listen

Chapter 5

Listening

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Listening

• Listening – the learned process of receiving, interpreting, recalling, evaluating, and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages.

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Is Listening Easy?

So, how good a listener is an average person? A researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit wanted to find out how good a listener was the average college student. During a lecture, he had his assistant fire a cap gun randomly during his lecture. Each time the cap gun fired, students were instructed to write down what they were doing at that exact moment. Here are the results:

● 20% reported thinking about sex. ● 20% reported reminiscing about something. ● 20 % reported listening. ● Only 7% reported actively listening.

The remainder reported that they were thinking about lunch, daydreaming, worrying, and contemplating their religion!

Most people think they are pretty good listeners. But how good are we actually? Let’s assess our listening skills or lack thereof

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Are you a good listener? Answer the following: True or False

1. I frequently find myself daydreaming while someone else is talking.

2. I’d rather just listen to people’s words than pay attention to their nonverbal cues to understand the message

3. I am really good a pseudo listening, acting like I’m listening even if I’m not.

4. If I disagree with people, I interrupt them immediately to set the record straight.

5. I often interrupt people to speed along a convo or to interject my opinion.

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6-10

1. I anticipate what people will say next as they are speaking.

2. I am easily distracted by a speaker’s appearance. 3. I have a hard time listening to difficult or complex

material. 4. I often find myself judging the topic as boring or

uninteresting to me. 5. I often form my response while the other person is still

speaking.

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1. I discount what other people say, if they don’t agree with my opinions and values.

2. I have a hard time listening to subjects that I find personally controversial and emotional.

3. I frequently interrupt the speaker to get my point across. 4. I often have convos while doing multiple things like

playing on the computer, listening to music, and other distractions.

5. I am easily distracted by a speaker’s delivery (tone of voice, accent, volume)

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Add your scores

● Each false is worth 1 point.

● 14+, you’re a skilled listener!

● 12-13, you’re above average

● 10-11, you’re within average range

● 9 and below, you need help.

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Listening Process

• Receiving – Physiological intake of some stimuli

• Interpreting – Make meaning from stimuli using schemata

• Recall – Retrieval of information from short- or long-term

memory

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Listening Process (cont’d)

• Evaluating – Making judgments about a message’s credibility,

completeness, and worth

• Responding – Sending verbal and nonverbal messages that

indicate attentiveness and understanding or a lack thereof

• Back-channel cues

• Paraphrasing

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Importance of Listening

• Listening helps us achieve communication goals

• Listening plays a role in academic, professional, civic, and personal contexts

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Listening Types

• Discriminative listening – Primarily instrumental and physiological

• Informational listening – Focus: comprehending and retaining information

• Critical listening – Focus: analyzing or evaluating a message

• Empathetic listening – Focus: understanding or experiencing

others’ thoughts or feelings

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Listening Styles

Listening Style Focus Potential Weakness

People-oriented Needs and feelings of others May under-focus on content

Action-oriented Well organized and precise information

May be easily frustrated by “unorganized” messages

Content-oriente d

Processing complex messages May not be effective under time-constraints

Time-oriented Completing tasks and achieving goals

May cut people off and make decisions without all the information

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Environmental and Physical Barriers

• Environmental factors such as lighting, temperature, and furniture affect our ability to listen

• Psychological noise – noise stemming from our psychological states including moods and level of arousal can facilitate or impede listening

• Physiological noise – noise stemming from a physical illness, injury, or bodily stress

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Cognitive and Personal Barriers

• Difference between speech and thought rate allows us to cognitively process more information than comes from one speaker

• Selective attention – refers to our tendency to pay attention to the messages that benefit us in some way and filter others out

• Response preparation interferes with the listening process; more concerned with the response than the sender’s message

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Lack of Listening Preparation

• Our culture focuses more on speaking than listening

• There is little formal instruction in listening

• Listening is often seen as a “chore”

• Where is this most common?

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Bad Speakers and/or Messages

• Poorly structured or composed messages, and information overload present listening challenges

– Sorry Donny T.

– Speakers should work to create “listenable messages”

• Listeners should monitor prejudice that may arise

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Bad Listening Practices

• Interrupting – Bad when intentional or the result of “mindless

communication”

• Distorted listening – Occurs when we incorrectly recall information, skew

information to fit our expectations or existing schemas, or add material to embellish or change information

– basically, you didn’t listen well and making things up to make it seem like you did

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Bad listening practices

• Pseudolistening - faking it (so yes, responding can be faked!)


• Monopolizing/Narcissistic- stage hog
 • Selective listening- bits and pieces of what we

want, tuning out the things we don’t want to hear. 
 • Defensive listening- feeling attacked
 • Ambushing/Aggressive listening- you’re attacking

• Literal listening- content-level only

• Therapy Session. Which type is it?

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Bad Listening Practices

• Eavesdropping – A planned attempt to secretly listen to a

conversation, which is a violation of the speakers’ privacy

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Listening Competence at Each Stage

Receiving Concentrate on stimuli most relevant to your listening goals, avoid interrupting

Interpreting Identify main points, take additional meaning from contextual clues

Recalling Use multiple senses to decode messages; repeat, rephrase, and reorganize information to fit your cognitive preferences

Evaluating Separate facts, inferences, and judgments; identify persuasive strategies and fallacies; monitor your biases

Responding Ask appropriate clarifying questions, paraphrase, adapt response to the speaker and context

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When Giving Feedback to Others

1. Be specific a. I noticed you said “any of our recent events.” What events are you

talking about? 2. Be descriptive

a. I didn’t like that. -> That made me feel (emotion) because (reason). 3. Be positive

a. “Thank you for sharing that.” “I’m glad you feel comfortable talking to me about this, but I don’t think I may be the best person to talk to.”

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When Giving Feedback to Others

1. Be constructive a. You’re such a bad boyfriend for saying/doing that! -> Next time,

can you do (action) or say (message) instead? 2. Be realistic

a. I never want to hear you talk to me like that again! You’re the worst person I’ve ever met! -> When you speak this way, it doesn’t feel good. I won’t allow our conversations to continue if you keep going in this way.

3. Be relevant a. Simply just staying on topic.

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When Giving Feedback to Yourself

1. Identify strengths and weaknesses

2. Evaluate yourself within the context of the task or

assignment guidelines

3. Set goals for next time

4. Revisit goals and assess progress at regular intervals

Listening quiz!!

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