. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. And after listening to you, I realize I might have to finally give in. But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. But it turns out humans can stay oriented really, really well, provided that their language and culture requires them to keep track of this information. 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. We post open positions (including internships) on our jobs page. Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. Copyright 2018 NPR. And it's sad that we're not going to be able to make use of them and learn them and celebrate them. I've always found that a very grating way to ask for something at a store. 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. 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. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. Newsletter: Physicist Richard Feynman once said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." One way we fool ourselves is by imagining we know more than we do; we think we are experts. They can be small differences but important in other ways. 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. If you, grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your. VEDANTAM: My guest today is - well, why don't I let her introduce herself? Watch Your Mouth | Hidden Brain : NPR The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. And if they were facing east, they would make the cards come toward them, toward the body. Newer episodes are unlikely to have a transcript as it takes us a few weeks to process and edit each transcript. All episodes of Hidden Brain - Chartable So for example, you might not imagine the color shirt that he's wearing or the kinds of shoes that he's wearing. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. Whats going on here? Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. But actually, that's exactly how people in those communities come to stay oriented - is that they learn it, (laughter) right? So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. "Most of the laughter we produce is purely . 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 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. So we did an analysis of images in Artstor. Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. MCWHORTER: Exactly. So in English, I might say that Sam (ph) broke the flute. That hadn't started then. They shape our place in it. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. I just don't want to do it. They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. Lost In Translation- Hidden Brain Podcast Transcript .pdf Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. What Do You Do When Things Go Right? But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. You're not going to do any of the things that are seen as a foundation of our technological society. Writing has come along relatively recently. 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. Parents and peers influence our major life choices. As soon as you move the leg, it becomes a different leg. Hidden Brain - Transcripts Lera, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. 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. 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. BORODITSKY: Well, I think it's a terrible tragedy. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often, untranslatable. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done.