Copyright 2023 Steno. They are ways of seeing the world. 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. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Languages are not just tools. 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. So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. There was no way of transcribing an approximation of what people said and nobody would have thought of doing it. Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. 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. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. So the way you say hi in Kuuk Thaayorre is to say, which way are you heading? You would give a different description to mark that it was not intentional. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? There's been a little bit of research from economists actually looking at this. This week, a story about a con with a twist. ROB LOWE: (As Chris Traeger) Dr. Harris, you are literally the meanest person I have ever met. Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. Subscribe: iOS | Android | Spotify | RSS | Amazon | Stitcher Latest Episodes: Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button All sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain are managed by SXM Media. 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. And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. So act like Monday. Whats going on here? BORODITSKY: Thank you so much for having me. And then he would take a Polaroid of the kid and say, well, this is you. VEDANTAM: For more HIDDEN BRAIN, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. How do you balance the imperative of teaching correct usage? It goes in this pile. Today's episode was the first in our You 2.0 series, which runs all this month. But things can be important not just because they're big. We love the idea of Hidden Brain helping to spark discussions in your community. VEDANTAM: Our conversation made me wonder about what this means on a larger scale. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) If you're so upset about it, maybe you can think of a way to help her. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. That's because change is hard. BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." It's exactly how old English turned into modern English. Well never sell your personal information. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. That's what it's all about. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. So when the perfect woman started writing him letters, it seemed too good to be true. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? VEDANTAM: Still don't have a clear picture? We convince a colleague to take a different tactic at work. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. 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. 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? BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. As soon as you move the leg, it becomes a different leg. Newsletter: Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. Hidden Brain Feb 23, 2023 Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. 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. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. I decided it was very important for me to learn English because I had always been a very verbal kid, and I'd - was always the person who recited poems in front of the school and, you know, led assemblies and things like that. So if the word for death was masculine in your language, you were likely to paint death as a man. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. And what he noticed was that when people were trying to act like Monday, they would act like a man. 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. But if you seed a watermelon, nobody assumes that you're taking seeds and putting them in the watermelon, you're taking them out. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. 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 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? She once visited an aboriginal community in northern Australia and found the language they spoke forced her mind to work in new ways. VEDANTAM: I asked Lera how describing the word chair or the word bridge as masculine or feminine changes the way that speakers of different languages think about those concepts. What do you do for christmas with your family? Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Not without written permission. Athletic Scholarships are Negatively Associated with Intrinsic Motivation for Sports, Even Decades Later: Evidence for Long-Term Undermining, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Arlen C. Moller, Motivation Science, 2020. This is Hidden Brain. BORODITSKY: That's a wonderful question. And so somebody will say, well, who was it who you thought was going to give you this present? That hadn't started then. 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. All of the likes and, like, literallies (ph) might sometimes grate on your nerves, but John McWhorter says the problem might be with you, not with the way other people speak. I said, you know, this weird thing happened. MCWHORTER: No, because LOL was an expression; it was a piece of language, and so you knew that its meaning was going to change. John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. It's never going to. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We call this language Gumbuzi. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. And I would really guess that in a few decades men will be doing it, too. And one thing that we've noticed is that around the world, people rely on space to organize time. Please note that your continued use of the RadioPublic services following the posting of such changes will be deemed an acceptance of this update. I think it's a really fascinating question for future research. 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. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. So for example, you might not imagine the color shirt that he's wearing or the kinds of shoes that he's wearing. And if they were facing east, they would make the cards come toward them, toward the body. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. 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. For example, he might take a bunch of pictures of boys and girls and sort them and say, OK, this is a boy. Podcasters use the RadioPublic listener relationship platform to build lasting connections with fans. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. 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. Updated privacy policy: We have made some changes to our Privacy Policy. 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. It's just how I feel. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. And this is NPR. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. 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. It seems kind of elliptical, like, would it be possible that I obtained? MCWHORTER: Yeah. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. 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. And if you can enjoy it as a parade instead of wondering why people keep walking instead of just sitting on chairs and blowing on their tubas and not moving, then you have more fun. We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. Yes! And if it was feminine, then you're likely to paint death as a woman. ), The Sourcebook of Listening Research: Methodology and Measures, 2018. But can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? Hidden Brain: You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose on Apple Podcasts 51 min You 2.0: Cultivating Your Purpose Hidden Brain Social Sciences Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. Toula and Ian's different backgrounds become apparent on one of their very first dates. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). What Do You Do When Things Go Right? Whats going on here? 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. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Right. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. You can't touch time. They often feel angry about it, and you think this anger is actually telling. 