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. Each generation hears things and interprets things slightly differently from the previous one. But if you prefer life - the unpredictability of life - then living language in many ways are much more fun. But time doesn't have to flow with respect to the body. 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. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, by Karen Jehn et. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. But we have plenty of words like that in English where it doesn't bother us at all. BORODITSKY: Well, I think it's a terrible tragedy. 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. Women under about 30 in the United States, when they're excited or they're trying to underline a point, putting uh at the end of things. MCWHORTER: Thank you for having me, Shankar. 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. 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. There was no way of transcribing an approximation of what people said and nobody would have thought of doing it. There's not a bigger difference you could find than 100 percent of the measurement space. But also, I started wondering, is it possible that my friend here was imagining a person without a gender for this whole time that we've been talking about them, right? But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? 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. (Speaking Japanese). 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. (Speaking Japanese). You can't touch time. But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. MCWHORTER: Oh, yeah, I'm a human being. 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. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. It's never going to. VEDANTAM: Time is another concept that is also central to the way we see and describe the world. VEDANTAM: Well, that's kind of you, Lera. edit transcripts, Improve the presence of your podcasts, e.g., self-service, If you share your Listen Notes page and at-mention. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. Just saying hello was difficult. And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. And we looked at every personification and allegory in Artstor and asked, does the language that you speak matter for how you paint death, depending on whether the word death is masculine or feminine in your language? 00:51:58 - We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. If you're like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. 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. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. It seems kind of elliptical, like, would it be possible that I obtained? It's just how I feel. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter. Podcasters use the RadioPublic listener relationship platform to build lasting connections with fans. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? Language as it evolved was just talking to an extent that can be very hard for we literate people to imagine. Flight attendant Steven Slater slides from a plane after quitting. You're also not going to do algebra. I had this cool experience when I was there. Interpersonal Chemistry: What Is It, How Does It Emerge, and How Does it Operate? Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. 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. So earlier things are on the left. And they said, well, of course. And after listening to you, I realize I might have to finally give in. We love the idea of Hidden Brain helping to spark discussions in your community. VEDANTAM: I asked Lera how describing the word chair or the word bridge as masculine or feminine changes the way that speakers of different languages think about those concepts. 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. Read the episode transcript. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. 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. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. You know, there's no left leg or right leg. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. But actually, that's exactly how people in those communities come to stay oriented - is that they learn it, (laughter) right? Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. VEDANTAM: For more HIDDEN BRAIN, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. So it's mendokusai. 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. This takes kids a little while to figure out, and he had all kinds of clever ways to ask these questions. If you're bilingual or multilingual, you may have noticed that different languages make you stretch in different ways. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Whats going on here? Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. 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. Welcome to HIDDEN BRAIN. For example, he might take a bunch of pictures of boys and girls and sort them and say, OK, this is a boy. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. If you're just joining us, I'm talking to John McWhorter. You also see huge differences in other domains like number. And you say that dictionaries in some ways paint an unrealistic portrait of a language. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. So the word for the is different for women than for men, and it's also different for forks versus spoons and things like that. VEDANTAM: One of the points you make in the book of course is that the evolution of words and their meanings is what gives us this flowering of hundreds or thousands of languages. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. So some languages don't have number words. al (Eds. So I think that nobody would say that they don't think language should change. It's how we think about anything that's abstract, that's beyond our physical senses. So in English, I might say that Sam (ph) broke the flute. And if that is true, then the educated person can look down on people who say Billy and me went to the store or who are using literally, quote, unquote, "wrong" and condemn them in the kinds of terms that once were ordinary for condemning black people or women or what have you. 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. And we're all going to have feelings like that. Bu That's because change is hard. Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. 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. VEDANTAM: I'm Shankar Vedantam. Toula and Ian's different backgrounds become apparent on one of their very first dates. There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. And he started by asking Russian-speaking students to personify days of the week. They shape our place in it. 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. And dead languages never change, and some of us might prefer those. So LOL starts out as meaning hardy-har-har (ph), but then it becomes something more abstract. VEDANTAM: If languages are shaped by the way people see the world, but they also shape how people see the world, what does this mean for people who are bilingual? John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. So for example, if Sam grabbed a hammer and struck the flute in anger, that would be one description, like, Sam broke the flute. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. BORODITSKY: And when they were trying to act like Wednesday, they would act like a woman BORODITSKY: Which accords with grammatical gender in Russian. For more of our Relationships 2.0 series, check out one of our most popular episodes ever about why marriages are so hard. 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. 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. Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. And then when I turned, this little window stayed locked on the landscape, but it turned in my mind's eye. podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9rd1djMGxoZg==, open.spotify.com/show/20Gf4IAauFrfj7RBkjcWxh. How so? Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. 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 that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. 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. 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. 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. Of course, if you can't keep track of exactly seven, you can't count. 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. BORODITSKY: Yeah. Imagine this. 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. VEDANTAM: So all this raises a really interesting question. 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 does a person who says that really deserve the kind of sneering condemnation that you often see? If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. 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. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. 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. We post open positions (including internships) on our jobs page. Lera, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. It's not something that you typically go out trying to do intentionally. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Parents and peers influence our major life choices. We don't want to be like that. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. 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 In The Air We Breathe . This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? And then question 21 was, is this person a man or a woman? It goes in this pile. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. For example, if you take seeds and put them in the ground, that's one thing. And, I mean, just in terms of even sounds changing and the way that you put words together changing bit by bit, and there's never been a language that didn't do that. Writing has come along relatively recently. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. 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. (LAUGHTER) VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. 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. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. We lobby a neighbor to vote for our favored political candidate. 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. Newsletter: Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. We recommend movies or books to a friend. JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt. And I did that. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Speaking German). What do you do for christmas with your family? 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. BORODITSKY: Well, there may not be a word for left to refer to a left leg. Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. So these speakers have internalized this idea from their language, and they believe that it's right. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore how unconscious bias can infect a culture and how a police shooting may say as much about a community as it does about individuals. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. They often feel angry about it, and you think this anger is actually telling. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Shelly. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . podcast pages. They're more likely to see through this little game that language has played on them. So you can think about an un-gendered person in the same way that I might think about a person without a specific age or specific height or specific color shirt. 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. 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. You can't smell or taste time. Additional Resources Book: This is Hidden Brain. . But can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? All sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain are managed by SXM Media. : 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. Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. to describe the world. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. You can run experiments in a lab or survey people on the street. 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. 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? ROB LOWE: (As Chris Traeger) Dr. Harris, you are literally the meanest person I have ever met. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. I just don't want to do it. 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. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. 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. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. 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. 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. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. And then he would take a Polaroid of the kid and say, well, this is you. Rightly Crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating Goal Self-Concordance Prior to Selection Helps People Choose More Intrinsic Goals, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Mike Prentice, and Evgeny Osin, Journal of Research in Personality, 2019. And it sounds a little bit abrupt and grabby like you're going to get something instead of being given. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. Lera said there's still a lot of research to be done on this. Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. What a cynical thing to say, but that doesn't mean that it might not be true. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. In the final episode of our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. I'm shankar Vedantam in the 2002 rom com. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts. Why researchers should think real-world: A conceptual rationale, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life, 2012. FEB 27, 2023; Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button . VEDANTAM: If you're bilingual or you're learning a new language, you get what Jennifer, experienced - the joy of discovering a phrase that helps you perfectly encapsulate a. feeling or an experience. MCWHORTER: Yeah. 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. Hidden Brain. 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. See you next week. 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. I'm Shankar Vedantam. So act like Monday. 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. There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. We'll also look at how languages evolve, and why we're sometimes resistant to those changes. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. And why do some social movements take off and spread, while others fizzle? 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. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. They know which way is which. And it really is an illusion that what language is, is something that sits still. In a lot of languages, there isn't. MCWHORTER: Language is a parade, and nobody sits at a parade wishing that everybody would stand still. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. I saw this bird's-eye view, and I was this little red dot. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe watching Netflix or something. In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. 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. 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 MCWHORTER: No, because LOL was an expression; it was a piece of language, and so you knew that its meaning was going to change. BORODITSKY: Yeah. Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, by Shannon M. Smith & Harry Reis, Personal Relationships, 2012. They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. This is a database with millions of art images. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.