In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? Bu This takes kids a little while to figure out, and he had all kinds of clever ways to ask these questions. Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. Refusing to Apologize can have Psychological Benefits, by Tyler Okimoto, Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick, European Journal of Social Psychology, 2013. MCWHORTER: Exactly. And they suggest that differences across languages do, in fact, predict some of these measures of gender equality across countries. We'll also look at how languages evolve, and why we're sometimes resistant to those changes. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. Physicist Richard Feynman once said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." One way we fool ourselves is by imagining we know more than we do; we think we are experts. Whats going on here? That was somehow a dad's fashion, and that I should start wearing flat-fronted pants. But things can be important not just because they're big. But can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? 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. 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. * Data source: directly measured on Listen Notes. 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? How do certain memes go viral? You couldn't have predicted this I know-uh move-uh (ph). You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. But what I am thinking is, you should realize that even if you don't like it, there's nothing wrong with it in the long run because, for example, Jonathan Swift didn't like it that people were saying kissed instead of kiss-ed (ph) and rebuked instead of rebuk-ed (ph). And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: (Speaking foreign language). I've always found that a very grating way to ask for something at a store. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. 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. BORODITSKY: And when they were trying to act like Wednesday, they would act like a woman BORODITSKY: Which accords with grammatical gender in Russian. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. You're not going to do trigonometry. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. VEDANTAM: Many of us have dictionaries at home or at work, John. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. 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. And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. Please do not republish our logo, name or content digitally or distribute to more than 10 people without written permission. But what if it's not even about lust? But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. 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. This week, in the final . 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? If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? 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 talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness Why do some companies become household names, while others flame out? MCWHORTER: You could have fun doing such a thing. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Lots of languages make a distinction between things that are accidents and things that are intentional actions. Whats going on here? After claiming your Listen Notes podcast pages, you will be able to: Respond to listener comments on Listen Notes, Use speech-to-text techniques to transcribe your show and Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. 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. This is a database with millions of art images. Hidden Brain. ), The Sourcebook of Listening Research: Methodology and Measures, 2018. So they've compared gender equality, gender parity norms from the World Health Organization, which ranks countries on how equal access to education, how equal pay is, how equal representation in government is across the genders. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. How else would you do it? It's exactly how old English turned into modern English. 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. 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. As soon as you move the leg, it becomes a different leg. 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 So you can't see time. 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. They believe that their language reflects the true structure of the world. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe watching Netflix or something. Whats going on here? So you may start with moving your southwest leg in, but then you have to move your northeast leg out. And they asked me all kinds of questions about them. 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. 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. Of course, if you can't keep track of exactly seven, you can't count. We'll be back momentarily. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. So the word for the is different for women than for men, and it's also different for forks versus spoons and things like that. Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. Not without written permission. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. 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. Parents and peers influence our major life choices. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. 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. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. He didn't like that people were shortening the words. Why researchers should think real-world: A conceptual rationale, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of Research Methods for Studying Daily Life, 2012. (Speaking Japanese). UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: (Speaking Italian). But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? I just don't want to do it. So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. What Do You Do When Things Go Right? Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. If you dont see any jobs posted there, feel free to send your resume and cover letter to [emailprotected] and well keep your materials on hand for future openings on the show. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. 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. And if you teach them that forks go with women, they start to think that forks are more feminine. 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. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. In the final episode of our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. And there are all kinds of interesting, useful, eye-opening ideas that exist in all of the world's languages. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. VEDANTAM: So I want to talk about a debate that's raged in your field for many years. But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. 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. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. MCWHORTER: Yeah. 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. In The Air We Breathe . But, in fact, they were reflecting this little quirk of grammar, this little quirk of their language and in some cases, you know, carving those quirks of grammar into stone because when you look at statues that we have around - of liberty and justice and things like this - they have gender. You can't touch time. Now, many people hear that and they think, well, that's no good because now literally can mean its opposite. 