How Speech Shapes Your Identity with Dr. Katherine Kinzler

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Education, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2021

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Forrest is joined by pioneering psychologist Dr. Katherine Kinzler to explore how our speech shapes our social identity, and the views we hold about other people. A big part of human nature is to rapidly sort people into two groups: “like me,” and “not like me.” Our general tendency is to gravitate toward people we perceive as “like me,” and avoid and oppose people we perceive as “not like me.” We use many different kinds of markers to determine which group a person belongs to: markers like perceived race, gender, political affiliation, and social class. But there’s an often-overlooked factor that might influence how we view ourselves and others even more powerfully: the way we speak. About Our Guest: Dr. Kinzler is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, and the leader of the Development of Social Cognition Laboratory. She’s also the author of the wonderful book How You Say It: Why You Talk the Way You Do―And What It Says About You. Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Watch the Episode: Prefer watching video? You can watch this episode on YouTube. Key Ideas: 2:25: Why language is such an important signifier of identity. 8:15: Why the brain cares so much about categories. 10:50: Brain plasticity and early language acquisition. 13:50: Language bias and dialectical prejudice. 19:15: Interventions for limiting linguistic prejudice. 23:00: How dialect changes as identity changes. 28:50: Consequences of dialectical prejudice. 34:30: Dialectical prejudice in the courtroom. 36:30: What can we do about dialect prejudice? 40:50: Positive results of bilingual exposure. 45:00: Becoming a better communicator. 49:00: Katherine’s “wave a magic wand” change. 51:30: When to start talking with kids about language. 53:00: Recap Sponsors: From Dr. Hanson: The Foundations of Well-Being brings together the lessons of a lifetime of practice into one year-long online program. Podcast listeners can use the code BEINGWELL25 at checkout for an additional 25% off! Please don't hesitate to apply for a scholarship if you're in need. Join over a million people using BetterHelp, the world’s largest online counseling platform. Visit betterhelp.com/beingwell for 10% off your first month! Want to sleep better? Try the legendary Calm app! Visit calm.com/beingwell for 40% off a premium subscription. Start a new healthy habit with Seed! Visit seed.com/beingwell and use code BEINGWELL to get 20% off your first month of Seed’s Daily Synbiotic. Connect with the show: Follow Forrest on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Follow Rick on Facebook Follow Forrest on Facebook Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forest Hanson.
0:10.9	If you're new to the podcast, this is where we explore the practical science of last and
0:15.1	well-being.
0:16.1	And if you've listened before, welcome back.
0:18.6	As we've explored previously, many times on the podcast, a big part of human nature is
0:23.1	our tendency to rapidly sort people into two different groups, like me and not like me.
0:30.1	This tendency moves us to gravitate toward people we perceive as like me, and avoid even
0:35.4	oppose people we perceive as not like me.
0:38.9	We use many different kinds of markers to determine which group a person belongs to.
0:43.3	Markers like their perceived race, gender, political affiliation, and even social class.
0:48.9	But there's an often overlooked factor that might influence how we view ourselves and
0:52.6	others even more powerfully, the way we speak.
0:55.9	Today we're going to be exploring something that we often don't even think about, how
0:59.9	our speech shapes our social identity and the views we hold about other people.
1:04.9	To help us do that, I'm joined by a pioneering, truly psychologist in this territory, Dr.
1:09.9	Catherine Kinsler.
1:10.9	Dr. Kinsler is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and the leader of
1:15.3	the development of social cognition laboratory.
1:18.2	Her work focuses on the origins of prejudice and in-group outgroup thinking, with an
1:21.9	emphasis on understanding how language and accent mark different social groups.
1:26.7	She holds degrees from Yale and Harvard was a full bright scholar and was named one of
1:30.1	the 50 most influential scientists under the age of 40 by the world economic forum.
	...

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