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. Lera, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. How big are the differences that we're talking about, and how big do you think the implications are for the way we see the world? So one possibility for bilinguals would be that they just have two different minds inside - right? VEDANTAM: So I want to talk about a debate that's raged in your field for many years. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, by Adam Grant, 2021. 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? They're more likely to see through this little game that language has played on them. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? There's not a bigger difference you could find than 100 percent of the measurement space. BORODITSKY: Well, I think it's a terrible tragedy. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. June 20, 2020 This week on Hidden Brain, research about prejudices so deeply buried, we often doubt their existence. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? 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. To request permission, please send an email to [emailprotected]. Imagine this. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. So it's easy to think, oh, I could imagine someone without thinking explicitly about what they're wearing. And then if you are going to be that elliptical, why use the casual word get? 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. Newer episodes are unlikely to have a transcript as it takes us a few weeks to process and edit each transcript. 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. Those sorts things tend to start with women. 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. So to give you a very quick wrap-up is that some effects are big, but even when effects aren't big, they can be interesting or important for other reasons - either because they are very broad or because they apply to things that we think are really important in our culture. BORODITSKY: Well, you would be at sea at first. 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. podcast pages. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. Now I can stay oriented. 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. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. He says that buying into false beliefs, in other words, deluding ourselves can . . Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. If you, grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your. 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. FDA blocks human trials for Neuralink brain implants. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . You have to do it in order to fit into the culture and to speak the language. But it's a lovely example of how language can guide you to discover something about the world that might take you longer to discover if you didn't have that information in language. The only question was in which way. 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. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. So you can't know how the words are going to come out, but you can take good guesses. Many people have this intuition that, oh, I could never learn that; I could never survive in a community like this. What a cynical thing to say, but that doesn't mean that it might not be true. MCWHORTER: Language is a parade, and nobody sits at a parade wishing that everybody would stand still. And so language changed just like the clouds in the sky. : 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. And so what that means is if someone was sitting facing south, they would lay out the story from left to right. 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. 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).". So it's mendokusai. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. In this month's Radio Replay, we ask whether the structure of the languages we speak can change the way we see the world. 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 If you're just joining us, I'm talking to John McWhorter. 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. MCWHORTER: Yes, Shankar, that's exactly it. Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, by Philip Tetlock, Psychology Review, 2002. And they asked me all kinds of questions about them. VEDANTAM: Languages seem to have different ways of communicating agency. 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. So we've done a lot of studies looking at how speakers of Spanish and German and Russian actually think about objects that have opposite grammatical genders. So these speakers have internalized this idea from their language, and they believe that it's right. This week, we continue our look at the science of influence with psychologist Robert Cialdini, and explore how these techniques can be used for both good and evil. Maybe it's, even less than 100 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, 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. VEDANTAM: Time is another concept that is also central to the way we see and describe the world. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where. So the question for us has been, how do we build these ideas? In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at Hidden Brain telling the stories of . This is a database with millions of art images. All rights reserved. He. And a girl goes in this pile. - so one skull but two different minds, and you shift from one to the other. And it really is an illusion that what language is, is something that sits still. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking foreign language). 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. Transcript Podcast: Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. There was no such thing as looking up what it originally meant. 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. He's a defender of language on the move, but I wanted to know if there were things that irritated even him. BORODITSKY: Yeah. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy thats all around us. That's the way words are, too. Parents and peers influence our major life choices, but they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. 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. All of these are very subjective things. I'm Shankar Vedantam. You can support Hidden Brain indirectly by giving to your local NPR station, or you can provide direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page. And they said, well, of course. You can't smell or taste time. 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. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy. Please do not republish our logo, name or content digitally or distribute to more than 10 people without written permission. 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. "Most of the laughter we produce is purely . What Makes Lawyers Happy? This is NPR. Read the episode transcript. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. And you've conducted experiments that explore how different conceptions of time in different languages shape the way we think about the world and shape the way we think about stories. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kennon M. Sheldon, George Washington Law Review, 2015. Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. BORODITSKY: Yeah. 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. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. 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. So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. Shankar Vedantam, host of the popular podcast "Hidden Brain" has been reporting on human behavior for decades. But might we allow that there's probably a part of all human beings that wants to look down on somebody else. You can find all Hidden Brain episodes on our website. 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. And it's not just about how we think about time. 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. 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. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. 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?
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