VEDANTAM: I love this analogy you have in the book where you mention how, you know, thinking that a word has only one meaning is like looking at a snapshot taken at one point in a person's life and saying this photograph represents the entirety of what this person looks like. If you're bilingual or multilingual, you may have noticed that different languages make you stretch in different ways. 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. 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? al (Eds. She shows how our conversational styles can cause We all know casual sex isn't about love. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." It's inherent. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. BORODITSKY: Actually, one of the first people to notice or suggest that this might be the case was a Russian linguist, Roman Jakobson. VEDANTAM: Many of us have dictionaries at home or at work, John. You're not going to do any of the things that are seen as a foundation of our technological society. 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. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. 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 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. For example, he might take a bunch of pictures of boys and girls and sort them and say, OK, this is a boy. In The Air We Breathe . UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking foreign language). When the con was exposed, its victims defended the con artists. There are different ways to be a psychologist. LERA BORODITSKY: The categorization that language provides to you becomes real - becomes psychologically real. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at Hidden Brain telling the stories of . Lera, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. And when I listen to people having their peeves, I don't think, stop it. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. Trusted by 5,200 companies and developers. Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, by Philip Tetlock, Psychology Review, 2002. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. I saw this bird's-eye view, and I was this little red dot. You can also connect directly with our sponsorship representative by emailing [emailprotected]. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In a lot of languages, there isn't. MCWHORTER: Those are called contronyms, and literally has become a new contronym. Perceived Partner Responsiveness Minimizes Defensive Reactions to Failure, by Peter A. Caprariello and Harry T. Reis, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2011. 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). Lera said there's still a lot of research to be done on this. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Speaking German). 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. Hidden Brain Claim By Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Podcasts RSS Web PODCAST SEARCH EPISODES COMMUNITY PODCASTER EDIT SHARE Listen Score LS 84 Global Rank TOP 0.01% ABOUT THIS PODCAST Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? We convince a colleague to take a different tactic at work. But I understand that in Spanish, this would come out quite differently. Young people have always used language in new and different ways, and it's pretty much always driven older people crazy. And then when I turned, this little window stayed locked on the landscape, but it turned in my mind's eye. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page, sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain. How do you balance the imperative of teaching correct usage? 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. And so language changed just like the clouds in the sky. So some languages don't have number words. He's also the author of the book, "Words On The Move: Why English Won't - And Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally).". UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). Newsletter: Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. See you next week. We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. Languages are not just tools to describe the world. And so I set myself the goal that I would learn English in a year, and I wouldn't speak Russian to anyone for that whole first year. All rights reserved. If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Copyright 2023 Steno. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. You can run experiments in a lab or survey people on the street. And then he would take a Polaroid of the kid and say, well, this is you. So in English, I might say that Sam (ph) broke the flute. JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt. So for example, grammatical gender - because grammatical gender applies to all nouns in your language, that means that language is shaping the way you think about everything that can be named by a noun. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). But I think that we should learn not to listen to people using natural language as committing errors because there's no such thing as making a mistake in your language if a critical mass of other people speaking your language are doing the same thing. VEDANTAM: Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. It's how we think about anything that's abstract, that's beyond our physical senses. 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. ADAM COLE, BYLINE: (Singing) You put your southwest leg in, and you shake it all about. 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. In this favorite episode from 2021, Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow explains why purpose isnt something to be found its somethi, It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. If a transcript is available, you'll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy. 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. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Additional Resources Book: Many people have this intuition that, oh, I could never learn that; I could never survive in a community like this. You're not going to do trigonometry. If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. Just saying hello was difficult. Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways w, Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Language as it evolved was just talking to an extent that can be very hard for we literate people to imagine. Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. Now I can stay oriented. And as soon as I saw that happen, I thought, oh, this makes it so much easier. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. MCWHORTER: Yes, Shankar, that's exactly it. He. But I find that people now usually use the word to mean very soon, as in we're going to board the plane momentarily. Women under about 30 in the United States, when they're excited or they're trying to underline a point, putting uh at the end of things. They know which way is which. So that's a measurement difference of 100 percent of performance. He's a defender of language on the move, but I wanted to know if there were things that irritated even him. But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Speaking foreign language). to describe the world. But actually, that's exactly how people in those communities come to stay oriented - is that they learn it, (laughter) right? 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? But they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. Whats going on here? In the final episode of our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. Lera is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? You can find all Hidden Brain episodes on our website. Of course, you also can't experience anything outside of time. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. They're more likely to say, well, it's a formal property of the language. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. MCWHORTER: Exactly. Of course, if you can't keep track of exactly seven, you can't count. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often, untranslatable. So if you took a bunch of those tendencies, you could make up, say, the English of 50 years from now, but some of the things would just be complete chance. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. In this favorite 2021 episode, psychologist Adam Grant pushes back against the benefits of certainty, and describes the magic that unfolds when we challenge our own deeply-held beliefs. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Refusing to Apologize can have Psychological Benefits, by Tyler Okimoto, Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick, European Journal of Social Psychology, 2013. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. And then question 21 was, is this person a man or a woman? 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. I'm Shankar Vedantam. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Right. I said, you know, this weird thing happened. 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. 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. Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. Those sorts things tend to start with women. And so I was trying to keep track of which way is which. I think it's a really fascinating question for future research. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. VEDANTAM: One of the points you make in the book of course is that the evolution of words and their meanings is what gives us this flowering of hundreds or thousands of languages. And we teach them, for example, to say that bridges and apples and all kinds of other things have the same prefix as women. 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. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? You may also use the Hidden Brain name in invitations sent to a small group of personal contacts for such purposes as a listening club or discussion forum. 00:55:27 Hidden Brain Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Each language comprises the ideas that have been worked out in a culture over thousands of generations, and that is an incredible amount of cultural heritage and complexity of thought that disappears whenever a language dies. You couldn't have predicted this I know-uh move-uh (ph). No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started.