Chapter 7

The Nature of Listening

1. What is Listening?
a. Listening: the active process of making meaning our of another persons spoken
message.
i. Listening to someone doesnt mean youre listening effectively. Effective listening
involves listening with the conscious and explicit goal of understanding what the
speaker is attempting to communicate.
b. Listening Styles:
i. People-Oriented Style: emphasizes concern for other peoples emotions and
interests.
ii. Action-Oriented Style: emphasizes organization and precision.
iii. Content-Oriented Style: emphasizes intellectual challenges.
iv. Time-Oriented Style: emphasizes efficiency.
v. Research suggest that women and men have different listening styles: women are
more interested in people, whereas men are more interested in facts.
2. The Importance of Listening Effectively
a. One of the reasons its important to understand listening is that we do it so much of the
time.
b. The ability to listen effectively is important to our success in a variety of contexts.
3. Some Misconceptions About Listening
a. Myth: Hearing is the Same as Listening
i. Hearing: a passive process that occurs when sound waves cause the bones in your
inner ear to vibrate and send signals to your brain.
ii. Listening; an active process of paying attention to a sound, assigning meaning to it,
and responding to it.
1. Hearing is a part of this process, but listening requires much more than just
perceiving the sounds around you.
2. Sometimes we listen without hearing, and our understanding can be
impaired as a result.
iii. Hearing is merely the perception of sound. Most people hear sounds almost
continuously.
b. Myth: Listening is Natural and Effortless
i. Listening is a learned skill, not an innate ability like hearing.
ii. We learn through experience and instruction.
c. Myth: All Listeners Hear the Same Message
i. Our experiences, our biases, and even our gender and culture all influence how we
create meaning from the information we take in.
4. Culture and Sex Affect Listening Behavior
a. Men are more likely than women to interrupt someone they are listening to.
b. Women have been shown to maintain eye contact while listening to their conversational
partners more than men do.
c. In particular, listening behavior appears to be affected by how people in a given culture
think about the importance of time.
i. In individualistic cultures, people often look upon time as a resource and become
impatient with speaker who dont get to the point.
ii. People in collectivistic cultures emphasize social harmony over efficiency. People in
these cultures often pay close attention to nonverbal behaviors and contextual cues
to determine the meaning of a speakers message.

Ways of Listening
1. Stages of Effective Listening (HURIER Model: John Brownell developed this model to describe the
six stages of effective listening.)
a. Hearing: the physical process of perceiving sound.
i. This is where the listening process begins.
ii. In face-to-face interaction hearing is the first step in effective listening.
1. People with hearing impairments find ways to overcome that challenge, such
as reading lips and using sign language.
b. Understanding: to understand means to comprehend the meanings of the words and
phrases youre hearing.
i. If someone is speaking in a language or jargon you dont understand, you might be
able to hear that person, but you wont be able to listen effectively.
ii. If you are uncertain whether you understand what a speaker is saying, the most
effective course of action is usually to ask the person questions to check you
understanding.
c. Remembering: being able to store something in your memory and retrieve it when needed.
i. Helps avoid awkward situations and can help you communicate with others more
effectively.
ii. Mnemonic devices: tricks that can improve short and long term memory.
1. Acronym: a word formed from the first letters or parts of a compound term.
d. Interpreting
i. The process of interpreting has two parts:
1. Paying attention to all the speakers verbal and nonverbal behaviors so that
you can assign meaning to what the person has said.
2. Signaling your interpretation of the message to the speaker.
a. Signaling lets the speaker know youre following along with what he
or she is saying and allows you to confirm you interpretations.
e. Evaluating
i. Several events happen at the evaluation stage:
1. You judging whether the speakers statements are accurate and true.
2. Youre also separating facts from opinions and trying to determine why the
speaker is saying what he or she is saying.
3. Youre considering the speakers words in the context of other information
you have received from that speaker or other sources.
f. Responding: indicating to a speaker that youre listening.
i. We sometimes call this process giving feedback, and we do it both verbally and
nonverbally using a variety of strategies.
ii. Below are seven types of listening responses, arranged in order from the most
passive to the most active strategies:
1. Stonewalling: responding with silence and a lack of facial expression.
a. Often signals a lack of interest in what the speaker is saying.
2. Back Channeling: nodding your head or using facial expressions,
vocalizations such as uh-huh, and verbal statements such as I understand
let the speaker know youre paying attention.
3. Paraphrasing: restating in your own words what the speaker has said, to
show you understand.
4. Empathizing: conveying to the speaker that you understand and share his or
her feelings on the topic.
5. Supporting: expressing your agreement with the speakers opinion or point
of view.
6. Analyzing: providing a separate perspective on what the speaker has said.
7. Advising: communicating advice to the speaker about what he or she should
think, feel, or do.
2. Types of Listening
a. Informational Listening: listening to learn.
i. It is one of the most important ways we learn. It is also the most passive type of
listening.
ii. We are listening primarily to learn something new rather than to analyze or support
the speakers information.
b. Critical Listening: listening with the goal of evaluating or analyzing what one hears.
i. Does not necessarily mean disapproving of or finding fault with what youre
hearing. It means analyzing and evaluating the merits of what a speaker is saying.
1. Therefore, critical listening is a more active, engaging process than
informational listening.
c. Empathic Listening: listening in order to experience what another person is thinking or
feeling.
i. Different from sympathetic listening, which means feeling sorry for another person.
ii. Effective empathic listening requires two skills:
1. Perspective Taking: the ability to understand a situation from another
individuals point of view.
2. Empathic Concern: the ability to identify how someone else is feeling and
then experience those feelings yourself.
d. Other Types of Listening
i. Inspirational Listening: listening in order to be inspired.
ii. Appreciative Listening: listening for pure enjoyment.
iii. Cultural Listening

