This week, a story about a con with a twist. Newer episodes are unlikely to have a transcript as it takes us a few weeks to process and edit each transcript. Refusing to Apologize can have Psychological Benefits, by Tyler Okimoto, Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick, European Journal of Social Psychology, 2013. But she told me a story about a conversation she had with a native speaker of Indonesian. VEDANTAM: I understand that there's also been studies looking at how artists who speak different languages might paint differently depending on how their languages categorize, you know, concepts like a mountain or death. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page, sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain. Languages are not just tools. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. The fun example I give my students is imagine playing the hokey pokey in a language like this. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Speaking German). Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. You know, I was trying to stay oriented because people were treating me like I was pretty stupid for not being oriented, and that hurt. BORODITSKY: Yeah, that's true. 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. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. If you're bilingual or multilingual, you may have noticed that different languages make you stretch in different ways. That's because change is hard. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? 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? So LOL was an internet abbreviation meaning laugh out loud or laughing out loud, but LOL in common usage today doesn't necessarily mean hysterical laughter. All episodes of Hidden Brain - Chartable Hidden Brain Episodes Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. 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. So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. 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You know, we spend years teaching children about how to use language correctly. How does that sound now? But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? But we have plenty of words like that in English where it doesn't bother us at all. And so somebody will say, well, who was it who you thought was going to give you this present? 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. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. We convince a colleague to take a different tactic at work. 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. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. And if the word bridge is masculine in your language, you're more likely to say that bridges are strong and long and towering - these kind of more stereotypically masculine words. Shankar Vedantam, host of the popular podcast "Hidden Brain" has been reporting on human behavior for decades. I think that the tone that many people use when they're complaining that somebody says Billy and me went to the store is a little bit incommensurate with the significance of the issue. MCWHORTER: No, because LOL was an expression; it was a piece of language, and so you knew that its meaning was going to change. The Effects of Conflict Types, Dimensions, and Emergent States on Group Outcomes, by Karen Jehn et. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. You're not going to do trigonometry. I've always found that a very grating way to ask for something at a store. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. 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. In English, actually, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, I broke my arm. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). So what happens is that once literally comes to feel like it means really, people start using it in figurative constructions such as I was literally dying of thirst. Yes! The categorization that language provides to you becomes real, becomes psychologically real. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness Why do some companies become household names, while others flame out? 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. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. 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. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through. 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. It can be almost counterintuitive to listen to how much giggling and laughing you do in ordinary - actually rather plain exchanges with people. So one possibility for bilinguals would be that they just have two different minds inside - right? 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. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). But can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. Perceived Partner Responsiveness Minimizes Defensive Reactions to Failure, by Peter A. Caprariello and Harry T. Reis, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2011. If you prefer to listen through a podcast app, here are links to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher. 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. Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? VEDANTAM: Languages seem to have different ways of communicating agency. 00:55:27 Hidden Brain Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button BORODITSKY: Well, there may not be a word for left to refer to a left leg. BORODITSKY: And Russian is a language that has grammatical gender, and different days of the week have different genders for some reason. The best Podcast API to search all podcasts and episodes. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? So I think it's something that is quite easy for humans to learn if you just have a reason to want to do it. Imagine you meet somebody, they're 39 and you take their picture. It goes in this pile. Updated privacy policy: We have made some changes to our Privacy Policy. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. VEDANTAM: If you're bilingual or you're learning a new language, you get what Jennifer experienced - the joy of discovering a phrase that helps you perfectly encapsulate a feeling or an experience. Whats going on here? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not. Learn more. And it's sad that we're not going to be able to make use of them and learn them and celebrate them. Because it was. They shape our place in it. It's too high. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. 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. al (Eds. But does a person who says that really deserve the kind of sneering condemnation that you often see? It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. 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. 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? Of course, eventually, the Finnish kids also figured it out because language isn't the only source of that information, otherwise it would be quite surprising for the Finns to be able to continue to reproduce themselves. 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. In many languages, nouns are gendered. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . And it sounds a little bit abrupt and grabby like you're going to get something instead of being given. Additional Resources Book: It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. Welcome to HIDDEN BRAIN. 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. It's inherent. 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. We can't help, as literate people, thinking that the real language is something that sits still with letters written all nice and pretty on a page that can exist for hundreds of years, but that's not what language has ever been. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. It turns out, as you point out, that in common usage, literally literally means the opposite of literally. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. All sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain are managed by SXM Media. 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. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. 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. And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. MCWHORTER: Exactly. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. and pick the featured episodes for your show. In the United States, we often praise people with strong convictions, and look down on those who express doubt or hesitation. So in English, I might say that Sam (ph) broke the flute. I'm . Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. 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. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. Whats going on here? 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. It's exactly how old English turned into modern English. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. And so, for example, can I get a hamburger? If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. 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. 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. But time doesn't have to flow with respect to the body. 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. We talk with psychologist Iris Mauss, who explains why happiness can seem more el, When we want something very badly, it can be hard to see warning signs that might be obvious to other people. 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.