Because it was. They shape our place in it. 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. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? The dictionary says both uses are correct. And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. You also see huge differences in other domains like number. - so one skull but two different minds, and you shift from one to the other. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. 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. 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. 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. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. What Do You Do When Things Go Right? VEDANTAM: Around the world, we often hear that many languages are dying, and there are a few megalanguages that are growing and expanding in all kinds of ways. 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. Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. You can't smell or taste time. You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. FDA blocks human trials for Neuralink brain implants. 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. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. 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. Languages are not just tools. And it sounds a little bit abrupt and grabby like you're going to get something instead of being given. The only question was in which way. People do need to be taught what the socially acceptable forms are. Of course, you also can't experience anything outside of time. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. Interpersonal Chemistry: What Is It, How Does It Emerge, and How Does it Operate? 00:51:58 - We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. June 20, 2020 This week on Hidden Brain, research about prejudices so deeply buried, we often doubt their existence. Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. 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? If you're like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. 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. But actually, it's something that's not so hard to learn. It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. You're not going to do trigonometry. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, by Adam Grant, 2021. And I kind of sheepishly confessed this to someone there. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. 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. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. 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? VEDANTAM: Well, that's kind of you, Lera. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. Take the word bridge - if it's feminine in your language, you're more likely to say that bridges are beautiful and elegant. So that's a measurement difference of 100 percent of performance. Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. I'm Shankar Vedantam. 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. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. FEB 27, 2023; Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button . But it turns out humans can stay oriented really, really well, provided that their language and culture requires them to keep track of this information. That hadn't started then. VEDANTAM: How the languages we speak shape the way we think and why the words we use are always in flux. And then when I turned, this little window stayed locked on the landscape, but it turned in my mind's eye. Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. Imagine this. But might we allow that there's probably a part of all human beings that wants to look down on somebody else. That kind of detail may not appear. If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it. 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. I want everybody to have the fun I'm having. When the con was exposed, its victims defended the con artists. MCWHORTER: It's a matter of fashion, pure and simple. They're supposed to be painting something very personal. 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. BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. 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. So for example, you might not imagine the color shirt that he's wearing or the kinds of shoes that he's wearing. VEDANTAM: I'm Shankar Vedantam. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. And you can even teach people to have a little bit of fun with the artifice. It's just how I feel. And, I mean, just in terms of even sounds changing and the way that you put words together changing bit by bit, and there's never been a language that didn't do that. VEDANTAM: So I find that I'm often directionally and navigationally challenged when I'm driving around, and I often get my east-west mixed up with my left-right for reasons I have never been able to fathom. Perceived Partner Responsiveness Scale (PPRS), by Harry T. Reis et. They shape our place in it. ), Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy, 2004. 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. 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. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. So if the word for death was masculine in your language, you were likely to paint death as a man. to describe the world. Whats going on here? 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. Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Parents and peers influence our major life choices, but they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. And so for me, that question was born in that conversation of are there some languages where it's easier to imagine a person without their characteristics of gender filled in? How else would you do it? So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. This week, we continue our look at the science of influence with psychologist Robert Cialdini, and explore how these techniques can be used for both good and evil. And in fact, speakers of languages like this have been shown to orient extremely well - much better than we used to think humans could. Stay with us. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Speaking Russian). And nobody wishes that we hadn't developed our modern languages today from the ancient versions. This is Hidden Brain. 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. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. 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. For example, if you take seeds and put them in the ground, that's one thing. But what if it's not even about lust? And there are consequences for how people think about events, what they notice when they see accidents. BORODITSKY: Thank you so much for having me. It is the very fabric, the very core of your experience. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Shelly. Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at Hidden Brain telling the stories of . Parents and peers influence our major life choices. Writing has come along relatively recently. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. And when I listen to people having their peeves, I don't think, stop it. 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. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. I just don't want to do it. And so somebody will say, well, who was it who you thought was going to give you this present? Marcus Butt/Getty Images/Ikon Images Hidden Brain Why Nobody Feels Rich by Shankar Vedantam , Parth Shah , Tara Boyle , Rhaina Cohen September 14, 2020 If you've ever flown in economy class. But if you prefer life - the unpredictability of life - then living language in many ways are much more fun. All rights reserved. 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. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. 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? 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? This is HIDDEN BRAIN. If you prefer to listen through a podcast app, here are links to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. Does a speaker of a language, like Spanish, who has to assign gender to so many things, end up seeing the world as more gendered? Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, by Shannon M. Smith & Harry Reis, Personal Relationships, 2012. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. 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. That's how much cultural heritage is lost. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. 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. That is the direction of writing in Hebrew and Arabic, going from right to left. In this episode, we explore how long-term relationships have changed over time and whether we might be able to improve marriage by asking less of it. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. All rights reserved. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. 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. And why do some social movements take off and spread, while others fizzle? Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Whats going on here? native tongue without even thinking about it. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. 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. al (Eds. And a girl goes in this pile. We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. They often feel angry about it, and you think this anger is actually telling. And, I mean, really, it sounds exactly like that. And it irritates people, but there's a different way of seeing literally. Learn more. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. If a transcript is available, you'll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Copyright 2018 NPR. 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. 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. You know, there's no left leg or right leg. Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing.