We convince a colleague to take a different tactic at work. 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. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. I know-uh (ph) is there, or something along the lines of babe-uh (ph). Copyright 2023 Steno. Stay with us. Please do not republish our logo, name or content digitally or distribute to more than 10 people without written permission. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. 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. VEDANTAM: The word chair is feminine in Italian. We love the idea of Hidden Brain helping to spark discussions in your community. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) If you're so upset about it, maybe you can think of a way to help her. 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. We also look at how. BORODITSKY: Actually, one of the first people to notice or suggest that this might be the case was a Russian linguist, Roman Jakobson. As you're going about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, by Karen Jehn et. 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. It should be thought of as fun. Hidden Brain. Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. And if you teach them that forks go with women, they start to think that forks are more feminine. And I would really guess that in a few decades men will be doing it, too. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." Trusted by 5,200 companies and developers. If you, grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. BORODITSKY: My family is Jewish, and we left as refugees. 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. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. 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 don't want to be like that. 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. VEDANTAM: If you have teenagers or work closely with young people, chances are you'll be mystified by their conversations or even annoyed. 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. 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. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. But I understand that in Spanish, this would come out quite differently. MCWHORTER: Exactly. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. 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. 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. VEDANTAM: Time is another concept that is also central to the way we see and describe the world. 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. 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. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. 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. And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. They often feel angry about it, and you think this anger is actually telling. 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. And so for example, if the word chair is masculine in your language, why is that? native tongue without even thinking about it. And as you point out, it's not just that people feel that a word is being misused. And there are all kinds of interesting, useful, eye-opening ideas that exist in all of the world's languages. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. It seems kind of elliptical, like, would it be possible that I obtained? Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. If you're just joining us, I'm talking to John McWhorter. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Shelly. And I did that. So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. But we have plenty of words like that in English where it doesn't bother us at all. You can't touch time. 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? 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 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. 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. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. 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 he suggested it might be the case that the arbitrarily assigned grammatical genders are actually changing the way people think about these days of the week and maybe all kinds of other things that are named by nouns. Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through. What a cynical thing to say, but that doesn't mean that it might not be true. In the final episode of our Relationships 2.0 series, psychologistHarry Reis says theres another ingredient to successful relationships thats every bit as important as love. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. And in fact, speakers of languages like this have been shown to orient extremely well - much better than we used to think humans could. And there are consequences for how people think about events, what they notice when they see accidents. Newsletter: Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. 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. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. So it's easy to think, oh, I could imagine someone without thinking explicitly about what they're wearing. There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. 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? 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? MCWHORTER: It's a matter of fashion, pure and simple. So earlier things are on the left. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? And then if you are going to be that elliptical, why use the casual word get? Each language comprises the ideas that have been worked out in a culture over thousands of generations, and that is an incredible amount of cultural heritage and complexity of thought that disappears whenever a language dies. 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. This week, a story about a con with a twist. 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. 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. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking foreign language). It's just how I feel. Now, in a lot of languages, you can't say that because unless you were crazy, and you went out looking to break your arm, and you succeeded - right? . Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. 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. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. And nobody wishes that we hadn't developed our modern languages today from the ancient versions. Learn more. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. 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. They know which way is which. John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. To request permission, please send an email to [emailprotected]. But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. 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. ROB LOWE: (As Chris Traeger) Dr. Harris, you are literally the meanest person I have ever met. Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. That is the most random thing. 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. It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. And so I was trying to keep track of which way is which. And we teach them, for example, to say that bridges and apples and all kinds of other things have the same prefix as women. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. If you're bilingual or multilingual, you may have noticed that different languages make you stretch in different ways. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where. And you say that dictionaries in some ways paint an unrealistic portrait of a language. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. And a girl goes in this pile. Something new will have started by then, just like if we listen to people in 1971, they sound odd in that they don't say like as much as we do. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. You also see huge differences in other domains like number. Growing up, I understood this word to mean for a very short time, as in John McWhorter was momentarily surprised. VEDANTAM: Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. 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. Now I can stay oriented. Copyright 2018 NPR. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. It goes in this pile. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. There are signs it's getting even harder. And I don't think any of us are thinking that it's a shame that we're not using the language of Beowulf. I just don't want to do it. It is the very fabric, the very core of your experience. Languages are not just tools to describe the world. You can run experiments in a lab or survey people on the street. 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? The size of this effect really quite surprised me because I would have thought at the outset that, you know, artists are these iconoclasts. So new words are as likely to evolve as old ones. And it's not just about how we think about time. He's also the author of the book, "Words On The Move: Why English Won't - And Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally).". And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. And it sounds a little bit abrupt and grabby like you're going to get something instead of being given. Imagine this. You know, there's no left leg or right leg. 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. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking foreign language). 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. 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. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. I'm Shankar Vedantam, and you're listening to HIDDEN BRAIN. 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. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. 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. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . 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. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. 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. I think that it's better to think of language as a parade that either you're watching, or frankly, that you're in, especially because the people are never going to stand still. This week, in the second installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Todd Kashdan looks at the relationship between distress and happiness, and ho, Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt. That's because change is hard. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. 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 that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. 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. We'll also look at how languages evolve, and why we're sometimes resistant to those changes. 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. How else would you do it? You're also not going to do algebra. It's inherent. 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. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. 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. And he started by asking Russian-speaking students to personify days of the week. So the question for us has been, how do we build these ideas? 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. BORODITSKY: One thing that we've noticed is this idea of time, of course, is very highly constructed by our minds and our brains.