We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. 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. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. Hidden Brain - KQED | News, Radio, Podcasts, TV 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. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Can I get some chicken? VEDANTAM: (Laughter) All right, I think it might be time for me to confess one of my pet peeves. Hidden Brain on Apple Podcasts Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. We post open positions (including internships) on our jobs page. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). But we have plenty of words like that in English where it doesn't bother us at all. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? Let's start with the word literally. And if the word bridge is masculine in your language, you're more likely to say that bridges are strong and long and towering - these kind of more stereotypically masculine words. 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. We don't want to be like that. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. You 2.0: How to Open Your Mind | Hidden Brain Media So these speakers have internalized this idea from their language, and they believe that it's right. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? It's not necessarily may I please have, but may I have, I'll have, but not can I get a. I find it just vulgar for reasons that as you can see I can't even do what I would call defending. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. But I understand that in Spanish, this would come out quite differently. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. They are ways of seeing the world. I had this cool experience when I was there. But, you know, John, something gnaws at me every time I hear the word used wrong. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. And after listening to you, I realize I might have to finally give in. But it's so hard to feel that partly because our brains are on writing, as I say in the book. It should be thought of as fun. Hidden Brain: You, But Better on Apple Podcasts 50 min You, But Better Hidden Brain Social Sciences Think about the resolutions you made this year: to quit smoking, eat better, or get more exercise. 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. But what if there's a whole category of people in your life whose impact is overlooked? But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. Which pile do you go in, right? Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at Hidden Brain telling the stories of . Podcasters use the RadioPublic listener relationship platform to build lasting connections with fans. Whats going on here? But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? So the question for us has been, how do we build these ideas? 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. Hidden Brain. Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. MCWHORTER: It's a matter of fashion, pure and simple. Hidden Brain - Transcripts Hidden Brain - Transcripts Subscribe 435 episodes Share Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Lera said there's still a lot of research to be done on this. I'm shankar Vedantam in the 2002 rom com. Our team includes Laura Kwerel, Adhiti Bandlamudi and our supervising producer Tara Boyle. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. MCWHORTER: Oh, yeah, I'm a human being. It can be almost counterintuitive to listen to how much giggling and laughing you do in ordinary - actually rather plain exchanges with people. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). And so even though I insist that there is no scientific basis for rejecting some new word or some new meaning or some new construction, I certainly have my visceral biases. Whereas speakers of a language like Spanish might not be quite as good at remembering who did it when it's an accident, but they're better at remembering that it was an accident. Many people have this intuition that, oh, I could never learn that; I could never survive in a community like this. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. FAQ | Hidden Brain Media But it's a lovely example of how language can guide you to discover something about the world that might take you longer to discover if you didn't have that information in language. So one possibility for bilinguals would be that they just have two different minds inside - right? And so I set myself the goal that I would learn English in a year, and I wouldn't speak Russian to anyone for that whole first year. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. 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. It's too high. VEDANTAM: So this begs the question, if you were to put languages on something of a spectrum, where you have, you know, languages like Spanish or Hindi where nouns are gendered and languages like English where many nouns are not gendered but pronouns are gendered, and on the other end of the spectrum, you have languages like Finnish or Persian where you can have a conversation about someone without actually mentioning their gender, it would seem surprising if this did not translate, at some level, into the way people thought about gender in their daily activities, in terms of thinking about maybe even who can do what in the workplace. What Makes Lawyers Happy? So for example, grammatical gender - because grammatical gender applies to all nouns in your language, that means that language is shaping the way you think about everything that can be named by a noun. BORODITSKY: Well, there may not be a word for left to refer to a left leg. I'm Shankar Vedantam. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Speaking Russian). 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 And they suggest that differences across languages do, in fact, predict some of these measures of gender equality across countries. 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? And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. Yes! The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. We'll also look at how languages evolve, and why we're sometimes resistant to those changes. Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. Decoding Emotions - Transcripts I've always found that a very grating way to ask for something at a store. : 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. 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? And he started by asking Russian-speaking students to personify days of the week. BORODITSKY: Yeah. 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. And so, for example, can I get a hamburger? You would never know, for example, that - give you an example I've actually been thinking about. Newsletter: Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. ), The Sourcebook of Listening Research: Methodology and Measures, 2018. Lera, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. June 20, 2020 This week on Hidden Brain, research about prejudices so deeply buried, we often doubt their existence. out. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. The fun example I give my students is imagine playing the hokey pokey in a language like this. 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. 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. ADAM COLE, BYLINE: (Singing) You put your southwest leg in, and you shake it all about. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. They're supposed to be painting something very personal. How do you balance the imperative of teaching correct usage? The size of this effect really quite surprised me because I would have thought at the outset that, you know, artists are these iconoclasts. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Right. This is Hidden Brain. BORODITSKY: The way to say my name properly in Russian is (speaking foreign language), so I don't make people say that. They know which way is which. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. 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. The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. How does that sound now? 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. In the final episode of our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. 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 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. Writing has come along relatively recently. Of course, if you can't keep track of exactly seven, you can't count. That kind of detail may not appear. MCWHORTER: Yeah. 