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

by Kate Murphy

Listening helps us sort fact from fiction and deepens our understanding of the complex situations and personalities we encounter in life. It’s how we gain entrée, gather intelligence, and make connections, regardless of the social circles in which we find ourselves.

A study by psychologists at the University of Essex found that the mere presence of a phone on the table—even if it’s silent—makes those sitting around the table feel more disconnected and disinclined to talk about anything important or meaningful, knowing if they do, they will probably be interrupted.

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. It quashes elaboration and prevents real issues from coming to the surface.

The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas believed human interactions are the foundation of personal ethics and that listening, and the understanding and empathy it engenders, gives our lives meaning and direction. Levinas, who was Jewish and was a prisoner of war during WWII, stressed the importance of experiencing the “other.” By this, he meant engaging with other people face-to-face and learning how all our stories are different and yet the same in terms of underlying emotions. Listening to the “other” is what reminds us of our common human vulnerability and fragility, and it imposes the ethical imperative, or duty, to do no harm.

The contemporary French intellectual Pascal Bruckner argues in The Temptation of Innocence that modern individualism may be taking us backward. He observes that when one’s duty is foremost to one’s self, there is no sense of social obligation and “guided only by the lantern of his own understanding, the individual loses all assurance of a place, an order, a definition. He may have gained freedom, but he has lost security.” In our self-reliant society, we believe we are responsible for our own happiness and prosperity. “Everyone must sell himself as a person, in order to be accepted,” Bruckner writes. But this constant self-promotion and image cultivation comes at a cost. We lose touch with others and ultimately our sense of belonging and connection, which was all we really wanted in the first place.