Parents and peers influence our major life choices, but they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. 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. But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. We love the idea of Hidden Brain helping to spark discussions in your community. We'll be back momentarily. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). Going the Distance on the Pacific Crest Trail: The Vital Role of Identified Motivation, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Motivation Science, 2020. Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. It's part of a general running indication that everything's OK between you and the other person, just like one's expected to smile a little bit in most interactions. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often untranslatable. You can't touch time. 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. Whats going on here? In this favorite episode from 2021, Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow explains why purpose isnt something to be found its somethi, It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, by Karen Jehn et. And so, for example, can I get a hamburger? 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. Dictionaries are wonderful things, but they create an illusion that there's such thing as a language that stands still, when really it's the nature of human language to change. 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. 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. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. Those sorts things tend to start with women. But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. - so one skull but two different minds, and you shift from one to the other. VEDANTAM: Time is another concept that is also central to the way we see and describe the world. Please note that your continued use of the RadioPublic services following the posting of such changes will be deemed an acceptance of this update. Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. Official Website Airs on: SUN 7pm-8pm 55:27 Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Feb 27 Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. And then when I turned, this little window stayed locked on the landscape, but it turned in my mind's eye. For more on decision-making, check out our episode on how to make wiser choices. So new words are as likely to evolve as old ones. And it's not just about how we think about time. We use a lot of music on the show! But we have plenty of words like that in English where it doesn't bother us at all. 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. Hidden Brain: You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose on Apple Podcasts 51 min You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose Hidden Brain Social Sciences Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. There are signs it's getting even harder. 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? In this month's Radio Replay, we ask whether the structure of the languages we speak can change the way we see the world. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. Newer episodes are unlikely to have a transcript as it takes us a few weeks to process and edit each transcript. 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. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? 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. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. It takes, 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. Or feel like you and your spouse sometimes speak different languages? But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. For example, when we started talking about navigation, that's an example where a 5-year-old in a culture that uses words like north, south, east and west can point southeast without hesitation. BORODITSKY: One thing that we've noticed is this idea of time, of course, is very highly constructed by our minds and our brains. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. 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. And we're all going to have feelings like that. FEB 27, 2023; Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button . No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. It has to do with the word momentarily. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. 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. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. So that, again, is a huge difference. 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. Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. 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? Because it was. But somehow they've managed, not just by randomly bumping into each other. 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. Newsletter: How do you balance the imperative of teaching correct usage? And very competent adults of our culture can't do that. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. 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? So that's a measurement difference of 100 percent of performance. Lera, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. Imagine this. Listen on the Reuters app. But I find that people now usually use the word to mean very soon, as in we're going to board the plane momentarily. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. MCWHORTER: Thank you for having me, Shankar. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. This week on Hidden Brain, psychologist Adam Grant describes the magic th Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. So act like Monday. When she was 12, her family came to the United States from the Soviet Union. So we did an analysis of images in Artstor. 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. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. BORODITSKY: Yeah. Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date. 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. So these speakers have internalized this idea from their language, and they believe that it's right. He says there are things we can do to make sure our choices align with our deepest values. Perceived Partner Responsiveness Minimizes Defensive Reactions to Failure, by Peter A. Caprariello and Harry T. Reis, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2011. So you can't see time. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? And if you teach them that forks go with women, they start to think that forks are more feminine. Growing up, I understood this word to mean for a very short time, as in John McWhorter was momentarily surprised. 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. BORODITSKY: Actually, one of the first people to notice or suggest that this might be the case was a Russian linguist, Roman Jakobson. When the con was exposed, its victims defended the con artists. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Speaking foreign language). This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." Just go to the magnifying glass in the top right corner, click on it, and use the search function at the top of the page. 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. So you may start with moving your southwest leg in, but then you have to move your northeast leg out. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. 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. The fun example I give my students is imagine playing the hokey pokey in a language like this. BORODITSKY: That's a wonderful question. * Data source: directly measured on Listen Notes. Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. If you're bilingual or multilingual, you may have noticed that different languages make you stretch in different ways. Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. 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. Thank you! But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. 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. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. See you next week. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. You can support Hidden Brain indirectly by giving to your local NPR station, or you can provide direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). But can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? But if you seed a watermelon, nobody assumes that you're taking seeds and putting them in the watermelon, you're taking them out. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). BORODITSKY: And Russian is a language that has grammatical gender, and different days of the week have different genders for some reason. Women under about 30 in the United States, when they're excited or they're trying to underline a point, putting uh at the end of things. 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. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. But time doesn't have to flow with respect to the body. 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. Toula and Ian's different backgrounds become apparent on one of their very first dates. It's never happened. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often, untranslatable. GEACONE-CRUZ: It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged, encapsulated way, and you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it. 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. You know, endings are going to tend to drop off. Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. And I was telling this person about someone I knew back in America. You can also connect directly with our sponsorship representative by emailing [emailprotected]. And dead languages never change, and some of us might prefer those. You-uh (ph). UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Speaking Russian). UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking foreign language). al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. So some languages don't have number words. Read the episode transcript. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. They can be small differences but important in other ways. Trusted by 5,200 companies and developers. Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. It is the very fabric, the very core of your experience. We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. Maybe it's even less than a hundred meters away, but you just can't bring yourself to even throw your coat on over your pajamas and put your boots on and go outside and walk those hundred meters because somehow it would break the coziness. That's how much cultural heritage is lost. Whats going on here? VEDANTAM: Many of us have dictionaries at home or at work, John. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? And what he noticed was that when people were trying to act like Monday, they would act like a man. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. If you liked . So bilinguals are kind of this in-between case where they can't quite turn off their other languages, but they become more prominent, more salient when you are actually speaking the language or surrounded by the language. You also see huge differences in other domains like number. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? You can run experiments in a lab or survey people on the street. And so I was trying to keep track of which way is which. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. This is a database with millions of art images. In this week's My Unsung Hero, Sarah Feldman thanks someone for their gift more than 20 years ago. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. But might we allow that there's probably a part of all human beings that wants to look down on somebody else. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. 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. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. VEDANTAM: I asked Lera how describing the word chair or the word bridge as masculine or feminine changes the way that speakers of different languages think about those concepts. 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 transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. I said, you know, this weird thing happened. They know which way is which. This is NPR. It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts. al, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2004. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. 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. So LOL was an internet abbreviation meaning laugh out loud or laughing out loud, but LOL in common usage today doesn't necessarily mean hysterical laughter. But it is a completely crucial part of the human experience. Sociologist Lisa Wade believes the pervasive hookup culture on campuses today is different from that faced by previous generations. edit transcripts, Improve the presence of your podcasts, e.g., self-service, If you share your Listen Notes page and at-mention. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking foreign language). It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. And a girl goes in this pile. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. VEDANTAM: My guest today is - well, why don't I let her introduce herself? I'm shankar Vedantam in the 2002 rom com. LERA BORODITSKY: The categorization that language provides to you becomes real - becomes psychologically real. BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. Each generation hears things and interprets things slightly differently from the previous one. 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. It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness Why do some companies become household names, while others flame out? You would never know, for example, that - give you an example I've actually been thinking about. I had this cool experience when I was there. And I did that. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. 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 : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. 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. Many people have this intuition that, oh, I could never learn that; I could never survive in a community like this. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. And it irritates people, but there's a different way of seeing literally. 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. So when I ask you to, say, imagine a man walking down the street, well, in your imagery, you're going to have some details completed and some will be left out. Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, by Philip Tetlock, Psychology Review, 2002. These relationships can help you feel cared for and connected. So earlier things are on the left. And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. 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. This week, in the second installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Todd Kashdan looks at the relationship between distress and happiness, and how to keep difficult emotions from sabotaging our wellbeing. And you say that dictionaries in some ways paint an unrealistic portrait of a language. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. This week, a story about a con with a twist. 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. Could this affect the way, you know, sexism, conscious or unconscious, operates in our world? But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? So what happens is that once literally comes to feel like it means really, people start using it in figurative constructions such as I was literally dying of thirst. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. They shape our place in it. Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. 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? Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy. Languages are not just tools to describe the world. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. So LOL starts out as meaning hardy-har-har (ph), but then it becomes something more abstract. BORODITSKY: My family is Jewish, and we left as refugees. And all of a sudden, I noticed that there was a new window that had popped up in my mind, and it was like a little bird's-eye view of the landscape that I was walking through, and I was a little red dot that was moving across the landscape. They're more likely to see through this little game that language has played on them. 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. The only question was in which way. This takes kids a little while to figure out, and he had all kinds of clever ways to ask these questions. And then question 21 was, is this person a man or a woman? But things can be important not just because they're big. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. It's never going to. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. If you're like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. 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 couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. MCWHORTER: Yes, Shankar, that's exactly it. Lera said there's still a lot of research to be done on this. Why researchers should think real-world: A conceptual rationale, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life, 2012. 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. 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. I'm Shankar Vedantam. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. BORODITSKY: Thank you so much for having me. Newsletter: Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. Interpersonal Chemistry: What Is It, How Does It Emerge, and How Does it Operate? They shape our place in it. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. This week on Hidden Brain, we revisit a favorite episode exploring what this culture means Jesse always wanted to fall in love. VEDANTAM: So all this raises a really interesting question. What do you do for christmas with your family? But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. So I think it's an incredible tragedy that we're losing all of this linguistic diversity, all of this cultural diversity because it is human heritage. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . native tongue without even thinking about it. It's too high. Bu They're supposed to be painting something very personal. If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. And one thing that we've noticed is that around the world, people rely on space to organize time. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. 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. If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? I'm Shankar Vedantam. And some people would say it's a lot more because it's, you know, irrecoverable and not reduplicated elsewhere. But the reason that it seems so elusive is because we don't really think about the, quote, unquote, "meaning" of things like our conversation-easing laughter. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. Another possibility is that it's a fully integrated mind, and it just incorporates ideas and distinctions from both languages or from many languages if you speak more than two. But actually, it's something that's not so hard to learn. VEDANTAM: Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. Welcome to HIDDEN BRAIN. Are the spoken origins of language one reason that words so often seem to be on the move? 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. Of course, if you can't keep track of exactly seven, you can't count. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. MCWHORTER: Yes, that's exactly true. 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. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Shelly. Let's start with the word literally. VEDANTAM: Well, that's kind of you, Lera.