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. VEDANTAM: Many of us have dictionaries at home or at work, John. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. 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. Hidden Brain | Hidden Brain Media Well never sell your personal information. 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 dead languages never change, and some of us might prefer those. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking foreign language). Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kennon M. Sheldon, George Washington Law Review, 2015. If you missed it, Think back to the last time someone convinced you to do something you didn't want to do, or to spend money you didn't want to spend. You can run experiments in a lab or survey people on the street. Hidden Brain: The Easiest Person to Fool on Apple Podcasts * Data source: directly measured on Listen Notes. VEDANTAM: So I want to talk about a debate that's raged in your field for many years. 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. And then 10 years later when they're 49, you say, well, that picture of you at 39 is what you really are and whatever's happened to you since then is some sort of disaster or something that shouldn't have happened. How to Really Know Another Person - Transcripts 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? And nobody wishes that we hadn't developed our modern languages today from the ancient versions. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. So in English, I might say that Sam (ph) broke the flute. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy. I just don't want to do it. I think language can certainly be a contributor into the complex system of our thinking about gender. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt. 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. In The Air We Breathe : NPR So I think it's something that is quite easy for humans to learn if you just have a reason to want to do it. It's testament to the incredible ingenuity and complexity of the human mind that all of these different perspectives on the world have been invented. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. We recommend movies or books to a friend. 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. But time doesn't have to flow with respect to the body. MCWHORTER: Yes, that's exactly true. He's a defender of language on the move, but I wanted to know if there were things that irritated even him. And I thought, wow, first of all, it would be almost impossible to have a conversation like that in English where you hadn't already revealed the gender of the person because you have to use he or she. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? Copyright 2023 Steno. VEDANTAM: Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. And a girl goes in this pile. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . 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? And I don't think any of us are thinking that it's a shame that we're not using the language of Beowulf. In this favorite episode from 2021, Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow explains why purpose isnt something to be found its something we can develop from within. So new words are as likely to evolve as old ones. We lobby a neighbor to vote for our favored political candidate. I'm Shankar Vedanta. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. VEDANTAM: Our conversation made me wonder about what this means on a larger scale. VEDANTAM: Would it be possible to use what we have learned about how words and languages evolve to potentially write what a dictionary might look like in 50 years or a hundred years? Transcript 585: In Defense of Ignorance Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. 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. That's how much cultural heritage is lost. 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. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. It's just how I feel. (LAUGHTER) VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. Imagine this. - you would have to say something like, my arm got broken, or it so happened to me that my arm is broken. Bu 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. But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. But things can be important not just because they're big. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. 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. Could this affect the way, you know, sexism, conscious or unconscious, operates in our world? In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. and pick the featured episodes for your show. 585: In Defense of Ignorance - This American Life Parents and peers influence our major life choices. Because were a small team, we dont have a publicly-available list of every piece of music that we use. al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. It is the very fabric, the very core of your experience. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? But it is a completely crucial part of the human experience. Each generation hears things and interprets things slightly differently from the previous one. 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. BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. This week, a story about a con with a twist. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness can seem more elusive the harder we chase it, and what we can do instead to build a lasting sense of contentment. We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. We'll be back momentarily. If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. VEDANTAM: Lera now tries to understand languages spoken all over the world. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, by Shannon M. Smith & Harry Reis, Personal Relationships, 2012. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. In The Air We Breathe . Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. 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. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Shelly. He. So - but if I understand correctly, I would be completely at sea if I visited this aboriginal community in Australia because I have often absolutely no idea where I am or where I'm going. Which I think is probably important with the reality that this edifice that you're teaching is constantly crumbling. VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. They believe that their language reflects the true structure of the world. VEDANTAM: Languages seem to have different ways of communicating agency. VEDANTAM: Time is another concept that is also central to the way we see and describe the world. Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-being, Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-being: The Self-Concordance Model, Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. 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 seems kind of elliptical, like, would it be possible that I obtained? So to give you a very quick wrap-up is that some effects are big, but even when effects aren't big, they can be interesting or important for other reasons - either because they are very broad or because they apply to things that we think are really important in our culture. You may link to our content and copy and paste episode descriptions and Additional Resources into your invitations. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. For example, he might take a bunch of pictures of boys and girls and sort them and say, OK, this is a boy. Young people have always used language in new and different ways, and it's pretty much always driven older people crazy. Transcript Speaker 1 00:00:00 this is hidden brain. All rights reserved. MCWHORTER: Yeah, I really do. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. How come you aren't exactly the way you were 10 years ago? If you are a podcaster, the best way to manage your podcasts on Listen Notes is by claiming your Listen Notes Hidden Brain (podcast) - Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam - Listen Notes 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. Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. LERA BORODITSKY: The categorization that language provides to you becomes real - becomes psychologically real.
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