hidden brain transcript

So for example, you might not imagine the color shirt that he's wearing or the kinds of shoes that he's wearing. 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. And if you teach them that forks go with women, they start to think that forks are more feminine. al (Eds. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. 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. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. Take the word bridge - if it's feminine in your language, you're more likely to say that bridges are beautiful and elegant. Whats going on here? Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. You know, it's Lady Liberty and Lady Justice. So it's mendokusai. 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. But it's exactly like - it was maybe about 20 years ago that somebody - a girlfriend I had told me that if I wore pants that had little vertical pleats up near the waist, then I was conveying that I was kind of past it. VEDANTAM: Languages seem to have different ways of communicating agency. And you can even teach people to have a little bit of fun with the artifice. VEDANTAM: If you have teenagers or work closely with young people, chances are you'll be mystified by their conversations or even annoyed. VEDANTAM: I'm Shankar Vedantam. But, if you dig a little deeper, you may find that they share much more: they might make the same amount of money as you, or share the, We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. 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. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). I think language can certainly be a contributor into the complex system of our thinking about gender. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Speaking Russian). The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Rightly Crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating Goal Self-Concordance Prior to Selection Helps People Choose More Intrinsic Goals, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Mike Prentice, and Evgeny Osin, Journal of Research in Personality, 2019. MCWHORTER: Yes, that's exactly true. The best Podcast API to search all podcasts and episodes. 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. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? 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. And so for example, if the word chair is masculine in your language, why is that? Elon Musk's brain chips, starvation in Somalia and Greek anguish If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. In The Air We Breathe . Whats going on here? native tongue without even thinking about it. So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. VEDANTAM: Time is another concept that is also central to the way we see and describe the world. He says that buying into false beliefs, in other words, deluding ourselves can . Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. It takes, 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. I know-uh (ph) is there, or something along the lines of babe-uh (ph). Imagine how we would sound to them if they could hear us. This week, we continue our look at the science of influence with psychologist Robert Cialdini, and explore how th, We all exert pressure on each other in ways small and profound. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. MCWHORTER: Yeah. And as you point out, it's not just that people feel that a word is being misused. Growing up, I understood this word to mean for a very short time, as in John McWhorter was momentarily surprised. 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 In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. She once visited an aboriginal community in northern Australia and found the language they spoke forced her mind to work in new ways. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. 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. Who Do You Want To Be? | Hidden Brain Media Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. 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? But does a person who says that really deserve the kind of sneering condemnation that you often see? Interpersonal Chemistry: What Is It, How Does It Emerge, and How Does it Operate? In the final episode of our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. BORODITSKY: So quite literally, to get past hello, you have to know which way you're heading. In this favorite 2021 episode, psychologistAdam Grantpushes back against the benefits of certainty, and describes the magic that unfolds when we challenge our own deeply-held beliefs. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking foreign language). Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. They shape our place in it. Parents and peers influence our major life choices, but they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. 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. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. MCWHORTER: Thank you for having me, Shankar. Whats going on here? If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. And it sounds a little bit abrupt and grabby like you're going to get something instead of being given. al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. 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. Thank you! We always knew that certain species of animals had abilities to orient that we thought were better than human, and we always had some biological excuse for why we couldn't do it. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. 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? But actually, it's something that's not so hard to learn. You're also not going to do algebra. He didn't like that people were shortening the words. They're more likely to see through this little game that language has played on them. 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. Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. 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. Stay with us. BORODITSKY: Actually, one of the first people to notice or suggest that this might be the case was a Russian linguist, Roman Jakobson. Parents and peers influence our major life choices. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Bu 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. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often untranslatable. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. 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 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. And what he noticed was that when people were trying to act like Monday, they would act like a man. We'll also look at how languages evolve, and why we're sometimes resistant to those changes. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. 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. BORODITSKY: Yeah. And in fact, speakers of languages like this have been shown to orient extremely well - much better than we used to think humans could. So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. They are ways of seeing the world. 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 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. How else would you do it? VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. MCWHORTER: Yeah, I really do. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Well never sell your personal information. How To Breathe Correctly For Optimal Health, Mood, Learning The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. 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? BORODITSKY: And when they were trying to act like Wednesday, they would act like a woman BORODITSKY: Which accords with grammatical gender in Russian. But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. 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. 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. And then question 21 was, is this person a man or a woman? Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. It goes in this pile. 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. Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. In this favorite episode from 2021, Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow explains why purpose isnt something to be found its something we can develop from within. Writing has come along relatively recently. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. 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. 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. I think it's a really fascinating question for future research. to describe the world. LERA BORODITSKY: The categorization that language provides to you becomes real - becomes psychologically real. I'm shankar Vedantam in the 2002 rom com. VEDANTAM: John McWhorter, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Right. 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. You can't smell or taste time. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). 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. I'm Shankar Vedantam. All of these are very subjective things. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Many people have this intuition that, oh, I could never learn that; I could never survive in a community like this. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. . Please do not republish our logo, name or content digitally or distribute to more than 10 people without written permission. If you're just joining us, I'm talking to John McWhorter. John, you've noted that humans have been using language for a very long time, but for most of that time language has been about talking. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? 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. It should be thought of as fun. Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy | Hidden Brain Media Decoding Emotions - Transcripts Learn more. The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. And it's sad that we're not going to be able to make use of them and learn them and celebrate them. Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. But things can be important not just because they're big. Hidden Brain - You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose - Google Podcasts You couldn't have predicted this I know-uh move-uh (ph). 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. In the second episode of our "Relationships 2.0" series, psychologist Do you ever struggle to communicate with your mom? BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. 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. There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. 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. So when the perfect woman started writing him letters, it seemed too good to be true. VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly useful. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often, untranslatable. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. BORODITSKY: Well, I think it's a terrible tragedy. But time doesn't have to flow with respect to the body. 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? 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. JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt. 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. If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. FAQ | Hidden Brain Media It's inherent. So new words are as likely to evolve as old ones. 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? But it's so hard to feel that partly because our brains are on writing, as I say in the book. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. Read the episode transcript. 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. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. To request permission, please send an email to [emailprotected]. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe watching Netflix or something. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. And there are consequences for how people think about events, what they notice when they see accidents. I saw this bird's-eye view, and I was this little red dot. And I kind of sheepishly confessed this to someone there. 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. When language was like that, of course it changed a lot - fast - because once you said it, it was gone. That's what it's all about. That is the most random thing. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. Yes! 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. Hidden Brain - KQED | News, Radio, Podcasts, TV MCWHORTER: Oh, yeah, I'm a human being. by Harry T. Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021. And one thing that we've noticed is that around the world, people rely on space to organize time. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? 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. 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. So LOL starts out as meaning hardy-har-har (ph), but then it becomes something more abstract. It seems kind of elliptical, like, would it be possible that I obtained? 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. - you would have to say something like, my arm got broken, or it so happened to me that my arm is broken. What Makes Lawyers Happy? The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. 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. So bilinguals are kind of this in-between case where they can't quite turn off their other languages, but they become more prominent, more salient when you are actually speaking the language or surrounded by the language. The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, by Karen Jehn et. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. Young people have always used language in new and different ways, and it's pretty much always driven older people crazy.

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