UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. Learn more. Only a couple hundred languages - or if you want to be conservative about it, a hundred languages - are written in any real way and then there are 6,800 others. A brief history of relationship research in social psychology, by Harry T. Reis, in Handbook of the History of Social Psychology, 2011. But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. Now, many people hear that and they think, well, that's no good because now literally can mean its opposite. 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. Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. VEDANTAM: One of the things I found really interesting is that the evolution of words and language is constant. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. In the second episode of our "Relationships 2.0" series, psychologist Do you ever struggle to communicate with your mom? In the final episode of our Relationships 2.0 series, psychologistHarry Reis says theres another ingredient to successful relationships thats every bit as important as love. 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. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. Growing up, I understood this word to mean for a very short time, as in John McWhorter was momentarily surprised. And I thought, wow, first of all, it would be almost impossible to have a conversation like that in English where you hadn't already revealed the gender of the person because you have to use he or she. And so what that means is if someone was sitting facing south, they would lay out the story from left to right. You couldn't have predicted this I know-uh move-uh (ph). Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. You-uh (ph). (LAUGHTER) VEDANTAM: In the English-speaking world, she goes by Lera Boroditsky. What do you do for christmas with your family? 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. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. out. Official Website Airs on: SUN 7pm-8pm 55:27 Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Feb 27 Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. 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 a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date. I think language can certainly be a contributor into the complex system of our thinking about gender. And there are all kinds of interesting, useful, eye-opening ideas that exist in all of the world's languages. 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 Opening scene of Lady Bird Flight attendant Steven Slater slides from a plane after quitting Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. 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. So if the word for death was masculine in your language, you were likely to paint death as a man. And then 10 years later when they're 49, you say, well, that picture of you at 39 is what you really are and whatever's happened to you since then is some sort of disaster or something that shouldn't have happened. 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). For more of our Relationships 2.0 series, check out one of our most popular episodes ever about why marriages are so hard. Imagine this. Sociologist Lisa Wade believes the pervasive hookup culture on campuses today is different from that faced by previous generations. If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter. Transcript - How language shapes the way we think by Lera Boroditsky.docx, The Singapore Quality Award requires organisations to show outstanding results, The following lots of Commodity Z were available for sale during the year, b The authors identify 5 types of misinformation in the abstract but discuss 7, 17 Chow N Asian value and aged care Geriatr Gerontol Int 20044521 5 18 Chow NWS, Writing Results and Discussion Example.docx, A 6 month old infant weighing 15 lb is admitted with a diagnosis of dehydration, ng_Question_-_Assessment_1_-_Proposing_Evidence-Based_Change.doc, The Social Security checks the Government sends to grandmothers are considered A, 03 If a covered member participates on the clients attest engagement or is an, AURETR143 Student Assessment - Theory v1.1.docx. 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. 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. There's a way of speaking right. 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? something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. This is NPR. BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. BORODITSKY: And Russian is a language that has grammatical gender, and different days of the week have different genders for some reason. Newsletter: Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. And a girl goes in this pile. In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. If a transcript is available, you'll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. 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. We recommend movies or books to a friend. 00:55:27 Hidden Brain Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button This week on Hidden Brain, psychologist Adam Grant describes the magic th And you say that dictionaries in some ways paint an unrealistic portrait of a language. Perceived Partner Responsiveness Scale (PPRS), by Harry T. Reis et. The dictionary says both uses are correct. And this is NPR. We'll be back momentarily. I'm Shankar Vedantam. They can be small differences but important in other ways. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? BORODITSKY: So quite literally, to get past hello, you have to know which way you're heading. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness can seem more elusive the harder we chase it, and what we can do instead to build a lasting sense of contentment. 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. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. 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. VEDANTAM: Our conversation made me wonder about what this means on a larger scale. 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. 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. Transcript 585: In Defense of Ignorance Note: This American Life is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. ), The Sourcebook of Listening Research: Methodology and Measures, 2018. 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. Sometimes you just have to suck it up. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. You would give a different description to mark that it was not intentional. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. Another possibility is that it's a fully integrated mind, and it just incorporates ideas and distinctions from both languages or from many languages if you speak more than two. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. All rights reserved. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, by Shannon M. Smith & Harry Reis, Personal Relationships, 2012. Welcome to HIDDEN BRAIN. 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. Well never sell your personal information. 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? LERA BORODITSKY: The categorization that language provides to you becomes real - becomes psychologically real. 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. See you next week. 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. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 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. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. VEDANTAM: Around the world, we often hear that many languages are dying, and there are a few megalanguages that are growing and expanding in all kinds of ways. And I don't think any of us are thinking that it's a shame that we're not using the language of Beowulf. And then if you are going to be that elliptical, why use the casual word get? There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. 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. To request permission, please send an email to [emailprotected]. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? (Speaking Japanese). UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking foreign language). And he started by asking Russian-speaking students to personify days of the week. So you can't see time. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: (Speaking foreign language). BORODITSKY: It's certainly possible. We'd say, oh, well, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales or whatever. Think back to the last time someone convinced you to do something you didn't want to do, or to spend money you didn't want to spend. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. We'll also look at how languages evolve, and why we're sometimes resistant to those changes. 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? He's a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and the author of the book "Words On The Move: Why English Won't - And Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally).". JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. 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? VEDANTAM: Many of us have dictionaries at home or at work, John. 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. When the con was exposed, its victims defended the con artists. Or feel like you and your spouse sometimes speak different languages? They give us a sense that the meanings of words are fixed, when in fact they're not. 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. 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. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Right. John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Because it was. 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. I've always found that a very grating way to ask for something at a store. So the question for us has been, how do we build these ideas? Languages are not just tools to describe the world. Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, by Philip Tetlock, Psychology Review, 2002. 437 Episodes Produced by Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam Website. So there are some differences that are as big as you can possibly measure. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? They shape our place in it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). In a lot of languages, there isn't. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. How does that sound now? So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. We love the idea of Hidden Brain helping to spark discussions in your community. So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. MCWHORTER: Oh, yeah, I'm a human being. And as soon as I saw that happen, I thought, oh, this makes it so much easier. I think that it's better to think of language as a parade that either you're watching, or frankly, that you're in, especially because the people are never going to stand still. And dead languages never change, and some of us might prefer those. 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. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. So it's easy to think, oh, I could imagine someone without thinking explicitly about what they're wearing. For more on decision-making, check out our episode on how to make wiser choices. 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. But might we allow that there's probably a part of all human beings that wants to look down on somebody else. We don't want to be like that. Now I can stay oriented. This week, we're going to bring you a conversation I had in front of a live audience with Richard Thaler, taped on Halloween at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D. Richard is a professor of behavioral sciences and economics at the University of Chicago and is a well-known author. It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts. 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. So - but if I understand correctly, I would be completely at sea if I visited this aboriginal community in Australia because I have often absolutely no idea where I am or where I'm going. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. In this week's My Unsung Hero, Sarah Feldman thanks someone for their gift more than 20 years ago. 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? This week, in the final . VEDANTAM: Languages orient us to the world. What do you think the implications are - if you buy the idea that languages are a very specific and unique way of seeing the world, of perceiving reality, what are the implications of so many languages disappearing during our time? They shape our place in it. People do need to be taught what the socially acceptable forms are. You know, it's Lady Liberty and Lady Justice. 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.