VEDANTAM: The word chair is feminine in Italian. And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. And it's not just about how we think about time. A brief history of relationship research in social psychology, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of the History of Social Psychology, 2011. This takes kids a little while to figure out, and he had all kinds of clever ways to ask these questions. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. 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. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. al, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2004. You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. 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. But things can be important not just because they're big. But if you prefer life - the unpredictability of life - then living language in many ways are much more fun. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. BORODITSKY: So quite literally, to get past hello, you have to know which way you're heading. VEDANTAM: So all this raises a really interesting question. It goes in this pile. 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. And there are all kinds of interesting, useful, eye-opening ideas that exist in all of the world's languages. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts. 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. How does that sound now? Just saying hello was difficult. BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. And if people heard the sounds a little differently and produced them a little differently, if there were new meanings of words - very quickly whatever the original meaning was wouldn't be remembered. Whats going on here? Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy. You can also connect directly with our sponsorship representative by emailing [emailprotected]. Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. We recommend movies or books to a friend. That's what it's all about. And they suggest that differences across languages do, in fact, predict some of these measures of gender equality across countries. The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, by Karen Jehn et. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. So it's easy to think, oh, I could imagine someone without thinking explicitly about what they're wearing. And then when I turned, this little window stayed locked on the landscape, but it turned in my mind's eye. There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. They're supposed to be painting something very personal. And you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it out. And you've conducted experiments that explore how different conceptions of time in different languages shape the way we think about the world and shape the way we think about stories. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. to describe the world. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. 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. VEDANTAM: (Laughter) All right, I think it might be time for me to confess one of my pet peeves. HIDDEN BRAIN < Lost in Translation: January 29, 20189:00 PM ET VEDANTAM: Well, that's kind of you, Lera. They believe that their language reflects the true structure of the world. 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. And it's sad that we're not going to be able to make use of them and learn them and celebrate them. BORODITSKY: Yeah. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. In The Air We Breathe . Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. 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? 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. BORODITSKY: Well, there may not be a word for left to refer to a left leg. Imagine this. 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 This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Which pile do you go in, right? 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. So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? If you're bilingual or multilingual, you may have noticed that different languages make you stretch in different ways. This is a database with millions of art images. 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? Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. When the con was exposed, its victims defended the con artists. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. 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). And so for example, if the word chair is masculine in your language, why is that? He says there are things we can do to make sure our choices align with our deepest values. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, What Do You Do When Things Go Right? 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. And so, for example, can I get a hamburger? Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. Could this affect the way, you know, sexism, conscious or unconscious, operates in our world? Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? Transcript Speaker 1 00:00:00 this is hidden brain. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? It's never going to. Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. Transcript 585: In Defense of Ignorance Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. You're not going to do any of the things that are seen as a foundation of our technological society. 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. There are different ways to be a psychologist. I saw this bird's-eye view, and I was this little red dot. John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. So in English, I might say that Sam (ph) broke the flute. 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? L. Gable, et. 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. 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. And as soon as I saw that happen, I thought, oh, this makes it so much easier. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. When we come back, I'm going to ask you about why languages change and whether there are hidden rules that shape why some words are more likely to evolve than others. But can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. They shape our place in it. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? So you may start with moving your southwest leg in, but then you have to move your northeast leg out. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. He's a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and the author of the book "Words On The Move: Why English Won't - And Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally).". How do you balance the imperative of teaching correct usage? Hidden Brain. What a cynical thing to say, but that doesn't mean that it might not be true. 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. MCWHORTER: Oh, yeah, I'm a human being. 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. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. And if you can enjoy it as a parade instead of wondering why people keep walking instead of just sitting on chairs and blowing on their tubas and not moving, then you have more fun. And it really is an illusion that what language is, is something that sits still. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. 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. They can be small differences but important in other ways. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe watching Netflix or something. And to our surprise, 78 percent of the time, we could predict the gender of the personification based on the grammatical gender of the noun in the artist's native language. 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. I'm Shankar Vedantam, and you're listening to HIDDEN BRAIN. 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. 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. And so I was trying to keep track of which way is which. So that, again, is a huge difference. In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. So that's a measurement difference of 100 percent of performance. In this week's My Unsung Hero, Sarah Feldman thanks someone for their gift more than 20 years ago. And a girl goes in this pile. So that's an example of how languages and cultures construct how we use space to organize time, to organize this very abstract thing that's otherwise kind of hard to get our hands on and think about. And we're all going to have feelings like that. Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. The Effective Negotiator Part 1: The Behavior of Successful Negotiators and The Effective Negotiator Part 2: Planning for Negotiations, by Neil Rackham and John Carlisle, Journal of European Industrial Training, 1978. But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. VEDANTAM: Many of us have dictionaries at home or at work, John. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? BORODITSKY: Well, you would be at sea at first. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. So the question for us has been, how do we build these ideas? Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. And some people would say it's a lot more because it's, you know, irrecoverable and not reduplicated elsewhere. Many people have this intuition that, oh, I could never learn that; I could never survive in a community like this. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. This week on Hidden Brain, we revisit a favorite episode exploring what this culture means Jesse always wanted to fall in love. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). 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. Young people have always used language in new and different ways, and it's pretty much always driven older people crazy. out. Learn more. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. She shows how our conversational styles can cause We all know casual sex isn't about love. 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. 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. Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. In many languages, nouns are gendered. Additional Resources Book: The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. 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. If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? But if you seed a watermelon, nobody assumes that you're taking seeds and putting them in the watermelon, you're taking them out. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. That's because change is hard. VEDANTAM: If you have teenagers or work closely with young people, chances are you'll be mystified by their conversations or even annoyed. We call this language Gumbuzi. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is NPR. Let's start with the word literally. When she was 12, her family came to the United States from the Soviet Union. But it's so hard to feel that partly because our brains are on writing, as I say in the book. 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? 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. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. And if they were facing east, they would make the cards come toward them, toward the body. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. So the way you say hi in Kuuk Thaayorre is to say, which way are you heading? VEDANTAM: How the languages we speak shape the way we think and why the words we use are always in flux. We can't help, as literate people, thinking that the real language is something that sits still with letters written all nice and pretty on a page that can exist for hundreds of years, but that's not what language has ever been. Hidden Brain. To request permission, please send an email to [emailprotected]. Our team includes Laura Kwerel, Adhiti Bandlamudi and our supervising producer Tara Boyle. Are the spoken origins of language one reason that words so often seem to be on the move? Whats going on here? It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. Those sorts things tend to start with women. 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. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter. And so somebody will say, well, who was it who you thought was going to give you this present? BORODITSKY: Yeah. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Yes! The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. This week, we launch the first of a two-part mini-series on the scie, If you think about the people in your life, it's likely that they share a lot in common with you. and pick the featured episodes for your show. As you're going about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. 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. Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. 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. We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. 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. But somehow they've managed, not just by randomly bumping into each other. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. MCWHORTER: You could have fun doing such a thing. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? 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. Which I think is probably important with the reality that this edifice that you're teaching is constantly crumbling. 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. That's the way words are, too. So for example, if Sam grabbed a hammer and struck the flute in anger, that would be one description, like, Sam broke the flute. My big fat greek wedding, an american woman of greek ancestry falls in love with a very vanilla, american man. He's also the author of the book, "Words On The Move: Why English Won't - And Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally).".