How does that sound now? 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. I'm Shankar Vedanta. 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? And it ended up becoming less a direct reflection of hearty laughter than an indication of the kind of almost subconscious laughter that we do in any kind of conversation that's meant as friendly. BORODITSKY: Yeah. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). (Speaking Japanese). Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Writing has come along relatively recently. So if the word for death was masculine in your language, you were likely to paint death as a man. Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. Watch Your Mouth | Hidden Brain : NPR But also, I started wondering, is it possible that my friend here was imagining a person without a gender for this whole time that we've been talking about them, right? VEDANTAM: For more HIDDEN BRAIN, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). Please note that your continued use of the RadioPublic services following the posting of such changes will be deemed an acceptance of this update. VEDANTAM: If you have teenagers or work closely with young people, chances are you'll be mystified by their conversations or even annoyed. And so language changed just like the clouds in the sky. 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. 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? The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, by Karen Jehn et. When language was like that, of course it changed a lot - fast - because once you said it, it was gone. But what if there's a whole category of people in your life whose impact is overlooked? VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Interpersonal Chemistry: What Is It, How Does It Emerge, and How Does it Operate? All rights reserved. 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. They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. Imagine how we would sound to them if they could hear us. The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. Imagine this. and pick the featured episodes for your show. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. 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. Parents and peers influence our major life choices, but they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. 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. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. Hidden Brain on Apple Podcasts But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. Hidden Brain - You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose - Google Podcasts So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. BORODITSKY: It's certainly possible. Shankar Vedantam, host of the popular podcast "Hidden Brain" has been reporting on human behavior for decades. 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). Whats going on here? Read the episode transcript. All sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain are managed by SXM Media. 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. Laughter: The Best Medicine | Hidden Brain : NPR And they have correlated this with gender features in the language, just like the ones you were talking about. Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. And, I mean, really, it sounds exactly like that. And nobody wishes that we hadn't developed our modern languages today from the ancient versions. Lera said there's still a lot of research to be done on this. 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. And it really is an illusion that what language is, is something that sits still. You-uh (ph). Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. VEDANTAM: Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. What Do You Do When Things Go Right? So the way you say hi in Kuuk Thaayorre is to say, which way are you heading? Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. We convince a colleague to take a different tactic at work. We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. 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. 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. That's the way words are, too. If you, grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. There are signs it's getting even harder. 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. And it's not just about how we think about time. As someone who works in media, I often find that people who can write well are often people who know how to think well, so I often equate clarity of writing with clarity of thought. BORODITSKY: The way to say my name properly in Russian is (speaking foreign language), so I don't make people say that. And some people would say it's a lot more because it's, you know, irrecoverable and not reduplicated elsewhere. 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. (LAUGHTER) VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts. Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, by Philip Tetlock, Psychology Review, 2002. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often, untranslatable. 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. They shape our place in it. So new words are as likely to evolve as old ones. 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. I just don't want to do it. 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. Hidden Brain - Transcripts You also see huge differences in other domains like number. 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. 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 JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. FEB 27, 2023; Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button . Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. Copyright 2023 Steno. It's just how I feel. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . 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). VEDANTAM: Many of us have dictionaries at home or at work, John. That kind of detail may not appear. Hidden Brain - Google Podcasts They are ways of seeing the world. And to our surprise, 78 percent of the time, we could predict the gender of the personification based on the grammatical gender of the noun in the artist's native language. You can't smell or taste time. If you prefer to listen through a podcast app, here are links to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher. If you still cant find the episode, try looking through our most recent shows on our homepage. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. BORODITSKY: That's a wonderful question. 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. 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. 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. Young people have always used language in new and different ways, and it's pretty much always driven older people crazy. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Right. This is Hidden Brain. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. So that, again, is a huge difference. Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button. 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. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Going the Distance on the Pacific Crest Trail: The Vital Role of Identified Motivation, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Motivation Science, 2020. Whats going on here? Elon Musk's brain chips, starvation in Somalia and Greek anguish 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? Interpersonal Chemistry: What Is It, How Does It Emerge, and How Does it Operate? I'm . Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. And I would really guess that in a few decades men will be doing it, too. And it sounds a little bit abrupt and grabby like you're going to get something instead of being given. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. Newsletter: "Most of the laughter we produce is purely . That's how much cultural heritage is lost. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. This is NPR. Because were a small team, we dont have a publicly-available list of every piece of music that we use. 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. 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. 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. And they said, well, of course. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. You would never know, for example, that - give you an example I've actually been thinking about. Those sorts things tend to start with women. 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. BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. They can be small differences but important in other ways. And when I listen to people having their peeves, I don't think, stop it. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. 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. 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. What turns out to be the case is that it's something in between - that bilinguals don't really turn off the languages they're not using when they're not using them. Perceived Partner Responsiveness Minimizes Defensive Reactions to Failure, by Peter A. Caprariello and Harry T. Reis, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2011. As soon as you move the leg, it becomes a different leg. 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. We're speaking today with cognitive science professor Lera Boroditsky about language. So some languages don't have number words. They often feel angry about it, and you think this anger is actually telling. Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. This week, in the final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes what happens when we stop to savor the beauty in nature, art, or simply the moral courage of those around us. 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. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). It's how we think about anything that's abstract, that's beyond our physical senses. You can run experiments in a lab or survey people on the street. If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. I know-uh (ph) is there, or something along the lines of babe-uh (ph). These relationships can help you feel cared for and connected. Flight attendant Steven Slater slides from a plane after quitting. Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, by Shannon M. Smith & Harry Reis, Personal Relationships, 2012. Thank you! If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter.