(LAUGHTER) VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. 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. And if it was feminine, then you're likely to paint death as a woman. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. How to Really Know Another Person - Transcripts 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. I'm Shankar Vedantam. You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. 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. 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. BORODITSKY: Yeah. 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? Relationships 2.0: What Makes Relationships Thrive | Hidden Brain Media June 20, 2020 This week on Hidden Brain, research about prejudices so deeply buried, we often doubt their existence. Why researchers should think real-world: A conceptual rationale, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life, 2012. John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. So for example, if Sam grabbed a hammer and struck the flute in anger, that would be one description, like, Sam broke the flute. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? Hidden Brain - KQED | News, Radio, Podcasts, TV al (Eds. But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. This week on Hidden Brain, we revisit a favorite episode exploring what this culture means Jesse always wanted to fall in love. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking foreign language). Imagine this. My Unsung Hero: A belated thank you : NPR I want everybody to have the fun I'm having. 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 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. VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. 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? And it's sad that we're not going to be able to make use of them and learn them and celebrate them. 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. Hidden Brain: The Easiest Person to Fool on Apple Podcasts This takes kids a little while to figure out, and he had all kinds of clever ways to ask these questions. Newsletter: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. : 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. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, by Adam Grant, 2021. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. If a transcript is available, you'll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. He says that buying into false beliefs, in other words, deluding ourselves can . In this week's My Unsung Hero, Sarah Feldman thanks someone for their gift more than 20 years ago. BORODITSKY: The way to say my name properly in Russian is (speaking foreign language), so I don't make people say that. That's what it's all about. So if the word for death was masculine in your language, you were likely to paint death as a man. al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. edit transcripts, Improve the presence of your podcasts, e.g., self-service, If you share your Listen Notes page and at-mention. Many people have this intuition that, oh, I could never learn that; I could never survive in a community like this. 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. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. One study that I love is a study that asked monolingual speakers of Italian and German and also bilingual speakers of Italian and German to give reasons for why things are the grammatical genders that they are. Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. We post open positions (including internships) on our jobs page. 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. Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. So in English, I might say that Sam (ph) broke the flute. Hidden Brain | Hidden Brain Media 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. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. And very competent adults of our culture can't do that. It's never going to. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. 585: In Defense of Ignorance - This American Life 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. In The Air We Breathe . So when the perfect woman started writing him letters, it seemed too good to be true. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. 00:55:27 Hidden Brain Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button But I find that people now usually use the word to mean very soon, as in we're going to board the plane momentarily. That kind of detail may not appear. Shankar Vedantam, host of the popular podcast "Hidden Brain" has been reporting on human behavior for decades. But things can be important not just because they're big. So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. And when I listen to people having their peeves, I don't think, stop it. 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. I decided it was very important for me to learn English because I had always been a very verbal kid, and I'd - was always the person who recited poems in front of the school and, you know, led assemblies and things like that. VEDANTAM: So I want to talk about a debate that's raged in your field for many years. And if you teach them that forks go with women, they start to think that forks are more feminine. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. Take the word bridge - if it's feminine in your language, you're more likely to say that bridges are beautiful and elegant. You may link to our content and copy and paste episode descriptions and Additional Resources into your invitations. 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 People do need to be taught what the socially acceptable forms are. Languages are not just tools. 00:51:58 - We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. This is Hidden Brain. It goes in this pile. 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. Transcript 585: In Defense of Ignorance Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. 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. It's too high. How do certain memes go viral? 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. Imagine how we would sound to them if they could hear us. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. And what he noticed was that when people were trying to act like Monday, they would act like a man. Thank you! You would give a different description to mark that it was not intentional. Hidden Brain (podcast) - Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam - Listen Notes Our team includes Laura Kwerel, Adhiti Bandlamudi and our supervising producer Tara Boyle. And as soon as I saw that happen, I thought, oh, this makes it so much easier. Or feel like you and your spouse sometimes speak different languages? in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. Watch Your Mouth | Hidden Brain : NPR Not without written permission. 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. 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. You can't touch time. Who Do You Want To Be? | Hidden Brain Media It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. And the way you speak right is not by speaking the way that people around you in your life speak, but by speaking the way the language is as it sits there all nice and pretty on that piece of paper where its reality exists. The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. I'm Shankar Vedantam. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. VEDANTAM: Languages orient us to the world. And I did that. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. And so to address that question, what we do is we bring English speakers into the lab, and we teach them grammatical genders in a new language that we invent. You-uh (ph). So act like Monday. 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. It's exactly how old English turned into modern English. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. 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. What Do You Do When Things Go Right? All sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain are managed by SXM Media. 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. VEDANTAM: How the languages we speak shape the way we think and why the words we use are always in flux. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness Why do some companies become household names, while others flame out? How to Foster Perceived Partner Responsiveness: High-Quality LIstening is Key, Perceived Partner Responsiveness Scale (PPRS), Toward Understanding Understanding:The Importance of Feeling Understood in Relationships, Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, Perceived Partner Responsiveness Minimizes Defensive Reactions to Failure, Assessing the Seeds of Relationship Decay: Using Implicit Evaluations to Detect the Early Stages of Disillusionment. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. 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. And then if you are going to be that elliptical, why use the casual word get? But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. FEB 27, 2023; Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button . 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. 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. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. Going the Distance on the Pacific Crest Trail: The Vital Role of Identified Motivation, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Motivation Science, 2020. And I would really guess that in a few decades men will be doing it, too. 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. Hidden Brain - Transcripts This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page, sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain. For more on decision-making, check out our episode on how to make wiser choices. And you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it out. I think language can certainly be a contributor into the complex system of our thinking about gender. They are ways of seeing the world. All episodes of Hidden Brain - Chartable Hidden Brain Episodes Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. That is exactly why you should say fewer books instead of less books in some situations and, yes, Billy and I went to the store rather than the perfectly natural Billy and me went to the store. In this month's Radio Replay, we ask whether the structure of the languages we speak can change the way we see the world. Flight attendant Steven Slater slides from a plane after quitting. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. Hidden Brain: You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose on Apple Podcasts VEDANTAM: Lera now tries to understand languages spoken all over the world. VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly useful. Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). Accuracy and availability may vary. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . Hidden Brain: You, But Better on Apple Podcasts So these speakers have internalized this idea from their language, and they believe that it's right. L. Gable, et. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. al (Eds. VEDANTAM: (Laughter) All right, I think it might be time for me to confess one of my pet peeves. As you're going about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. Just saying hello was difficult. Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at Hidden Brain telling the stories of . 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. Stay with us. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. Laughter: The Best Medicine | Hidden Brain : NPR 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. But I understand that in Spanish, this would come out quite differently. It has to do with the word momentarily. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. This week, in the final . And a girl goes in this pile. Whats going on here? 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? 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 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. 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. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. We use a lot of music on the show! And it sounds a little bit abrupt and grabby like you're going to get something instead of being given. 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? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: (Speaking Italian). VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often, untranslatable. Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. There was no way of transcribing an approximation of what people said and nobody would have thought of doing it. The dictionary says both uses are correct. 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.