What it costs them

It's easy to think of listening as a courtesy, pleasant to receive and harmless to go without. The research suggests it does more than that. How you listen affects what the other person is able to say, and it can affect how they see themselves.

Monisha Pasupathi and Ben Rich ran two studies with a hundred pairs of friends. One friend told the other about a recent experience. In some pairs the listening friend had been secretly instructed to be attentive. In others the friend was told to be distracted, and in one study a third group was told to disagree. The researchers were interested in what happened to the speaker's view of themselves. Someone who started out believing "I'm really interested in this activity" or "that event was typical of me" was less able to hold on to that belief after telling a distracted friend about it. The disagreeable friends didn't have that effect. A friend who argued with you left your sense of yourself intact. It was the friend who was only half there who undermined it.

The authors conclude that it's responsiveness, and not agreement, that people need from a listener in order to feel confirmed in who they are. I find that one of the more sobering results in this book. It suggests that when you half-listen to your daughter describing her week, more is going on than a missed detail or two. At a low level, and without either of you knowing it, her sense that the week was real and mattered is going unconfirmed.

Good news is affected as much as bad. Shelly Gable and colleagues studied what happens when people tell someone close about something good that's happened to them. Across four studies, sharing good news increased the teller's positive feeling over and above the event itself. The size of the benefit depended on how the listener responded. An active and constructive response, which showed interest, asked questions and was pleased for the person, enhanced it. A passive response, such as a brief "that's nice, dear", did not. Relationships in which a partner typically responded with enthusiasm were closer and more satisfying.

A drafting listener often produces the passive response without meaning to. Your son tells you he's been picked for the team. You're pleased, and you say, "Well done! You know, I was captain of the second eleven at your age." You meant to share in his moment, and what he experienced was his news turning into your reminiscence before he'd finished enjoying it. If he'd been asked one question, such as "What position?" or "Who told you?", he'd have had another minute of it. Children notice this early, and they adjust what they bring to each parent accordingly.

Then there's the effect on the telling itself, which I covered in chapter 4. Bavelas and her colleagues found that a distracted listener makes the speaker tell the story worse, and makes them lose the ending. If someone's stories always seem to fall flat when they tell them to you, they don't conclude that you're a poor listener. They're more likely to conclude that they're boring, or that the thing wasn't worth telling.

Teenagers deserve a particular mention. A parent's drafted replies to a teenager are nearly all of one kind, which is correction or instruction. The teenager mentions that a friend was caught vaping, and before the sentence is over the parent has a speech ready about vaping. The teenager learns that mentioning things produces speeches, and so they stop mentioning them. Parents then say that their fifteen-year-old has stopped talking to them, as though it were a stage of development. Some of it is. Some of it is a sensible response to what happens when they do talk. A parent who can hear "Jake got caught vaping" and respond with "Oh? What happened?" will hear a great deal more, and will learn sooner about the things they really need to know.

Put these together and you can see why people stop. It isn't a punishment, and it's seldom a decision. Telling you things has simply become unrewarding. The story doesn't land, and the subject gets taken over. Whether the news was good or bad, it shrinks in the telling. They also get advice on the part they'd already dealt with. None of it is dramatic enough to complain about. The person just finds, over time, that they'd rather tell their aunt.

I've set this out plainly because I think it's the strongest reason to change. You took up this habit to be helpful, and to be close to people and good company for them. It has been making you less useful to the people you love, and harder for them to confide in. It isn't doing what you wanted it to do.

If that stings, I'd add one thing. The effect reverses, and chapter 16 gives an example. People are quick to notice when someone has started listening to them properly, and they're forgiving about it. They don't hold the earlier years against you, and most of them are simply glad.