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. 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. But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. . Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. And MIT linguist Ken Hale, who's a renowned linguist, said that every time a language dies, it's the equivalent of a bomb being dropped on the Louvre. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Speaking Russian). If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. It can be almost counterintuitive to listen to how much giggling and laughing you do in ordinary - actually rather plain exchanges with people. Can I get some chicken? And it's not just about how we think about time. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. And as you point out, it's not just that people feel that a word is being misused. I'm . It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. FDA blocks human trials for Neuralink brain implants. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? 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. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. 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? 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. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. I think it's a really fascinating question for future research. And you've conducted experiments that explore how different conceptions of time in different languages shape the way we think about the world and shape the way we think about stories. You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. What do you do for christmas with your family? 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. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. I had this cool experience when I was there. "Most of the laughter we produce is purely . But then you start writing things down and you're in a whole new land because once things are sitting there written on that piece of paper, there's that illusion. ADAM COLE, BYLINE: (Singing) You put your southwest leg in, and you shake it all about. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. Whats going on here? And so somebody will say, well, who was it who you thought was going to give you this present? There are signs it's getting even harder. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where. 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. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. Imagine how we would sound to them if they could hear us. Writing has come along relatively recently. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Now I can stay oriented. So it's mendokusai. 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? But I understand that in Spanish, this would come out quite differently. 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. But somehow they've managed, not just by randomly bumping into each other. But if you prefer life - the unpredictability of life - then living language in many ways are much more fun. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, by Shannon M. Smith & Harry Reis, Personal Relationships, 2012. Sociologist Lisa Wade believes the pervasive hookup culture on campuses today is different from that faced by previous generations. 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. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. 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. You can't smell or taste time. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. And you say that dictionaries in some ways paint an unrealistic portrait of a language. So LOL starts out as meaning hardy-har-har (ph), but then it becomes something more abstract. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. 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. 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. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. BORODITSKY: Yeah. It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. These relationships can help you feel cared for and connected. VEDANTAM: I understand there's been some work looking at children and that children who speak certain languages are actually quicker to identify gender and their own gender than children who are learning other languages in other cultures. The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. And dead languages never change, and some of us might prefer those. It's inherent. But as Bob Cialdini set out to discover the keys to influence and persuasion, he decided to follow the instincts of his childhood. Subscribe: iOS | Android | Spotify | RSS | Amazon | Stitcher Latest Episodes: Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button This is HIDDEN BRAIN. 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. It's as if you saw a person - I'm not going to say at 4 because then the person is growing up, and if I use that analogy then it seems like I'm saying that language grows up or it moves toward something or it develops. It's just how I feel. So for example, you might not imagine the color shirt that he's wearing or the kinds of shoes that he's wearing. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. This week, we revisit a favorite episode from 2021, bringing you two stories about how easy it can be to believe in a false reality even when the facts dont back us up. I'm Shankar Vedantam. That hadn't started then. That is the direction of writing in Hebrew and Arabic, going from right to left. 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. This is Hidden Brain. He's also the author of the book, "Words On The Move: Why English Won't - And Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally).". 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 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. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. And so he suggested it might be the case that the arbitrarily assigned grammatical genders are actually changing the way people think about these days of the week and maybe all kinds of other things that are named by nouns. So I think that nobody would say that they don't think language should change. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness can seem more el, When we want something very badly, it can be hard to see warning signs that might be obvious to other people. 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. If you prefer to listen through a podcast app, here are links to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher. The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. If you still cant find the episode, try looking through our most recent shows on our homepage. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. And I don't think any of us are thinking that it's a shame that we're not using the language of Beowulf. Just saying hello was difficult. So one possibility for bilinguals would be that they just have two different minds inside - right? 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. BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. She once visited an aboriginal community in northern Australia and found the language they spoke forced her mind to work in new ways. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. When the con was exposed, its victims defended the con artists. Thank you! And then question 21 was, is this person a man or a woman? VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often, untranslatable. 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.