full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

This led me, as a behavioral esioconmt, to an intriguing hypothesis. Could how you sepak about time, could how your language forces you to think about time, affect your propensity to behave across time? You speak English, a futured lauggnae. And what that maens is that every time you discuss the future, or any kind of a future event, grammatically you're forced to cleave that from the present and traet it as if it's something viscerally different. Now suppose that that visceral difference makes you subtly dissociate the furute from the present every time you speak. If that's true and it makes the future feel like something more dniastt and more different from the present, that's going to make it harder to save. If, on the other hand, you speak a futureless language, the prenest and the future, you speak about them identically. If that subtly nudges you to feel about them iaecldintly, that's going to make it easier to save.

Open Cloze

This led me, as a behavioral _________, to an intriguing hypothesis. Could how you _____ about time, could how your language forces you to think about time, affect your propensity to behave across time? You speak English, a futured ________. And what that _____ is that every time you discuss the future, or any kind of a future event, grammatically you're forced to cleave that from the present and _____ it as if it's something viscerally different. Now suppose that that visceral difference makes you subtly dissociate the ______ from the present every time you speak. If that's true and it makes the future feel like something more _______ and more different from the present, that's going to make it harder to save. If, on the other hand, you speak a futureless language, the _______ and the future, you speak about them identically. If that subtly nudges you to feel about them ___________, that's going to make it easier to save.

Solution

  1. future
  2. speak
  3. treat
  4. identically
  5. present
  6. means
  7. language
  8. economist
  9. distant

Original Text

This led me, as a behavioral economist, to an intriguing hypothesis. Could how you speak about time, could how your language forces you to think about time, affect your propensity to behave across time? You speak English, a futured language. And what that means is that every time you discuss the future, or any kind of a future event, grammatically you're forced to cleave that from the present and treat it as if it's something viscerally different. Now suppose that that visceral difference makes you subtly dissociate the future from the present every time you speak. If that's true and it makes the future feel like something more distant and more different from the present, that's going to make it harder to save. If, on the other hand, you speak a futureless language, the present and the future, you speak about them identically. If that subtly nudges you to feel about them identically, that's going to make it easier to save.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
futureless language 7
language speakers 6
germanic language 3
tremendous amount 2
huge differences 2
savings behavior 2
oecd countries 2
countries saving 2
united states 2
futured languages 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
futureless language speakers 5
oecd countries saving 2

Important Words

  1. affect
  2. behave
  3. behavioral
  4. cleave
  5. difference
  6. discuss
  7. dissociate
  8. distant
  9. easier
  10. economist
  11. english
  12. event
  13. feel
  14. forced
  15. forces
  16. future
  17. futured
  18. futureless
  19. grammatically
  20. hand
  21. harder
  22. hypothesis
  23. identically
  24. intriguing
  25. kind
  26. language
  27. led
  28. means
  29. nudges
  30. present
  31. propensity
  32. save
  33. speak
  34. subtly
  35. suppose
  36. time
  37. treat
  38. true
  39. visceral
  40. viscerally