Are You Listening?

The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.

Shankar Vedantam:

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. As the sun set that April evening, the wireless radio began to crackle. It was a cold night in the North Atlantic, and ships were sending messages to their sisters. Watch out, they said. Icebergs ahead. On board the RMS Titanic, a man named Jack Phillips was working at the wireless radio. He received word from another ship that pinpointed the location of heavy icepack and a great number of bergs. Close to 11 p.m. another ship, the Californian, said it had come to a standstill in a dense field of ice. Shut up, the wireless operator is supposed to have responded. I'm busy. Busy with what? Jack Phillips was sending and receiving personal messages over the wireless radio for the ship's many wealthy and important passengers. You know what happened next. The Titanic struck an iceberg shortly afterwards. It sank and killed more than 1500 people on board. Today, we know there were many things that went wrong that night in 1912. People mistakenly believed that Titanic was unsinkable. There were not enough lifeboats to go around. The lifeboats that did manage to get into the water eventually floated away with more than 400 empty seats. But the story of what happened in the wireless room that night is less well known. What might have happened if the wireless operator, the captain and crew had actually listened to the warnings that were coming in loud and clear? Today on the show, we explore a great psychological mystery. We've all been provided with a plethora of ways to understand what other people are telling us. Why do we so often fail to take heed? The science of learning and the art of listening, this week on Hidden Brain. Thank you There are lots of reasons two people might misunderstand each other. But nearly all of them are either caused or compounded by a single factor. One or both parties has failed to hear what the other is actually saying. You see this in classrooms, in workplaces, in geopolitical settings. It happens between strangers, between partners, between friends. At the University of Haifa in Israel, psychologist Guy Itzchakov studies the science of listening. Guy Itzchakov, welcome to Hidden Brain.



Guy Itzchakov:

Hi, Shankar. Great to be here.



Shankar Vedantam:

Guy, I want to take you back to when you were 22 years old. You once got into an argument with a very good friend. Who was this friend, Guy? How long had you known him?



Guy Itzchakov:

Oh, I've known him since kindergarten.



Shankar Vedantam:

Okay, so this is a long-standing friendship. So what happened? What caused the conflict?



Guy Itzchakov:

It was a lot of time ago. I'm 38 now, so it seems like a different lifetime. But I wasn't invited to a social event that I really wanted to be invited to. Many of the popular kids were there. And I was never... Not unpopular, but never in the popular group. And this friend was friends with some people in the popular group, and a couple of days after, I heard someone talking about this event. And he didn't really do anything to me until I heard his friend was there. My friend was there. And I thought that he did not tell me about this event, even though he was my best friend. This is what I thought initially, and I felt really, really insulted.



Shankar Vedantam:

Yeah. Did you confront your friend, or did you just simply stew in silence?



Guy Itzchakov:

So I played passive-aggressive for a while. So I said, okay, I'm going to play insulted. So I didn't answer his phone, his calls. And so I avoided him for a few days until we eventually met in an unplanned way for me.



Shankar Vedantam:

And what happened at this meeting? So he came to me, and I was very cold. I wanted him to understand that I'm angry. And he was like, okay, so what's your problem? Why are you being so distant and cold? And what did he do to you? And then I vented about him not inviting me or telling me about this event. I was like, how could he not invite me? Like, I always invite him to other events like this. And when he gets the chance, he doesn't reciprocate. And he used this as an opportunity to be more in the popular group. And after so long, it's hard to remember the words, but I remembered the feeling.



Shankar Vedantam:

Yeah. You were hurt and you felt wounded and betrayed, and you wanted him to understand how upset you were.



Guy Itzchakov:

Exactly. Exactly. I didn't even want an apology. I wanted to make him feel like I failed.



Shankar Vedantam:

Did he try and explain what happened, Guy?



Guy Itzchakov:

Yeah. So he was saying words in the beginning. I had no idea what he said because he was too busy listening to myself. But when I get angry, I have a tendency to repeat the same thing over and over and over again. And after a few repetitions, I suddenly became aware that he's saying, you got it completely wrong. I did call you. I did text you. And then I called him a liar. Not only did you not invite with me, but you also are lying to me.



Shankar Vedantam:

The friend pulled out his phone and showed Guy the message he had sent, the call he had made. And then Guy remembered. He had recently switched phones because his battery had died. His phone had been out of commission when his friend had tried to reach him.



Guy Itzchakov:

I felt so, so small. I felt like, wow, I completely misread the situation. I completely judged him without giving him the opportunity to explain it. And he was actually right. And I felt really bad about it afterwards.



Shankar Vedantam:

Some time later, after Guy became a psychologist, he got to experience what it felt like when the shoe was on the other foot. He was working with a colleague in the field of education on a project. His colleague decided to bring in a senior scholar from his field. But when Guy and his colleague went to meet the other researcher, the senior scholar ignored him. He had no interest in listening to Guy or hearing about what he might bring to the project.



Guy Itzchakov:

My friend and I are about the same age. His colleague is older than both of us. And I felt like he's looking through me, and he actually said, well, why do you need him for? Get someone from our own college. And I felt so insulted. Like, he literally said, looked at me and said, why do you need him for? Like, I don't exist. Why do you need him for?



Shankar Vedantam:

And the truth is, I think, as human beings, we are incredibly sensitive to these markers of social rejection. In fact, even with the first story you told me about the party, part of the reason you were angry was that you wanted to be part of this group, and the group wasn't... You'd have felt that you weren't being welcomed into the group. And in this case, you were... You wanted to be part of this grand proposal, and this person was rejecting you. And as human beings, I think we're extraordinarily sensitive to any signal that someone actually might be dissing us, ignoring us, rejecting us.



Guy Itzchakov:

Of course, it's a basic human need. The need to belong, the need to feel included and to be connected with other people is... It goes with us through early childhood to our entire life.



Shankar Vedantam:

Yeah, yeah. I'm wondering, do you see examples of poor listening as you look around you, not just in your own life, Guy, but when you look at the media, on cable TV, faculty meetings, cabinet meetings? Do you see examples of poor listening everywhere you look?



Guy Itzchakov:

Well, to remind you, I live in Israel, so I see more examples of poor listening than the other way around. There is a sentence saying, two Israelis, four opinions. So unfortunately, I see poor listening everywhere, and even more unfortunately, it seems to be escalating as time goes by. Nowadays, with the televisions, at least in Israel, this is how I see it. So the norm unfortunately became to bring someone and start arguing with them. So if you don't argue with them, it's not interesting. It's all about the arguing and the yelling and who yells stronger and who dominates the conversation. And two people yell, so the one that you hear is the person who yells the loudest. This is what I talk about, a toxic atmosphere. It's always like, let's bring someone from the opposite that we disagree with and see and get them start yelling and then we will respond. And as a listening researcher, this really... I get a bad feeling from listening to it.



Shankar Vedantam:

When we come back, how poor listening ruins conversations and undermines our relationships and how to learn to listen better. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. The social psychologist James Pennebaker said, conversations are like dances. Two people effortlessly move in step with one another, usually anticipating the other person's next move. Now, good conversations might feel this way, but very often in our discussions with others, it can feel like we have two left feet. At the University of Haifa, Guy Itzchakov studies the psychology of listening. He says that listening plays a bigger role in conversations than we imagine. Guy, it seems like listening should be the easiest thing in the world. Someone speaks, all you have to do is sit there and pay attention. You say that one thing that makes it hard to do this well is that many of us are juggling a lot. We suffer from a chronic lack of bandwidth?



Guy Itzchakov:

Yes, exactly, because listening is not that easy. Listening is costly. It requires motivation. It requires cognitive ability. It requires time and effort. And these are limited resources that we have, and we need to decide how to allocate them. Like the famous sentence, time is money. And I think the reason that we think that listening is easy is often that we confuse listening with being silent, which is also not easy all the time, but listening is much harder than merely being silent.



Shankar Vedantam:

I'm imagining settings like a workplace, for example, where there's a lot of things going on, maybe a high-pressure environment. It's very difficult in those situations to actually make time to listen to someone, because there's so much going on that you feel, okay, I'm happy to have a conversation with you, but the conversation needs to be 60 seconds, because that's all the time that I have. And of course, when you put that kind of constraint on the conversation, it makes it very hard for the person to speak or for you to listen.



