And so what that means is if someone was sitting facing south, they would lay out the story from left to right. 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. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. VEDANTAM: The word chair is feminine in Italian. It can be almost counterintuitive to listen to how much giggling and laughing you do in ordinary - actually rather plain exchanges with people. FEB 27, 2023; Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button . They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. This is Hidden Brain. This is NPR. This week, in the final . Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. But might we allow that there's probably a part of all human beings that wants to look down on somebody else. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Those sorts things tend to start with women. The only question was in which way. A brief history of relationship research in social psychology, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of the History of Social Psychology, 2011. Parents and peers influence our major life choices. 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. Welcome to HIDDEN BRAIN. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. Watch Your Mouth | Hidden Brain : NPR They shape our place in it. Copyright 2018 NPR. Imagine how we would sound to them if they could hear us. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. You can also connect directly with our sponsorship representative by emailing [emailprotected]. But what if it's not even about lust? We recommend movies or books to a friend. And he started by asking Russian-speaking students to personify days of the week. If you're bilingual or multilingual, you may have noticed that different languages make you stretch in different ways. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe watching Netflix or something. "Most of the laughter we produce is purely . Which pile do you go in, right? GEACONE-CRUZ: It's this phrase that describes something between I can't be bothered or I don't want to do it or I recognize the incredible effort that goes into something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. So when the perfect woman started writing him letters, it seemed too good to be true. VEDANTAM: Around the world, we often hear that many languages are dying, and there are a few megalanguages that are growing and expanding in all kinds of ways. So the question for us has been, how do we build these ideas? Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. What Makes Lawyers Happy? You know, lots of people blow off steam about something they think is wrong, but very few people are willing to get involved and do something about it. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. BORODITSKY: My family is Jewish, and we left as refugees. 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? BORODITSKY: One thing that we've noticed is this idea of time, of course, is very highly constructed by our minds and our brains. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. 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 can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? But if I give that same story to a Hebrew or an Arabic speaker, they would organize it from right to left. So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. If a transcript is available, you'll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. 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. 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. There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. Refusing to Apologize can have Psychological Benefits, by Tyler Okimoto, Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick, European Journal of Social Psychology, 2013. If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter. Because were a small team, we dont have a publicly-available list of every piece of music that we use. Hidden Brain on RadioPublic This week on Hidden Brain, psychologist Adam Grant describes the magic th 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? You know, it's Lady Liberty and Lady Justice. You may link to our content and copy and paste episode descriptions and Additional Resources into your invitations. And then question 21 was, is this person a man or a woman? If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. Hidden Brain: The Easiest Person to Fool on Apple Podcasts UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). We use a lot of music on the show! Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. And I was telling this person about someone I knew back in America. It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. L. Gable, et. BORODITSKY: Well, there may not be a word for left to refer to a left leg. I think it's a really fascinating question for future research. And there are consequences for how people think about events, what they notice when they see accidents. VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. Whats going on here? I saw this bird's-eye view, and I was this little red dot. Many people have this intuition that, oh, I could never learn that; I could never survive in a community like this. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. MCWHORTER: No, because LOL was an expression; it was a piece of language, and so you knew that its meaning was going to change. And as odd as that sounds, I can guarantee you if you watch any TV show with women under a certain age or if you just go out on an American street and listen, you'll find that that's a new kind of exclamatory particle. And so for example, if the word chair is masculine in your language, why is that? 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).". All of these are very subjective things. So act like Monday. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. And they suggest that differences across languages do, in fact, predict some of these measures of gender equality across countries. MCWHORTER: Exactly. We lobby a neighbor to vote for our favored political candidate. Imagine this. to describe the world. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. 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. 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. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. 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. 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. But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. BORODITSKY: Well, you would be at sea at first. He didn't like that people were shortening the words. 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). 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. Only a couple hundred languages - or if you want to be conservative about it, a hundred languages - are written in any real way and then there are 6,800 others. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy. So that, again, is a huge difference. 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. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Speaking Russian). UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). Transcript - How language shapes the way we think by Lera Boroditsky.docx, The Singapore Quality Award requires organisations to show outstanding results, The following lots of Commodity Z were available for sale during the year, b The authors identify 5 types of misinformation in the abstract but discuss 7, 17 Chow N Asian value and aged care Geriatr Gerontol Int 20044521 5 18 Chow NWS, Writing Results and Discussion Example.docx, A 6 month old infant weighing 15 lb is admitted with a diagnosis of dehydration, ng_Question_-_Assessment_1_-_Proposing_Evidence-Based_Change.doc, The Social Security checks the Government sends to grandmothers are considered A, 03 If a covered member participates on the clients attest engagement or is an, AURETR143 Student Assessment - Theory v1.1.docx. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. And it ended up becoming less a direct reflection of hearty laughter than an indication of the kind of almost subconscious laughter that we do in any kind of conversation that's meant as friendly. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. Interpersonal Chemistry: What Is It, How Does It Emerge, and How Does it Operate? Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. They're more likely to say, well, it's a formal property of the language. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. 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. Because it was. Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, by Philip Tetlock, Psychology Review, 2002. 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. It seems kind of elliptical, like, would it be possible that I obtained? The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. 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. The best Podcast API to search all podcasts and episodes. So maybe they're saying bridges are beautiful and elegant, not because they're grammatically feminine in the language, but because the bridges they have are, in fact, more beautiful and elegant. You would give a different description to mark that it was not intentional. 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. out. But what most people mean is that there'll be slang, that there'll be new words for new things and that some of those words will probably come from other languages. This week on Hidden Brain, we revisit a favorite episode exploring what this culture means Jesse always wanted to fall in love. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it. So earlier things are on the left. BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. 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. MCWHORTER: Those are called contronyms, and literally has become a new contronym. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. How to Foster Perceived Partner Responsiveness: High-Quality LIstening is Key, by Guy Itzchakov, Harry Reis, and Netta Weinstein, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2021. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. He. 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. If you can speak more than one language, does this mean that you're also simultaneously and constantly shifting in your mind between different worldviews? But actually, it's something that's not so hard to learn. Languages are not just tools to describe the world. You're not going to do trigonometry. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. LERA BORODITSKY: The categorization that language provides to you becomes real - becomes psychologically real. Of course, if you can't keep track of exactly seven, you can't count. And you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it out. What a cynical thing to say, but that doesn't mean that it might not be true. Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. And some people would say it's a lot more because it's, you know, irrecoverable and not reduplicated elsewhere. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. 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? Newer episodes are unlikely to have a transcript as it takes us a few weeks to process and edit each transcript. 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. 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. He says that buying into false beliefs, in other words, deluding ourselves can . He says there are things we can do to make sure our choices align with our deepest values. Stay with us. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. That is the direction of writing in Hebrew and Arabic, going from right to left. Who Do You Want To Be? - Hidden Brain (pdcast) | Listen Notes 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. There's a lowlier part of our nature that grammar allows us to vent in the absence of other ways to do it that have not been available for some decades for a lot of us. Maybe it's, even less than 100 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, and it's just too much of, an effort, and you can't be bothered to do it, even though it's such a small thing. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. Decoding Emotions - Transcripts I think language can certainly be a contributor into the complex system of our thinking about gender. 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. This week, a story about a con with a twist. Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. And that is an example of a simple feature of language - number words - acting as a transformative stepping stone to a whole domain of knowledge. You 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. What do you do for christmas with your family? 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. How to Really Know Another Person - Transcripts Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Well never sell your personal information. In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. Laughter: The Best Medicine | Hidden Brain : NPR Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Who Do You Want To Be? | Hidden Brain Media They're supposed to be painting something very personal. 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. MCWHORTER: Yes, Shankar, that's exactly it. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. That was somehow a dad's fashion, and that I should start wearing flat-fronted pants. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. 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. So for example, if Sam grabbed a hammer and struck the flute in anger, that would be one description, like, Sam broke the flute. Hidden Brain - You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose - Google Podcasts And I would really guess that in a few decades men will be doing it, too. When she was 12, her family came to the United States from the Soviet Union. 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. Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. Podcasters use the RadioPublic listener relationship platform to build lasting connections with fans. 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. She shows how our conversational styles can cause We all know casual sex isn't about love. I said, you know, this weird thing happened. 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? Hidden Brain: You, But Better on Apple Podcasts 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. Each generation hears things and interprets things slightly differently from the previous one. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. 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. Hidden Brain: You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose on Apple Podcasts But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? I'm Shankar Vedantam, and you're listening to HIDDEN BRAIN. I had this cool experience when I was there. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . So if you took a bunch of those tendencies, you could make up, say, the English of 50 years from now, but some of the things would just be complete chance. 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. - so one skull but two different minds, and you shift from one to the other. Languages are not just tools. That is exactly why you should say fewer books instead of less books in some situations and, yes, Billy and I went to the store rather than the perfectly natural Billy and me went to the store.