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. 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. BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . 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. But what most people mean is that there'll be slang, that there'll be new words for new things and that some of those words will probably come from other languages. Can I get some chicken? For more on decision-making, check out our episode on how to make wiser choices. Toula and Ian's different backgrounds become apparent on one of their very first dates. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? FDA blocks human trials for Neuralink brain implants. 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. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. But I understand that in Spanish, this would come out quite differently. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. FEB 27, 2023; Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button . 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: So all this raises a really interesting question. Of course that's how you BORODITSKY: And so what was remarkable for me was that my brain figured out a really good solution to the problem after a week of trying, right? 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. They are ways of seeing the world. How else would you do it? Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. 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. 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. And what he noticed was that when people were trying to act like Monday, they would act like a man. And so what that means is if someone was sitting facing south, they would lay out the story from left to right. Now I can stay oriented. MCWHORTER: Yeah, I really do. And as odd as that sounds, I can guarantee you if you watch any TV show with women under a certain age or if you just go out on an American street and listen, you'll find that that's a new kind of exclamatory particle. (LAUGHTER) VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking foreign language). It's not something that you typically go out trying to do intentionally. al (Eds. You would give a different description to mark that it was not intentional. If you're like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. 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. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. That is utterly arbitrary that those little slits in American society look elderly, but for various chance reasons, that's what those slits came to mean, so I started wearing flat-fronted pants. 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. 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. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? When language was like that, of course it changed a lot - fast - because once you said it, it was gone. That's the way words are, too. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? It seems kind of elliptical, like, would it be possible that I obtained? BORODITSKY: Yeah. They're supposed to be painting something very personal. Podcasters use the RadioPublic listener relationship platform to build lasting connections with fans. Today, we explore the many facets of this idea. Which I think is probably important with the reality that this edifice that you're teaching is constantly crumbling. That kind of detail may not appear. VEDANTAM: Well, that's kind of you, Lera. I'm . And you can even teach people to have a little bit of fun with the artifice. The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. Whats going on here? 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. 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. VEDANTAM: For more HIDDEN BRAIN, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. al (Eds. But the reason that it seems so elusive is because we don't really think about the, quote, unquote, "meaning" of things like our conversation-easing laughter. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Speaking German). Could this affect the way, you know, sexism, conscious or unconscious, operates in our world? 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 it's not just about how we think about time. Sociologist Lisa Wade believes the pervasive hookup culture on campuses today is different from that faced by previous generations. 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: (Laughter) All right, I think it might be time for me to confess one of my pet peeves. 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. Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through. And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. And we teach them, for example, to say that bridges and apples and all kinds of other things have the same prefix as women. BORODITSKY: And Russian is a language that has grammatical gender, and different days of the week have different genders for some reason. BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. MCWHORTER: Language is a parade, and nobody sits at a parade wishing that everybody would stand still. 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. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." They know which way is which. 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. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. 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. How do you balance the imperative of teaching correct usage? GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe watching Netflix or something. That's what it's all about. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. Stay with us. 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 was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. But if I give that same story to a Hebrew or an Arabic speaker, they would organize it from right to left. I had this cool experience when I was there. We recommend movies or books to a friend. Whats going on here? It goes in this pile. Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-being, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Lawrence S. Krieger, Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2004. 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. 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. 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 something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. al, Group Decision and Negotiation, 2008. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). So that, again, is a huge difference. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Which pile do you go in, right? Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. Newer episodes are unlikely to have a transcript as it takes us a few weeks to process and edit each transcript. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 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. Young people have always used language in new and different ways, and it's pretty much always driven older people crazy. I'm Shankar Vedantam. And if it was feminine, then you're likely to paint death as a woman. 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 In the second episode of our "Relationships 2.0" series, psychologist Do you ever struggle to communicate with your mom? Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. If the language stayed the way it was, it would be like a pressed flower in a book or, as I say, I think it would be like some inflatable doll rather than a person. 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. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. But might we allow that there's probably a part of all human beings that wants to look down on somebody else. Maybe it's even less than a hundred 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. They can be small differences but important in other ways. What Makes Lawyers Happy? 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. That said, if you hear one or two pieces of music that you really love, feel free to email us at [emailprotected] and well do our best to respond to your request. And then when I turned, this little window stayed locked on the landscape, but it turned in my mind's eye. Hidden Brain - Transcripts Hidden Brain - Transcripts Subscribe 435 episodes Share Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. 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 I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. 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. But can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? 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. to describe the world. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. Whats going on here? But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. We also look at how. I'm Shankar Vedantam. So I think it's an incredible tragedy that we're losing all of this linguistic diversity, all of this cultural diversity because it is human heritage. 4.62. We'll be back momentarily. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. 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. 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. We convince a colleague to take a different tactic at work. MCWHORTER: Yeah. Languages are not just tools to describe the world. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. Perceived Partner Responsiveness Scale (PPRS), by Harry T. Reis et. So if the word for death was masculine in your language, you were likely to paint death as a man. MCWHORTER: Exactly. 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? 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. What Do You Do When Things Go Right? And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter. MCWHORTER: Those are called contronyms, and literally has become a new contronym. She once visited an aboriginal community in northern Australia and found the language they spoke forced her mind to work in new ways. VEDANTAM: Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. And we're all going to have feelings like that. I know-uh (ph) is there, or something along the lines of babe-uh (ph). 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. 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. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. You can also connect directly with our sponsorship representative by emailing [emailprotected]. So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. He says there are things we can do to make sure our choices align with our deepest values. HIDDEN BRAIN < Lost in Translation: January 29, 20189:00 PM ET VEDANTAM: Well, that's kind of you, Lera. 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? And this is NPR. 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. I've always found that a very grating way to ask for something at a store. 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. LERA BORODITSKY: The categorization that language provides to you becomes real - becomes psychologically real. And, I mean, really, it sounds exactly like that. There was no way of transcribing an approximation of what people said and nobody would have thought of doing it. 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? 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. In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. So you may start with moving your southwest leg in, but then you have to move your northeast leg out. I'm Shankar Vedantam. The fun example I give my students is imagine playing the hokey pokey in a language like this. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. Of course, you also can't experience anything outside of time. If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it. Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. You may link to our content and copy and paste episode descriptions and Additional Resources into your invitations. 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. 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. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy. 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. All rights reserved. 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 And if that is true, then the educated person can look down on people who say Billy and me went to the store or who are using literally, quote, unquote, "wrong" and condemn them in the kinds of terms that once were ordinary for condemning black people or women or what have you. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore how unconscious bias can infect a culture and how a police shooting may say as much about a community as it does about individuals. VEDANTAM: So I want to talk about a debate that's raged in your field for many years. Whats going on here? MCWHORTER: You could have fun doing such a thing. You-uh (ph). I'm Shankar Vedantam. You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. That was somehow a dad's fashion, and that I should start wearing flat-fronted pants.
Scientists Who Never Married,
Florida Man September 8, 2008,
How Many Lularoe Consultants Are There 2021,
When Did Mike Connors Wife Die,
Butler University Operations,
Articles H