You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

by Kate Murphy

Expressions of authentic emotion are discernibly different from those people “put on.” They are a special combination of minute muscle contractions, particularly around the eyes and mouth, over which you have no control. You can fake a smile, put on a brave face, and feign surprise, but it’s not going to look the same as it would if you actually felt the emotions.

People who were raised by, say, emotionally flat parents or parents who were depressed or angry all the time tend to have trouble reading the full range of facial expressions. Studies have shown this is also true for people who spend too much time looking at screens.

Likewise, romantic partners might have serious talks while they are lying side by side in a darkened bedroom. The lessening or softening of visual cues keeps them from going into sensory overload.

Because nonverbal signals typically carry more than half, or 55 percent, of the emotional content of a message, if you take them out of the equation, you’re missing out on a lot of information.

Indeed, mental health experts say device dependency has many of the same behavioral, psychological, and neurobiological components as substance abuse.

While our smartphones may not allow us to have a decent conversation (“Can you hear me now? How about now?”), they seem to offer us just about everything else—social media, games, news, maps, recipes, videos, music, movies, podcasts, shopping, and pornography, if you’re so inclined. In the end, none of it is as emotionally satisfying or as essential to our well-being as connecting with a live human being. And yet, like any addict, we keep tapping, scrolling, and swiping as if pulling a lever on a slot machine, hoping to eventually hit the jackpot.

It’s hard to concentrate on what’s happening in the real world when you’re preoccupied with what could be happening in the virtual one.

Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, T. S. Eliot, and Lewis Carroll all attributed their genius to long periods of uninterrupted musing.

A study by a British advertising buyer found that, on average, when people are at home, they switch between devices (phone, tablet, or laptop) twenty-one times per hour, all while the television is on in the background.

I feel like I’m always being buffeted about. You feel busier trying to keep up, but it just keeps you from getting anything done.”

It’s a weird loop of the phone creating a circumstance where people will talk about things that aren’t worth listening to, which in turn makes you more likely to stop listening and look at your phone.

But it’s not just mobile devices and the associated online distraction that are getting in the way of listening. It’s also the modern aural environments we have created for ourselves. Workplaces today, for example, from the smallest start-ups to the largest corporations, are typically “open office” designs, with few walls or enclosures, so every telephone call, keyboard click, and after-lunch belch contributes to a constant daily racket.

“The often used phrase ‘pay attention’ is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of attention that you can

allocate to activities, and if you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail.”

All this is to say that you must cultivate the right environment if you want to truly listen, which is as much about a receptive physical space as a receptive state of mind. You need quiet and freedom from interruption. There shouldn’t be background noise, much less the intruding pin...

Among the conversation starters recommended by the Family Dinner Project are questions like “What is the best gift you ever received?” and “If you went back in time one hundred or two hundred years and could only bring three things with you, what would you bring?” Similar to the “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love” mentioned earlier, the conversation starters are curious rather than appraising, seeking to find out not what someone has achieved but who the person really is.

“She never rushed you or tried to finish your thoughts,” Sharp said. “She invited you to tell your story, and, more importantly, she actually let you tell your story.”

So, too, in conversation, it’s important to pay attention to what words conceal and silences reveal.

To be a good listener is to accept pauses and silences because filling them too soon, much less preemptively, prevents the speaker from communicating what they are perhaps struggling to say.

Just wait. Give the other person a chance to pick up where they left off. As a journalist, it took me too long to realize that I didn’t have to say anything to keep the conversation going. Some of the most interesting and valuable bits of information have come not from my questioning but from keeping my mouth shut. You get so much mor...

There is a teaching in the Talmud that says, “A word is worth one coin, silence is worth two.” The Quakers have something called waiting worship where congregants assemble and sit in silence so they are open and available to divine insight. But even Quakers can be uncomfortable with silence. A member of a Quaker congregation in Richmond, Indiana, told me that there’s no problem finding a seat on the one Sunday a month devoted to waiting worship because “a lot of people don’t go because they find the quiet too challenging.”

“If you can bear to do it for just twenty-four hours, you will learn to be a better listener,” she said. “You will learn the unimportance of your words and the importance of other people’s words.”

Dutch researchers found that listening to positive gossip made people try to behave in a similar way, and negative gossip made people feel better about themselves. Another study showed that the more shocked or upset you are by gossip, the more likely it is that you’ll learn a lesson from it.

There’s also the thought that listening to how people talk about others, true or untrue, may say as much, or more, about them than the people they are talking about.

While you may feel a sense of urgency to tell people how you feel, it’s not always helpful. You are putting your ego ahead of the other person’s vulnerability. This doesn’t mean you have to be dishonest or self-effacing, but you do need to listen enough to know when the other person is ready to hear what you have to say. Not everything needs to be said as you are feeling it. In fact, sometimes it’s better to wait until you aren’t feeling it quite so strongly.

Relationships most often fail due to neglect, and one of the principle kinds of neglect is not being attentive. Whether viewed as an evolutionary survival tactic, basic moral virtue, or what we owe the ones we love, listening is what unifies us as human beings.

Maxim of Quality—we expect the truth. Maxim of Quantity—we expect to get information we don’t already know and not so much that we feel overwhelmed. Maxim of Relation—we expect relevance and logical flow.

Maxim of Manner—we expect the speaker to be reasonably brief, orderly, and unambiguous.

“’Tis the good reader that makes the good book.” Likewise, ’tis the good listener who makes the good conversation.

Their self-centered conversational style more often speaks to deep insecurities, anxieties, or blind spots. Sometimes just by listening, they begin to listen, too—not only to you but also to themselves.

The power of the listener is that you get to decide how much effort you want to put in and when you’ve had enough.

Part of being a good listener is knowing your limits and setting boundaries.

Not listening because you don’t agree with someone, you are self-absorbed, or you think you already know what someone will say makes you a bad listener. But not listening because you don’t have the intellectual or emotional energy to listen at that moment makes you human.

A good listener takes the time and makes the effort to help people find their voice, and in so doing, intimacy and understanding are earned. Listeners, through the gift or by dint of sustained attention, receive in return other people’s confidences.

Listening can continue even when you are no longer in the presence of the speaker as you reflect on what the person said and gain added insight.

“The best friendships are those where you are able to immediately pick up the conversation where you left off because the person’s words have remained with you.”

When you don’t interrupt or talk over people, you don’t keep them from finishing their sentences and thoughts. They sometimes say things that they didn’t expect and maybe didn’t even know themselves.

Listening helps you see we are all dealing with similar issues—wanting to be loved, looking for purpose, and fearing the end. You learn you are not alone. By listening, you acknowledge and embrace the world that is going on outside your head, which helps you sort out what’s going on inside your head. And unlike most things in your life, listening is fully under your control. You get to decide who deserves your attention. Listening is your gift to bestow. No one can make you listen.

But just as you should be mindful and intentional when you grant the gift of your attention, you should try to be as mindful and intentional when you withhold it. While not listening is justified and a matter of practicality in some circumstances, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a form of rejection. Consciously or unconsciously, you are choosing to attend to something else, which implies that person is not as interesting, as important, or as worthwhile, at least not at that moment.

Listening is like playing a sport or musical instrument in that you can get better and better with practice and persistence, but you will never achieve total mastery. Some may have more natural ability and some may have to try harder, but everyone can benefit from making the effort.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” It is flattering when someone listens to you, which is why we are drawn to those increasingly rare individuals who actually do.

Technology does not so much interfere with listening as make it seem unnecessary. Our devices indulge our fear of intimacy by fooling us into thinking that we are socially connected even when we are achingly alone.