Happiness 2.0: Surprising Sources of Joy | Hidden Brain Media If you prefer to listen through a podcast app, here are links to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher. ROB LOWE: (As Chris Traeger) Dr. Harris, you are literally the meanest person I have ever met. BORODITSKY: One thing that we've noticed is this idea of time, of course, is very highly constructed by our minds and our brains. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. So you might say, there's an ant on your northwest leg. And so somebody will say, well, who was it who you thought was going to give you this present? I had this cool experience when I was there. What we think of today as a word undergoing some odd development or people using some new construction is exactly how Latin turned into French. There's a lowlier part of our nature that grammar allows us to vent in the absence of other ways to do it that have not been available for some decades for a lot of us. 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. Maybe they like the same kinds of food, or enjoy the same hobbies. Hidden Brain on Apple Podcasts He says there are things we can do to make sure our choices align with our deepest values. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. All rights reserved. We also look at how. The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. And we teach them, for example, to say that bridges and apples and all kinds of other things have the same prefix as women. 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. Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. 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. We'll be back momentarily. 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 that's a measurement difference of 100 percent of performance. 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. 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. But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. When we come back, we dig further into the way that gender works in different languages and the pervasive effects that words can play in our lives. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, by Jamil Zaki, Niall Bolger, Kevin Ochsner, Psychological Science, 2008. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. Now, many people hear that and they think, well, that's no good because now literally can mean its opposite. 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. Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-being: The Self-Concordance Model, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Andrew J. Elliot, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999. We recommend movies or books to a friend. Put this image on your website to promote the show -, Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through, Report inappropriate content or request to remove this page. 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. 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. If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. This week, a story about a con with a twist. So LOL starts out as meaning hardy-har-har (ph), but then it becomes something more abstract. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. 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. BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). 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. Updated privacy policy: We have made some changes to our Privacy Policy. That was somehow a dad's fashion, and that I should start wearing flat-fronted pants. 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. Imagine this. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. VEDANTAM: As someone who spends a lot of his time listening to language evolve, John hears a lot of slang. So that's an example of how languages and cultures construct how we use space to organize time, to organize this very abstract thing that's otherwise kind of hard to get our hands on and think about. Whats going on here? : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kennon M. Sheldon, George Washington Law Review, 2015. You also see huge differences in other domains like number. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. But time doesn't have to flow with respect to the body. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. But things can be important not just because they're big. 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. So you can't see time. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Because were a small team, we dont have a publicly-available list of every piece of music that we use. This is Hidden Brain. If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. Hidden Brain. Mistakes and errors are what turned Latin into French. BORODITSKY: And when they were trying to act like Wednesday, they would act like a woman BORODITSKY: Which accords with grammatical gender in Russian. Not without written permission. And I kind of sheepishly confessed this to someone there. Are the spoken origins of language one reason that words so often seem to be on the move? Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. Copyright 2023 Steno. You're not going to do trigonometry. L. Gable, et. So for example, if Sam grabbed a hammer and struck the flute in anger, that would be one description, like, Sam broke the flute. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. And I did that. MCWHORTER: Those are called contronyms, and literally has become a new contronym. Read the episode transcript. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. 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. It might irritate you slightly to hear somebody say something like, I need less books instead of fewer books. When language was like that, of course it changed a lot - fast - because once you said it, it was gone. 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. something, even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. 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 a girl goes in this pile. So it's mendokusai. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. I've always found that a very grating way to ask for something at a store. But actually, that's exactly how people in those communities come to stay oriented - is that they learn it, (laughter) right? The dictionary says both uses are correct. 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. MCWHORTER: Yes, Shankar, that's exactly it. And, I mean, really, it sounds exactly like that. 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. Learn more. BORODITSKY: Well, I think it's a terrible tragedy. Perspectives on the Situation by Harry T. Reis, and John G. Holmes, in The Oxford Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012. in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. 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. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This is NPR. 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. 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. The size of this effect really quite surprised me because I would have thought at the outset that, you know, artists are these iconoclasts. 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. In the final episode of our "Mind Reading 2.0" series, we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. And if they were facing east, they would make the cards come toward them, toward the body. VEDANTAM: How the languages we speak shape the way we think and why the words we use are always in flux. We'll begin with police shootings of unarmed Black men. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Hidden Brain: The NPR Archive : NPR - NPR.org That hadn't started then. Please note that your continued use of the RadioPublic services following the posting of such changes will be deemed an acceptance of this update. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy. 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. You can't touch time. But, you know, John, something gnaws at me every time I hear the word used wrong. Watch Your Mouth | Hidden Brain : NPR : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? 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. 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. Elon Musk's brain chips, starvation in Somalia and Greek anguish 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. And when I listen to people having their peeves, I don't think, stop it. Or feel like you and your spouse sometimes speak different languages? Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. It's never happened. And so even though I insist that there is no scientific basis for rejecting some new word or some new meaning or some new construction, I certainly have my visceral biases. In this month's Radio Replay, we ask whether the structure of the languages we speak can change the way we see the world. 