Guy Itzchakov:

That's true, and in addition to it, think about the time when an employee of yours or maybe you or towards your supervisor came and said, well, I really need to talk to you. And even though you only had 60 seconds, but in addition, your mind wasn't clean to listen. You were bothered by your next meeting or your previous conversation or a million other things. This is why we talk about the ability, the cognitive ability. So you might have even you might even have 60 seconds, you might have 10 minutes, but your internal disturbances would prevent you from really listening to this person.



Shankar Vedantam:

Has this ever happened to you, Guy? Can you think of a time when someone came to you and wanted to talk with you, but in fact, you had so much going on in your own head that in fact, even though you were, quote, unquote, listening, you weren't really listening? Ah, yes, yes.



Guy Itzchakov:

I have three girls. My little one is in the... Hadar is in the first grade, my little one, Michal, is in the fourth grade, and my older one, Noir, is in the sixth grade. And so, you know, as a father, we slept three girls, and my wife, I live with four women, so I'm constantly reminded that I need to be a better listener. But one story that really strikes me, it was an experience that with Michal, with my middle one, when she was in kindergarten, and we went to the playground. And, you know, as an academic, I have a job that I often, I work from home. So work-home balance is really, the line is really fuzzy. So it was me and her, and, you know, she was on the swing. And I was texting work things, and she talked, and I, you know, I was texting. And like two minutes after, she said, Daddy, I want to go up.



Shankar Vedantam:

She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home. Yeah, go up, yeah, because we live in the apartment. We live in the building in the apartment. Daddy, I want to go up to home. And she really wanted to go to the playground before. And then I caught myself. Like, wow, I'm so, like, I'm a, I study listening, and this is what I do. So yeah, I have all the excuses in the world. And I put the phone in my pocket. And then without the phone, then after a few minutes, I asked her, Michal, do you still want to go up? She said, no. This is just one example.



Shankar Vedantam:

When Guy was distracted, his daughter instantly picked up on it. Researchers have tested the same effect in the lab. In a study led by Munisha Pasupathi at the University of Utah, people were paired up in conversation. Some of the listeners were given good listening instructions. Listen like you would listen to a close friend. But then there was a second condition.



Guy Itzchakov:

So there are numerous experiments using distractions where listeners were distracted. A great research by Munisha Pasupathi from the University of Utah, they brought participants to the laboratory, and they divided them to pairs, two diets, listener and a speaker. You either were in the listener role or in the speaker role. And your instruction as a listener was to listen like you listen to a close friend. The speaker told you about a meaningful event that happened to them, and you were told as a listener to listen like you listen to a close friend. In the distraction condition, the listeners were giving the same instructions, but were also told, count the number of times that the speaker said a word that starts with th, that, this, those, there are many words in the English language that start with th. So they cognitively distracted the listener. One interesting finding was that in the distraction condition, in the transcripts of the speakers, you could see a lot of the flow, the fluency of the speech was hurt. So they went from the, there was no coherence in the story. So you start from the beginning to the end, and then they went back to the middle. And a lot of stuttering, like, um, um, um, um, um.



Shankar Vedantam:

Yeah, so this is remarkable because what you're saying is that the effects of poor listening were not experienced just by the listener. The effects of poor listening were being experienced by the speaker.



Guy Itzchakov:

Exactly. And we have numerous experiments showing it. The listener determines more than 50% of the conversation. So the speaker's speech was hurt, the fluency, more stuttering. The most interesting, in my view, were that a few days afterwards, they invited the speakers back to tell about their own stories, the story that they told. And speakers who talk to distracted listeners remembered less from their own stories. And as a professor, I really resonate with it. For example, when I talk to a class and I see people not listening, you know, we have all these internal thoughts. And when we feel that the other person is not listening well to us, the volume of this internal thought goes up.



Shankar Vedantam:

You know, Guy, I was giving a talk recently at a university, and there were a large number of people in the audience, and the audience was very engaged and listening very closely. But there was one person in the audience, this is the end of the day, the person might have been tired, I might not have been as interesting as I thought I was, but the person was falling asleep, and I could see the person from the stage, I could see this person falling asleep. Now, it was a very large hall, and they were, most of the audience was very engaged, people were leaning forward, but the fact that one person was nodding off from the stage, I kept telling myself, focus on everybody else who's listening, but my brain kept going back to this one person who was falling asleep. And it's a very good example of what you're talking about, which is we're so sensitive to these markers that someone is not engaged with what we're saying, and it really disrupts our own flow of thought.



Guy Itzchakov:

So your example is a great example of what's called the negativity bias in us. So you can have so many people listening to you, but you will focus on the one person that increases your evaluation and apprehension, the socially exclusion fear, which I think is so fundamental, but I think your example says it the best.



Shankar Vedantam:

So you were recently having dinner with your family, and a political issue came up. You told me some time ago that Israelis love to talk about politics, and this probably was one of those examples. But in this situation, you were trying to get your point across, but you felt you weren't being heard. Describe what happened to me and what the effect was on your ability to communicate your ideas, Guy.



Guy Itzchakov:

So this was in a Passover dinner, and it was around a very, very heated topic back then. Now it seems like a different world now. It was about the Jadigal reform that was supposed to happen in Israel. Many families were very divided, my family as well. A Passover dinner is a dinner with many of the family you don't see very often. There is a sentence, you don't speak politics at the dinner table, but this was the only thing people talked about back then. And I actually didn't want to get into it because it was a very sensitive topic, and there are family members who I see maybe once every two years. So I don't want to get into an argument with them. It doesn't do good for anyone, not for me, not for them, not for the relationship. But one of them brought something up, and I thought, okay, I'm not gonna say anything, until he said something I really opposed. And I couldn't, you know, it was like, it's like someone hitting me in the stomach, like psychologically hitting me. And I responded, and then he responded, and then we got into this argument. And I felt that the more angry I got, the more my mind became narrow. I could only think of very weak arguments. And even when I conveyed the arguments, even to me, they sounded so weak. And then the frustration, because I know so much, and now when I present my arguments, because I'm so mad, I can't even think straight. So this was a very, even my wife told me afterwards, you know, don't argue anymore like this. When you argue, you sound ignorant. And she knows how much I know, but nothing came out.



Shankar Vedantam:

And in some ways, this matches what you're finding in the lab, which is that when we have all these thoughts racing around in our heads, it keeps us from making the kinds of arguments we could have made if someone was actually listening well. That in some ways, the lack of listening or the fact that we feel like we have to shout to get our view across actually makes our own arguments more impoverished than they would be otherwise.



Guy Itzchakov:

Exactly. Because in my story, for example, and I see it in the lab many times, when we feel that our right to express our attitude, perspective, belief is being threatened, we become defensive. And when we become defensive, we try to bolster our own attitudes. It makes the listening almost impossible when we're in such a state, because when, going back to this example, when this family member was speaking, I wasn't listening to him, I was thinking how I'm going to counter back. And when I was speaking, I saw he wasn't listening, he was thinking the same. So basically, we were talking past each other. We both come away with a more rigid attitude. So it wasn't a conversation, it was an exercise for both of us of how to bolster our attitude. And then people are surprised that people are, that polarization increases and people are becoming more extreme, because we don't practice listening and we don't create the atmosphere, the openness that allows listening to happen.



Shankar Vedantam:

You say that another big reason that listening is hard is that we can be afraid of change. What do you mean by this, Guy?



Guy Itzchakov:

And this is not my idea. This was suggested by Carl Rogers, one of the noted fathers of modern psychology, and Rogers said that one of the reasons for our poor communication is that we fear that if we really listen, we might need to change. And when we are not the one who initiates the change, this can be threatening. Like for me, it would be conversing with my wife. My wife is the person who knows me the best. We've been married last week 13 years. We've been together 14 years. She knows me better than I know myself. She can predict my behavior. When I tell her, no, I'm not going to do that, she tells me, okay, you are going to do that. I said, no, I'm not going to do it. You'll see. And then I called her and say, well, okay, now, yeah, I'm coming home early. I'm not going to the gym as I planned. So she knows me better than I know myself. So when she says something that bothers her about my behavior, I know that she's right. But it's not comfortable for me to hear it because this is me. If I admit it, I basically admit that I need to change it. And well, change is hard work.



Shankar Vedantam:

So in other words, I dig in more deeply into my preferred point of view because I'm worried that if I actually listen to you, I might have to change my beliefs.



Guy Itzchakov:

Think about a person who wants a very extreme position, a very one-sided view on any topic. Now, if this person really listens to someone who wants a different attitude, they might realize that there is merit to the opposite point of view. Now, I'm not saying they will change the attitude, but if I'm extreme and this is a self-identifying attitude, I might realize that I need to change. Now, then, how do I justify myself? How do I justify my behaviors? This defensiveness, this fear of change is something that is going with us in our daily lives.



Shankar Vedantam:

So, Guy, there was also a study that was conducted looking at managers in the workplace, and it found that sometimes managers are reluctant to listen because they worry that listening might imply compliance. Tell me about the study and what it found.



Guy Itzchakov:

So it was a great study. And the researchers conducted a qualitative study. They conducted an interview with, I think, it was bank workers in the financial industry. They found employees confused listening to complying with their requests. So for example, if you're my manager, and I'm asking you to take a few days off, you might listen well to me, but if you afterwards do not accept my request, there is a very good chance that I will say Shankar is not a good listener. Now even though you did listen to me, but I will confuse listening with compliance. And this often happens in an asymmetric relationship when there is a power difference. So the listener is not only a conversation partner, but has also resources that the speaker wants. And this study nicely showed how there is a risk of being perceived unfairly as a bad listener even though the manager did listen but did not comply. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen in the workplace. And I also see it in my daily life. For example, I go to the supermarket and a few days ago I hear this mother saying to her son, you don't listen. I told you so many times, you can't get this candy. Now he listened to her. He just didn't agree with her. There's a difference. There's a difference. I have the same issue with my girls. So you didn't listen to me. I asked you for this. Yeah, I listened to you, but I didn't accept what you said.



Shankar Vedantam:

Yeah, but I can see how this cuts both ways, though, because from the employee's point of view, the employee feels my manager listened to me very carefully and then didn't exceed to my request. Maybe the manager didn't listen to me very well. From the manager's point of view, you could say, if I listen very carefully to my employee, my employee is going to think that I agree with him or her. I should communicate right away that, in fact, I disagree and not listen very well, because listening can inadvertently imply compliance. So I can see from both points of view how this ends up being poisonous.



Guy Itzchakov:

That's true, because as you mentioned, you create an expectation that if you listen so attentively, you saw the merit in the request, and you're about to... So you create expectations that you cannot meet. However, there is a positive side to it. I don't want to present listening as... I want to give you the respect it deserves, because although when you're in a managerial role, and by the way, the higher in the hierarchy, in the organizational hierarchy you are, the more time you spend on listening during your work day, when you listen well... This is a different research, but when you listen well to your employee, there is a bigger chance that they will understand why you did not accept the request. So I don't want to come away as saying, well, don't listen, so don't build expectations. It's about communicating expectations clearly, but listening is a double-edged sword in this way, I think. People often think that listening well to someone, or which part of it is being non-judgmental toward the speaker, means that they have to agree with the speaker. And this is a misperception. Good listening is not equal to agreement. I can be non-judgmental towards my speaker, which means giving them the freedom and autonomy to express what they think, their views, which nowadays is a rare ingredient, while still holding a different attitude. So being non-judgmental and a good listener does not mean that I need to agree. So agreement is not a prerequisite for good listening.



Shankar Vedantam:

We think of listening as a passive activity, but as Guy's research has found, listening is not passive at all. Both active listening and poor listening communicate messages, messages with positive or disastrous consequences. When we come back, the transformative power of listening and how to be a better listener. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. Think about the last time you had a conversation with someone who really listened to you. You probably felt understood. As you spoke, the words came easily to you. You felt closer to the other person. At the University of Haifa, Guy Itzchakov studies the science of listening. Guy, we've talked earlier about how poor listening can beget poor listening. When we don't feel like someone is listening to us, we become less likely to listen to them. But the opposite is also true. Tell me about a recent conversation you had with a colleague who disagreed with you about politics but was a very good listener.



Guy Itzchakov:

So it was a very recent conversation about a week ago. And we hold opposite views. And we talked before about the poor listening experience I had with my family member. Now this was the exact opposite. He really listened well to me, even though he completely disagreed with what I was saying. This time, I could think clearly. I was able to articulate my arguments in a way that I was actually able to see also the other, the opposite side. When I was advocating in favor of X, I could also see the problem with X. It allowed me to see the multiplicity within my attitude, which was the complete opposite of the one-sidedness that I expressed and felt during the argument in the previous segment. He was a great listener, he is a great listener. He responded both non-verbally, he kept eye contact, he asked questions that really showed that he's trying to get my point of view, even though I know he disagrees. But I felt that he doesn't judge me for this attitude. And I asked him questions, and it was easier for me to listen to him after he listened so well to me. And I think I did a good job in listening back to him. And the interesting thing is that although we talked about the topic that is so polarizing, and we hold different attitudes on this topic, we managed to shift to the next topic, like, you know, it was so smooth, because good listening was present when we talked about this divisive topic.



Shankar Vedantam:

I understand that you've run a study with similar findings that shows that good listening can make people more open-minded. Can you tell me about this research, Guy?



Guy Itzchakov:

Yeah, happy to. This was about listening during disagreements. So I will give you one example of one of the studies. It was a package of four experiments that we ran. Israel was the first country who implemented the vaccination cards during the pandemic. And this was a big issue because it divided the population to two. If you have the vaccination card, you can get to many places. And if you don't have, there are many, many places. You remember how it was. And Israel, we were the first. There was a lot of divide around this topic. And during this time, we said, okay, this is the perfect time to do a study about it. So students sign up for this study. They first wrote and indicated their attitude if they are pro or against or they hold a neutral position. They wrote a brief essay justifying their attitude. And then we told them that a few days later, they were going to be conversing with a listener. And so, for example, if you indicated that you were against vaccination cards, you will be paired with a listener who supposedly was in favor. And we had my research assistants in my lab, they go through 15 to 20 hours of listening training, as they do both good listening condition and normal listening, or we call it moderate listening condition. And so, the speakers share their attitudes, either randomly assigned to either with a listener who exhibited good listening behavior, such as their reflection, question asking, validation, which goes something like, thank you, Shankar, for sharing this with me, I'm sure it wasn't easy for you. And the listeners reminded them that they had an opposite attitude.



Shankar Vedantam:

Guy and his colleagues found that the better the listener, the greater the sense of warmth speakers felt when talking to them. But that's not surprising. What was surprising is that when paired with an excellent listener, speakers were more likely to moderate their views.



Guy Itzchakov:

They didn't shift their attitude, but they moved more towards the midpoint. So they did move towards the listener's attitude, but they still kept their own valence or positivity or negativity. Now, the most interesting thing was that we measured their attitude extremity, the extent to which their attitude is one-sided before the conversation and after. And the change was significantly greater in the high quality listening condition, meaning that their attitude became less one-sided. And we replicated this finding across four experiments, different topics. So this was a really interesting finding.



Shankar Vedantam:

You know, I'm thinking about that children's game that we all used to play, you know, where you have a rope and you're playing tug of war. And of course, you have these two sides lining up on opposite sides. And, you know, you want to dig your heels into the ground and pull on the rope as hard as you can. And you obviously want to pull in only one direction, because of course, if you give any ground, then the other side is going to win. And, you know, of course, as a metaphor, you know, I'm wondering whether it fits the way many of us approach conversations, which is we're so intent on where that rope is that we actually feel like we have to pull really hard in only one direction, because of course, if we give any ground, then we're going to lose the battle altogether. But really, what you're saying is that when one side stops pulling, and in some ways, there's no more tug of war to be played, because, you know, the other side is not pulling in the opposite direction, you're not just holding the rope now. And now it allows you to basically say, where do I actually want to go with this rope? Do I want to go in this direction? Do I want to go in the other direction? You become more self-reflective.



Guy Itzchakov:

Yeah, I'm actually saying that if you listen well, you will get a bigger rope. And there will be enough rope for both of you and a mutual rope. Because you will see, you will be better able to see the needs and interests of your conversation partner. People often think that if they will be more effective if they dominate the conversation. So whoever speaks louder in Israel, it's very true. It's not true empirically, but it's true society-wise. If I speak louder, I'm dominating the conversation, and then I'm going to win. And that's another misperception. But it's not easy to tell a person, you need to let go. And if you let go, and you really try to listen and understand your conversation partner, who you probably disagree with, it will be at your advantage. Both of your advantages. But it's not an easy decision, because we're so used to try to dominate the conversation and afraid that if we won't dominate the conversation by speaking, we will lose. And then we end up by losing both of us.



Shankar Vedantam:

I mean, there's a great irony here, Guy, which is that very often when we find ourselves in disagreement with someone, we want them to basically say, you know, I'm open to new positions and new points of view. I'm willing to rethink my existing sense. And that's why we push so hard and we shout so loudly is we're trying to knock people off from their positions to take a more broad-based view of things. What you're finding in some ways is that it's actually not our arguments that have this effect on people. It's our listening that can have this effect on people. So it's a great paradox that, in fact, even if we were not focused on the quality of the relationship, if we were just focused on our goals of actually trying to knock people off from that point of view, we would be more effective if we actually did better listening and less arguing.



Guy Itzchakov:

I agree. I agree. So what I do with my students is I tell them a very simple task. Your goal for the upcoming week is to learn something new about a colleague of yours. One colleague each day. After each conversation, you need to reflect on your listening. What did you learn? What prevented you from listening well? What made you able to listen well? How can you improve the next time? So the gist is even forget all the behaviors. If you truly are interested in a person, you will be probably perceived as a good listener because you will do all this behavior. For example, think of a person you love. And this person comes and tells you, Shankar, I have something I want to share with you. You don't need me to tell you about what are the behaviors of good listening and the verbal and the nonverbal. You're interested in this person. And your behaviors will reflect this interest. And this is, I think, is at the core. So now we can't be interested in every person. But I think the basic premise is if we adapt a mindset that every person can teach us something, every person knows something that we've done, every person has a story. If you're interested in this story, you will most likely be perceived as a good listener.



Shankar Vedantam:

But at the same time, you know, I can imagine a situation where I'm speaking to somebody whom I like very much, where in a very calm setting, there are not a lot of distractions. This person and I agree on a whole bunch of things. They're talking. I find listening to be effortless and easy. The conversation is great. Now, those situations do arise. They happen with regularity, hopefully more often than not. But really, what we're called upon to do is situations that, in fact, don't meet all of those criteria. We have to actually talk to people whom we might not be close to. We might be talking to them in environments that are noisy or distracted. And we might, most importantly, be talking to people whom we disagree with. And at some level, I think what you're suggesting is that we have to bring to bear the same skills that we extend to the people we love and that we agree with to the people that we don't love and don't agree with if we're going to make any headway with them.



Guy Itzchakov:

Exactly. And this is why listening requires training, because for the people we love and are interested in, like you said, very easy. But the reality is that our lives are filled with other people as well. So this is why listening requires training and a decision to be a good listener. And it's really important, like we talked about being non-judgmental towards the speaker, also it's really important to be non-judgmental towards yourself. When you realize that you might not be as good of a listener as you thought you are, most of us are not as good of listeners as we think we are. But even if you are a good listener, there are times when we cannot be. As we mentioned, listening is a resource that we don't always have.



Shankar Vedantam:

You have talked about various techniques, and I know there's no sort of quick fix, sort of a guide to this, but I just want to talk about two or three important techniques that you and others have identified. Can you just talk about this idea that good listening involves a variety of verbal and nonverbal cues? What do you mean by this idea? What are some of these cues, Guy?