Common Barriers to Effective Listening
1. Noise: anything that distracts you from listening to what you wish to listen to.
2. Pseudolistening and Selective Attention
a. Pseudolistening: using feedback behaviors to give the false impression that one is listening.
b. Selective Attention: listening to only what one wants to hear and ignoring the rest.
c. Common reasons for selective attention and pseudolistening: boredom, disagreement with
speaker, disinterest, and sleepiness.
3. Information Overload: the state of being overwhelmed by the huge amount of information one is
required to take in every day.
a. Sources and Effects of Information Overload
i. Advertising messages (magazines, television, newspapers, billboards, clothing, junk
mail, movie previews, etc.)
ii. Alvin Toffler coined information overload in 1970.
iii. Information overload can be particularly troubling for people with attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
1. People with ADHD are easily distracted and have trouble focusing their
attention for very long.
b. Avoiding Overload From Computer-Mediated and Other Sources
i. Turn the ringer off your cell phone or PDA.
ii. Set filters on your e-mail system to reduce spam, and use a pop-up blocker to
eliminate pop-up ads when youre online.
4. Glazing Over: daydreaming during the time not spent listening.
a. Different from pseudolistening. When youre glazing over, you actually are listening to
what the speaker is saying youre just allowing your mind to wander while doing so.
b. Glazing over can lead to three problems:
i. Can cause you to miss important details in what youre hearing.
ii. Might lead you to listen less critically than you normally would.
iii. Glazing over can make it appear to a speaker that you arent listening to what he or
she is saying, even though you are.
5. Rebuttal Tendency: the propensity to debate a speakers point and formulate ones reply while the
person is still speaking.
a. Uses mental energy that should be spent paying attention to the speaker.
b. By not paying close attention to the speaker, a listener responds in the first place.
6. Closed-Mindedness: the tendency not to listen to anything with which one disagrees.
a. Close-minded individuals refuse to consider the merits of speakers point if it conflicts with
their own beliefs.
b. Most people are closed-minded only about particular issues, not about everything.
7. Competitive Interrupting: using interpretation to take control of a conversation.
a. The goal is to ensure that they get to speak more than the other person does and that their
ideas and perspective take priority.

Become a Better Listener
1. Becoming a Better Informational Listener
a. Separate What Is and Isnt Said
i. Perhaps the most effective way to determine whether you have understood a
speakers message is to paraphrase it.
b. Avoid the Confirmation Bias
i. Conformation Bias: the tendency to pay attention only to information that supports
ones values and beliefs while discounting or ignoring information that doesnt
ii. Ask yourself whether you have listened to all sides of an issue before you form a
conclusions , or whether you are simply avoiding information that would lead you to
question your beliefs.
c. Listen For Substance More Than For Style
i. Vividness Effect: refers to the tendency for dramatic, shocking events to distort
ones perceptions of reality.
2. Becoming a Better Critical Listener
a. Become a Skeptic
i. Skepticism isnt about being cynical or finding fault; rather, its about evaluating the
evidence for a claim.
ii. Being skeptic means setting aside your biases and being willing to be persuaded by
the merits of the argument and the quality of the evidence.
b. Evaluate a Speakers Credibility
i. Having experience with something may give a person credibility on that topic or
area, but it doesnt necessarily make the individual an expert.
1. Individuals can be experts on topics with which they have no personal
experience.
a. Ex: Male gynecologist and obstetrician
ii. If a speaker has a special interest in making you believe some idea or claim, that fact
tends to reduce his or her credibility.
c. Understanding Probability
i. An event or a fact is possible if theres even the slightest chance, however small, that
it might be true.
ii. To be probable, a statement has to have greater than 50 percent chance of being
true.
iii. A statement is certain only if its likelihood of being true is 100 percent, nothing less.
3. Becoming a Better Empathic Listener
a. Listen Nonjudgmentally
i. Two strategies:
1. Listen without interrupting.
2. Dont offer advice unless asked.
b. Acknowledge Feelings
i. An important strategy for good empathic listening, therefore, is to acknowledge a
speakers feelings and allow him or her to continue expressing them.
1. We do so by responding to speakers with continuer statements: phrases that
identify the emotions a person is experience and allow him or her to
communicate them further.
2. If is important to avoid terminator statements: phrases that fail to
acknowledge a speakers emotions and thereby shut down the persons
opportunity to express them.
c. Communicate Support Nonverbally
i. Perhaps the most important nonverbal behavior in this situation is eye contact.
1. If you allow yourself to be distracted by your environment, you can convey
the message that you arent really listening.
ii. Other important behaviors are your use of facial expressions and touch.
1. A reassuring smile and a warm touch can make people feel as though you
understand, support, and empathize.