Hidden Brain: The NPR Archive : NPR - NPR.org Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. The fact is that language change can always go in one of many directions, there's a chance element to it. You couldn't have predicted this I know-uh move-uh (ph). Hidden Brain. VEDANTAM: My guest today is - well, why don't I let her introduce herself? al, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2004. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Keltner describes . This is Hidden Brain. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. And when I listen to people having their peeves, I don't think, stop it. It's just how I feel. 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. So when the perfect woman started writing him letters, it seemed too good to be true. 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. He says that buying into false beliefs, in other words, deluding ourselves can . UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Speaking foreign language). If it is the first time you login, a new account will be created automatically. 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. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. So for example, for English speakers - people who read from left to right - time tends to flow from left to right. 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. And then question 21 was, is this person a man or a woman? Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. Subscribe: iOS | Android | Spotify | RSS | Amazon | Stitcher Latest Episodes: Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Hidden Brain: You, But Better on Apple Podcasts If you missed it, 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. And as you point out, it's not just that people feel that a word is being misused. GEACONE-CRUZ: It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside. That kind of detail may not appear. MCWHORTER: It's a matter of fashion, pure and simple. Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. That is the most random thing. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #16: Not figuratively, it's literally MCWHORTER: Yeah. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often, untranslatable. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) The second button literally makes or breaks the shirt. MCWHORTER: Yeah, I really do. We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. But actually, that's exactly how people in those communities come to stay oriented - is that they learn it, (laughter) right? 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. Well, that's an incredibly large set of things, so that's a very broad effect of language. Everyone wants to be loved and appreciated. 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. 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 No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. BORODITSKY: And when they were trying to act like Wednesday, they would act like a woman BORODITSKY: Which accords with grammatical gender in Russian. It's not necessarily may I please have, but may I have, I'll have, but not can I get a. I find it just vulgar for reasons that as you can see I can't even do what I would call defending. And if it was feminine, then you're likely to paint death as a woman. 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. VEDANTAM: John McWhorter, thank you so much for joining me on HIDDEN BRAIN today. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn helps us map out the unexpected ways we can find joy and happiness in our everyday lives. to describe the world. And why do some social movements take off and spread, while others fizzle? Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. And I kind of sheepishly confessed this to someone there. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, by Adam Grant, 2021. We call this language Gumbuzi. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking foreign language). But it is a completely crucial part of the human experience. - so one skull but two different minds, and you shift from one to the other. Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. But if you prefer life - the unpredictability of life - then living language in many ways are much more fun. It's never happened. GEACONE-CRUZ: And I ended up living there for 10 years. 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. 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. It's not something that you typically go out trying to do intentionally. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-being, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Lawrence S. Krieger, Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2004. 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. VEDANTAM: Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. VEDANTAM: Lera now tries to understand languages spoken all over the world. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. And it irritates people, but there's a different way of seeing literally. He says there are things we can do to make sure our choices align with our deepest values. BORODITSKY: I spoke really terrible Indonesian at the time, so I was trying to practice. MCWHORTER: Oh, yeah, I'm a human being. 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. Which I think is probably important with the reality that this edifice that you're teaching is constantly crumbling. 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. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. Go behind the scenes, see what Shankar is reading and find more useful resources and links. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. 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. 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? 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 HIDDEN BRAIN < Lost in Translation: January 29, 20189:00 PM ET VEDANTAM: Well, that's kind of you, Lera. 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. 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. And I did that. 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. So some languages don't have number words. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). John is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. That hadn't started then. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Speaking foreign language). That's the way words are, too. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? So when I ask you to, say, imagine a man walking down the street, well, in your imagery, you're going to have some details completed and some will be left out. How so? 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 is HIDDEN BRAIN. . Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. And what's cool about languages, like the languages spoken in Pormpuraaw, is that they don't use words like left and right, and instead, everything is placed in cardinal directions like north, south, east and west. 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. Stay with us. : A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? If you dont see any jobs posted there, feel free to send your resume and cover letter to [emailprotected] and well keep your materials on hand for future openings on the show. 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. No matter how hard you try to feel happier, you end up back where you started. 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. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly.