Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. MCWHORTER: You could have fun doing such a thing. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. Newer episodes are unlikely to have a transcript as it takes us a few weeks to process and edit each transcript. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. 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. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kennon M. Sheldon, George Washington Law Review, 2015. VEDANTAM: So all this raises a really interesting question. Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. I think that the tone that many people use when they're complaining that somebody says Billy and me went to the store is a little bit incommensurate with the significance of the issue. 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. VEDANTAM: You make the case that concerns over the misuse of language might actually be one of the last places where people can publicly express prejudice and class differences. 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. 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. Which pile do you go in, right? In the final episode of our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. It goes in this pile. VEDANTAM: So I want to talk about a debate that's raged in your field for many years. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. How do you balance the imperative of teaching correct usage? But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. MCWHORTER: Language is a parade, and nobody sits at a parade wishing that everybody would stand still. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. So it's mendokusai. Not without written permission. 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? Hidden Brain. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. 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. 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. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? So the question for us has been, how do we build these ideas? But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. There's a lowlier part of our nature that grammar allows us to vent in the absence of other ways to do it that have not been available for some decades for a lot of us. 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? Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. BORODITSKY: The way to say my name properly in Russian is (speaking foreign language), so I don't make people say that. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. Only a couple hundred languages - or if you want to be conservative about it, a hundred languages - are written in any real way and then there are 6,800 others. But time doesn't have to flow with respect to the body. But as Bob Cialdini set out to discover the keys to influence and persuasion, he decided to follow the instincts of his childhood. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. They can be small differences but important in other ways. 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? You know, endings are going to tend to drop off. 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. Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. And, of course, you always have to wonder, well, could it be that speakers of these different languages are actually seeing different kinds of bridges? Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Read the episode transcript. MCWHORTER: Yeah. What a cynical thing to say, but that doesn't mean that it might not be true. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. (Speaking Japanese). Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. And so somebody will say, well, who was it who you thought was going to give you this present? MCWHORTER: Oh, yeah, I'm a human being. 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? Or feel like you and your spouse sometimes speak different languages? This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. 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. We lobby a neighbor to vote for our favored political candidate. If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. 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. 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. MCWHORTER: Thank you for having me, Shankar. Opening scene of Lady Bird Flight attendant Steven Slater slides from a plane after quitting Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. We use a lot of music on the show! 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. We love the idea of Hidden Brain helping to spark discussions in your community. And so what that means is if someone was sitting facing south, they would lay out the story from left to right. If you're just joining us, I'm talking to John McWhorter. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. 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. In a lot of languages, there isn't. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. How else would you do it? Please note that your continued use of the RadioPublic services following the posting of such changes will be deemed an acceptance of this update. 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. 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. 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. Growing up, I understood this word to mean for a very short time, as in John McWhorter was momentarily surprised. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, by Adam Grant, 2021. Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. So it's easy to think, oh, I could imagine someone without thinking explicitly about what they're wearing. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. And then question 21 was, is this person a man or a woman? Now, many people hear that and they think, well, that's no good because now literally can mean its opposite. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. MCWHORTER: No, because LOL was an expression; it was a piece of language, and so you knew that its meaning was going to change. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. It's never going to. Imagine this. 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. We're speaking today with cognitive science professor Lera Boroditsky about language. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . Please do not republish our logo, name or content digitally or distribute to more than 10 people without written permission. 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. So earlier things are on the left. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. 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? You also see huge differences in other domains like number. All rights reserved. So one possibility for bilinguals would be that they just have two different minds inside - right? He didn't like that people were shortening the words. Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. For example, he might take a bunch of pictures of boys and girls and sort them and say, OK, this is a boy. As soon as you move the leg, it becomes a different leg. 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. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking foreign language). 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. According to neuroscientists who study laughter, it turns out that chuckles and giggles often aren't a response to humorthey're a response to people. It should be thought of as fun. And if you can enjoy it as a parade instead of wondering why people keep walking instead of just sitting on chairs and blowing on their tubas and not moving, then you have more fun. For example, if you take seeds and put them in the ground, that's one thing. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, Refusing to Apologize can have Psychological Benefits, The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, The Effective Negotiator Part 1: The Behavior of Successful Negotiators, The Effective Negotiator Part 2: Planning for Negotiations, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. And when I listen to people having their peeves, I don't think, stop it. Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. There are different ways to be a psychologist. But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. But I understand that in Spanish, this would come out quite differently. 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. You can't touch time. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page, sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain. Hidden Brain Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Science 4.6 36K Ratings; Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. 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. edit transcripts, Improve the presence of your podcasts, e.g., self-service, If you share your Listen Notes page and at-mention. There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. 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. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Speaking German). Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York.