How big are the differences that we're talking about, and how big do you think the implications are for the way we see the world? 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. For example, he might take a bunch of pictures of boys and girls and sort them and say, OK, this is a boy. They know which way is which. LERA BORODITSKY: The categorization that language provides to you becomes real - becomes psychologically real. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. It goes in this pile. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. 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. Going the Distance on the Pacific Crest Trail: The Vital Role of Identified Motivation, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Motivation Science, 2020. As you're going about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. So some languages don't have number words. And what he noticed was that when people were trying to act like Monday, they would act like a man. Of course, if you can't keep track of exactly seven, you can't count. Please note that your continued use of the RadioPublic services following the posting of such changes will be deemed an acceptance of this update. We'll be back momentarily. You have to do it in order to fit into the culture and to speak the language. And, I mean, really, it sounds exactly like that. How do certain memes go viral? You're not going to do any of the things that are seen as a foundation of our technological society. So LOL starts out as meaning hardy-har-har (ph), but then it becomes something more abstract. They are ways of seeing the world. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. 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. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page, sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain. VEDANTAM: How the languages we speak shape the way we think and why the words we use are always in flux. 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. BORODITSKY: Well, you would be at sea at first. Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. And you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it out. You know, it's Lady Liberty and Lady Justice. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. I'm Shankar Vedantam. So that's a measurement difference of 100 percent of performance. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #16: Not figuratively, it's literally MCWHORTER: Yeah. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. ), The Sourcebook of Listening Research: Methodology and Measures, 2018. We also look at how. 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. VEDANTAM: One of the ultimate messages I took from your work is that, you know, we can choose to have languages that are alive or languages that are dead. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. This is Hidden Brain. Or feel like you and your spouse sometimes speak different languages? And you say that dictionaries in some ways paint an unrealistic portrait of a language. But also, I started wondering, is it possible that my friend here was imagining a person without a gender for this whole time that we've been talking about them, right? It should be thought of as fun. How does that sound now? Lera said there's still a lot of research to be done on this. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kennon M. Sheldon, George Washington Law Review, 2015. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? So in English, I might say that Sam (ph) broke the flute. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) I'm willing to get involved. And it irritates people, but there's a different way of seeing literally. 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. Sociologist Lisa Wade believes the pervasive hookup culture on campuses today is different from that faced by previous generations. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important, VEDANTAM: There isn't a straightforward translation of this phrase in English. So it's mendokusai. this is hidden brain I'm Shankar Vedantam in the classic TV series Star Trek Mister Spock has a foolproof technique for accurately reading the thoughts and feelings of others the Vulcan mind I am Spock you James our minds are moving closer most most here are kind of hard we have new technology that gives us direct access to the minds of others so And so, for example, can I get a hamburger? We recommend movies or books to a friend. VEDANTAM: I'm Shankar Vedantam. So the question for us has been, how do we build these ideas? If you're like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. There are different ways to be a psychologist. 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. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. We're speaking today with cognitive science professor Lera Boroditsky about language. We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. 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. 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. And a girl goes in this pile. Why researchers should think real-world: A conceptual rationale, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life, 2012. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, What Do You Do When Things Go Right? Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. And they said, well, of course. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Shelly. BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. And then if you are going to be that elliptical, why use the casual word get? 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. 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. 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? There are many scholars who would say, look, yes, you do see small differences between speakers of different languages, but these differences are not really significant; they're really small. MCWHORTER: You could have fun doing such a thing. See you next week. 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. You can't smell or taste time. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. And they asked me all kinds of questions about them. So if the word for death was masculine in your language, you were likely to paint death as a man. You also see huge differences in other domains like number. 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. This week, in the final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes what happens when we stop to savor the beauty in nature, art, or simply the moral courage of those around us. And we're all going to have feelings like that. Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-being: The Self-Concordance Model, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Andrew J. Elliot, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999. 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. Not without written permission. Now I can stay oriented. The dictionary says both uses are correct. They can be small differences but important in other ways. You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. VEDANTAM: John McWhorter, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. What we think of today as a word undergoing some odd development or people using some new construction is exactly how Latin turned into French. It can be almost counterintuitive to listen to how much giggling and laughing you do in ordinary - actually rather plain exchanges with people. MCWHORTER: Those are called contronyms, and literally has become a new contronym. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. 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. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. This week, we're going to bring you a conversation I had in front of a live audience with Richard Thaler, taped on Halloween at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D. Richard is a professor of behavioral sciences and economics at the University of Chicago and is a well-known author. Yes! If you liked . How so? Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, by Shannon M. Smith & Harry Reis, Personal Relationships, 2012. Please do not republish our logo, name or content digitally or distribute to more than 10 people without written permission. VEDANTAM: So I want to talk about a debate that's raged in your field for many years. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. 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. I think language can certainly be a contributor into the complex system of our thinking about gender. 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. And after listening to you, I realize I might have to finally give in. In this month's Radio Replay, we ask whether the structure of the languages we speak can change the way we see the world. 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. Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through. But I don't think that it's always clear to us that language has to change in that things are going to come in that we're going to hear as intrusions or as irritating or as mistakes, despite the fact that that's how you get from, say, old Persian to modern Persian. BORODITSKY: That's a wonderful question. 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. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Speaking Russian). Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." BORODITSKY: Yeah. I said, you know, this weird thing happened. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. You're also not going to do algebra. You-uh (ph). But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. 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. But might we allow that there's probably a part of all human beings that wants to look down on somebody else. So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. Refusing to Apologize can have Psychological Benefits, by Tyler Okimoto, Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick, European Journal of Social Psychology, 2013. ), Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy, 2004. Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. So you can think about an un-gendered person in the same way that I might think about a person without a specific age or specific height or specific color shirt. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. VEDANTAM: If you have teenagers or work closely with young people, chances are you'll be mystified by their conversations or even annoyed. Whats going on here? 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. This takes kids a little while to figure out, and he had all kinds of clever ways to ask these questions. They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. L. Gable, et. Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. 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. 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. This week, a story about a con with a twist. If you prefer to listen through a podcast app, here are links to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher. He says that buying into false beliefs, in other words, deluding ourselves can . In a lot of languages, there isn't. So we've done a lot of studies looking at how speakers of Spanish and German and Russian actually think about objects that have opposite grammatical genders. The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, by Karen Jehn et. Writing has come along relatively recently. 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. Whats going on here? We convince a colleague to take a different tactic at work. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. So we did an analysis of images in Artstor. And as soon as I saw that happen, I thought, oh, this makes it so much easier. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often, untranslatable. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. As soon as you move the leg, it becomes a different leg. 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 transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. 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. It has to do with the word momentarily. 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. al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. Each generation hears things and interprets things slightly differently from the previous one. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. And as you point out, it's not just that people feel that a word is being misused. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). So these speakers have internalized this idea from their language, and they believe that it's right. There's not a bigger difference you could find than 100 percent of the measurement space. For more of our Relationships 2.0 series, check out one of our most popular episodes ever about why marriages are so hard. BORODITSKY: So quite literally, to get past hello, you have to know which way you're heading. What Do You Do When Things Go Right? So one possibility for bilinguals would be that they just have two different minds inside - right? I'm Shankar Vedantam. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. And it's not just about how we think about time. 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. 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. And I would really guess that in a few decades men will be doing it, too. 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. But as Bob Cialdini set out to discover the keys to influence and persuasion, he decided to follow the instincts of his childhood. 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. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. BORODITSKY: It's certainly possible. VEDANTAM: Time is another concept that is also central to the way we see and describe the world. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). 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. The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking foreign language). Stay with us. It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts. 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? Well never sell your personal information. And dead languages never change, and some of us might prefer those. It's never going to. They often feel angry about it, and you think this anger is actually telling. Thank you! The fun example I give my students is imagine playing the hokey pokey in a language like this. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking foreign language). But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. This week, in the final . So you can't see time. VEDANTAM: I love this analogy you have in the book where you mention how, you know, thinking that a word has only one meaning is like looking at a snapshot taken at one point in a person's life and saying this photograph represents the entirety of what this person looks like. Toula and Ian's different backgrounds become apparent on one of their very first dates. Which pile do you go in, right? (Speaking Japanese). If you are a podcaster, the best way to manage your podcasts on Listen Notes is by claiming your Listen Notes Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Interpersonal Chemistry: What Is It, How Does It Emerge, and How Does it Operate? To request permission, please send an email to [emailprotected]. 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. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. Transcript Speaker 1 00:00:00 this is hidden brain. 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? UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Speaking foreign language). But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly useful. 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. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. So for example, English speakers, because they're very likely to say, he did it or someone did it, they are very good at remembering who did it, even if it's an accident. 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. 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. 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. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. There are signs it's getting even harder. 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.
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