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. And if people heard the sounds a little differently and produced them a little differently, if there were new meanings of words - very quickly whatever the original meaning was wouldn't be remembered. 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. The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-being, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Lawrence S. Krieger, Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2004. Can I get some chicken? And it's sad that we're not going to be able to make use of them and learn them and celebrate them. 00:51:58 - We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. But somehow they've managed, not just by randomly bumping into each other. 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. All of these are very subjective things. Languages are not just tools. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? We lobby a neighbor to vote for our favored political candidate. BORODITSKY: Yeah. The best Podcast API to search all podcasts and episodes. MCWHORTER: Yes, that's exactly true. 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. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often untranslatable. What techniques did that person use to persuade you? Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. JENNIFER GEACONE-CRUZ: My name is Jennifer Geacone-Cruz. He didn't like that people were shortening the words. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. 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. : 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. It's too high. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. 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. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). Welcome to HIDDEN BRAIN. 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. For more on decision-making, check out our episode on how to make wiser choices. You can't know, but you can certainly know that if could listen to people 50 years from now, they'd sound odd. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. We're speaking today with cognitive science professor Lera Boroditsky about language. That is utterly arbitrary that those little slits in American society look elderly, but for various chance reasons, that's what those slits came to mean, so I started wearing flat-fronted pants. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . The only question was in which way. But the reason that it seems so elusive is because we don't really think about the, quote, unquote, "meaning" of things like our conversation-easing laughter. What a cynical thing to say, but that doesn't mean that it might not be true. Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. That's because change is hard. 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).". (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PARKS AND RECREATION"). We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, HOST:This is HIDDEN BRAIN. But might we allow that there's probably a part of all human beings that wants to look down on somebody else. Language is something that's spoken, and spoken language especially always keeps changing. 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. It should be thought of as fun. When we come back, I'm going to ask you about why languages change and whether there are hidden rules that shape why some words are more likely to evolve than others. Which pile do you go in, right? Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. MCWHORTER: Oh, yeah, I'm a human being. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. But if I give that same story to a Hebrew or an Arabic speaker, they would organize it from right to left. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. Additional Resources Book: VEDANTAM: One of the ultimate messages I took from your work is that, you know, we can choose to have languages that are alive or languages that are dead. And some people would say it's a lot more because it's, you know, irrecoverable and not reduplicated elsewhere. It goes in this pile. 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. That's the way words are, too. 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. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? 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. ADAM COLE, BYLINE: (Singing) You put your southwest leg in, and you shake it all about. BORODITSKY: The way to say my name properly in Russian is (speaking foreign language), so I don't make people say that. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). And so somebody says something literally, somebody takes a point literally. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. VEDANTAM: John McWhorter, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. Hidden Brain | Hidden Brain Media 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. Relationships 2.0: What Makes Relationships Thrive | Hidden Brain Media Language was talk. 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? Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. Hidden Brain: You, But Better on Apple Podcasts UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Right. If you're a monolingual speaker of one of these languages, you're very likely to say that the word chair is masculine because chairs are, in fact, masculine, right? You have to do it in order to fit into the culture and to speak the language. Listen on the Reuters app. 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. They can be small differences but important in other ways. 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. 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. In this week's My Unsung Hero, Sarah Feldman thanks someone for their gift more than 20 years ago. I'm Shankar Vedantam. They often feel angry about it, and you think this anger is actually telling. Whats going on here? And to arrive in a new place where you can't tell a joke and can't express an idea - oh, it's just really painful because you feel like your whole self is hiding inside and no one can see it. Later things are on the right. But what most people mean is that there'll be slang, that there'll be new words for new things and that some of those words will probably come from other languages. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. 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. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? And nobody wishes that we hadn't developed our modern languages today from the ancient versions. 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. We don't want to be like that. So in terms of the size of differences, there are certainly effects that are really, really big. Whats going on here? VEDANTAM: If you have teenagers or work closely with young people, chances are you'll be mystified by their conversations or even annoyed. And if you don't have a word for exactly seven, it actually becomes very, very hard to keep track of exactly seven. 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? 4.62. You know, endings are going to tend to drop off. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. Parents and peers influence our major life choices, but they can also steer us in directions that leave us deeply unsatisfied. All sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain are managed by SXM Media. You can search for the episode or browse all episodes on our Archive Page. But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. And there are consequences for how people think about events, what they notice when they see accidents. All rights reserved. You can run experiments in a lab or survey people on the street. And if you teach them that forks go with women, they start to think that forks are more feminine. Parents and peers influence our major life choices. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking foreign language). 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. native tongue without even thinking about it. Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live, by Kennon M. Sheldon, 2022. Special thanks to Adam Cole, who wrote and performed our rendition of "The Hokey Pokey." As you're going about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. But it's so hard to feel that partly because our brains are on writing, as I say in the book. HIDDEN BRAIN < Lost in Translation: January 29, 20189:00 PM ET VEDANTAM: Well, that's kind of you, Lera. - so one skull but two different minds, and you shift from one to the other. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. Toula and Ian's different backgrounds become apparent on one of their very first dates. She shows how our conversational styles can cause We all know casual sex isn't about love. And it really is an illusion that what language is, is something that sits still. Going the Distance on the Pacific Crest Trail: The Vital Role of Identified Motivation, by Kennon M. Sheldon, Motivation Science, 2020. If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript.
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