Guy Itzchakov:

So nonverbal behaviors are, for example, our facial expressions. Nonverbal behaviors such as nodding, such as open body posture, eye contact is very important. If the speaker sees that you are still paying attention to them, that you are still listening to them, you send them a meta-message. It's called a meta-message, not a direct message, but that you are important. You are the focus of my attention. I want to understand you. And this message relaxes them. They feel important. They feel validated. Now, listening also has a verbal component, and this is something that is less known, because many think that listening is only silence. It's not. For example, paraphrase. So when the speaker stops and doesn't have any more to add, or when you feel that you cannot encompass any more information, it's really important to reflect or paraphrase or summarize in your own words, or if you can, the closest you can to the speaker's words. And it's really important to ask afterwards, did I miss anything? Would you like to add anything? And this paraphrasing, we find it in our experiment that is very powerful because it benefits both the listener and the speaker. It benefits the listener because the speaker tells you about points that you missed. And there are studies showing that even good listeners remember up to 50% of the content. So no one expects us to remember everything. So it helps the listener. Most importantly, it helps the speaker to feel understood what people usually do and say, Yeah, Shankar, I understand you. That doesn't work. It's like me telling you, Shankar, trust me. I can't tell you to trust me. I need to show you that you can trust me. So by reflection, I show you I try to understand you. Another one is asking good questions that benefit the speaker's needs and interests. Very, very important. Good questions can deepen the conversation and help speakers bring from within them insight that they didn't think that they about before. Validation, which is not... Yeah, Shankar, I agree with you. Validation is especially a difficult conversation. Thank you for sharing with me, Shankar. I'm sure it wasn't easy for you. So it validates the effort that the speakers made and brings about closeness between the speaker and the exam.



Shankar Vedantam:

So I'm wondering, Guy, after doing all of this research and thinking, has it changed the way that you have tried to listen to other people? Do you find yourself doing poor listening and telling yourself, here are the things that I can do? Have you found yourself mid-conversation, stopping yourself to try and practice what you preach?



Guy Itzchakov:

I think so, last year in a class, and there was a student who was very frustrated. And she came to me at the end of the lesson, and she complained about the tasks and about how they don't have enough time, and students have a variety of complaints. And I didn't try to justify myself. And I initially wanted to, because I was tired, it was a four-hour course. And then I decided to practice what I preach. And I did not defend myself. I asked follow-up questions. Okay, so I heard you're saying that this course is, you feel that even though I reduced the number of articles, this is still unfair. Why do you feel it? Do you have anything else? And at the end of the day, she shared with me that she was very frustrated because her boyfriend broke up with her, and she was very angry. And she took it out on many people around her. She knew she was upset about the breakup with the boyfriend, but she was actually hurting a lot because she was extrapolating the anger to the people around her family, even professors, university friends. And she told me, after our conversation, it really helped me to relax, to unwind. And this made my day. This made my day that I managed to really help her. And again, notice the power of listening. It's not easy. It's not easy. Every day is a challenge. But I do want to believe that I'm making progress.



Shankar Vedantam:

Guy Itzchakov is a psychologist at the University of Haifa. Guy, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain. It's been a real pleasure to listen to you.



Guy Itzchakov:

Thank you very much for having me. You're a very good listener.



Shankar Vedantam:

Oh, thank you, Guy. Thank you. It's a professional occupation. If you'd like to hear about Guy's most important technique to get other people to listen to you, check out that idea in our companion story on Hidden Brain Plus. It's titled, How to Talk, So People Will Listen. If you're already a subscriber, it's available right now in this feed. If not, you can listen to that story as part of a free trial subscription on Apple Podcasts, or by going to apple.co.slash hiddenbrain. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media Our audio production team includes Bridget McCarthy, Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Correll, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury Tara Boyle is our executive producer I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor If you'd like to hear more of our reporting about how to engage productively with others, be sure to check out the episode notes for today's show You'll find other Hidden Brain interviews that will help you understand how conversations go off the rails, the role of good listening in successful relationships, and how we can keep conflicts from spiraling I'm Shankar Vedantam See you soon.