You're Not Listening

by Kate Murphy

  Much of what we think we know about listening comes from research on how students comprehend material taught in classrooms, which bears little resemblance to the listening we do in our everyday lives. Worse, scholars can’t seem to agree on a definition of listening. They introduce a different jargony definition every few years. In 1988, it was “the process of receiving, attending to, and assigning meaning to aural stimuli.” After several more iterations, in 2011, listening became “the acquisition, process, and retention of information in the interpersonal context.” All fancy ways of saying you totally get what someone is trying to tell you.

  And yet, there’s lots of pat advice out there about how to be a better listener. Most of it comes from business consultants and executive coaches who toss around the same ideas but use different (sometimes hilarious) terms and catchphrases like, shared sonic worlds and co-contextualizing. The advice typically boils down to showing that you are paying attention by making eye contact, nodding, and throwing in a “mmm-hmm” here and there. They instruct you not to interrupt, and when the speaker finishes, you are supposed to repeat or paraphrase back what the person said and then allow them to confirm or set you straight. Only at this point should you launch into what you want to say.

  The premise is this: listen in a prescribed way to get what you want (i.e., get a date, make the sale, negotiate the best terms, or climb the corporate ladder). Listening may indeed and probably will help you accomplish your goals, but if that’s your only motivation for listening, then you are just making a show of it. People will pick up on your inauthenticity. You don’t need to act like you are paying attention if you are, in fact, paying attention.

  Listening requires, more than anything, curiosity. McManus is almost compulsively curious. We all were at one point. When you were a little kid, everything was new, so you were curious about everything and everybody. Little kids will ask a million questions, sometimes embarrassingly personal questions, trying to figure you out. And they listen carefully to what you say, often repeating back what you least want them to—like an indiscreet comment or expletive you let slip.

  “Everyone is born a scientist,” said physicist Eric Betzig. “It’s just unfortunate that with a lot of people, it gets beat out of them.” He told me this in 2014 after learning he had won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in the development of a super high-resolution microscope that allows visualization of such minute biological processes as the transfer of DNA between cells. “I’ve been lucky to be able to maintain that kid-like curiosity and enthusiasm for experimenting and learning,” he said.

  Studies show that children and adults who are securely attached tend to be more curious and open to new information than people who are not. It’s another tenet of attachment theory that if you have someone in your life who listens to you and who you feel connected to, then the safer you feel stepping out in the world and interacting with others. You know you will be okay if you hear something or find out things that upset you because you have someone, somewhere, you can confide in and who will relieve your distress. It’s called having a secure base, and it’s a bulwark against loneliness.

  Pulitzer Prize–winning author and historian Studs Terkel made a career out of his curiosity. His landmark book Working was a collection of his interviews with people from all segments of society talking about their jobs—from garbage collectors and gravediggers to surgeons and industrial designers. Using their own words, Terkel demonstrated that we have something to learn from everybody. “The obvious tool of my trade is the tape recorder,” said Terkel, who died at ninety-six in 2008. “But I suppose the real tool is curiosity.”

  It was a curiosity that developed during his childhood. His parents owned a boardinghouse in Chicago, and he grew up fascinated by the intrigues, arguments, and assignations he overheard. The boarders, while transient, took up permanent residence in his imagination and enlivened his later work—people like Harry Michaelson, the tippling tool and die maker; Prince Arthur Quinn, the local precinct captain in his leprechaun green fedora; and Myrd Llyndgyn, the Welsh scavenger, whom Terkel said was not only penniless, “he didn’t have a vowel to his name.”

  The most valuable lesson I’ve learned as a journalist is that everybody is interesting if you ask the right questions. If someone is dull or uninteresting, it’s on you. Researchers at the University of Utah found that when talking to inattentive listeners, speakers remembered less information and were less articulate in the information they conveyed. Conversely, they found that attentive listeners elicited more information, relevant detail, and elaboration from speakers, even when the listeners didn’t ask any questions. So if you’re barely listening to someone because you think that person is boring or not worth your time, you will actually make it so.

  Think about a time when you were trying to tell a story to someone who was obviously uninterested; maybe they were sighing or their eyes were roaming around the room. What happened? Your pacing faltered, you left out details, or maybe you started babbling irrelevant information or overshared in an effort to regain their attention. Eventually, you probably trailed off while the other person smiled blandly or nodded absently. You also probably walked away from the encounter with a distinct dislike for that person.

  In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” To listen is to be interested, and the result is more interesting conversations. The goal is to leave the exchange having learned something. You already know about you. You don’t know about the person with whom you are speaking or what you can learn from that person’s experience.

  Ingvar Kamprad, founder of the international furniture retailer IKEA, knew this. While he reportedly lived mostly in seclusion, he would show up at IKEA locations around the world and anonymously stroll the floor, sometimes posing as a customer questioning employees, and other times approaching customers as if he were an employee. “I see my task as serving the majority of people,” he told an interviewer several years before his death in 2018. “The question is, how do you find out what they want, how best to serve them? My answer is to stay close to ordinary people, because at heart I am one of them.”

  Kamprad’s approach demonstrates not only good business sense but also a genuine curiosity about other people’s thoughts and feelings. It’s an eagerness to understand someone else’s worldview and an expectation that you will be surprised by what you hear and will learn from the experience. Put another way, it’s a lack of presumption that you already know what someone will say, much less that you know better.

  * * *

  Thinking you already know how a conversation will go down kills curiosity and subverts listening, as does anxiety about the interaction. It’s why every day, strangers completely ignore one another in crowded public spaces like trains, buses, elevators, and waiting rooms. But what if you weren’t allowed to keep to yourself? Behavioral science researchers at the University of Chicago ran a series of experiments involving hundreds of bus and train commuters whom they assigned to one of three conditions: 1) sit in solitude, 2) engage with a stranger, or 3) act as they normally would on their commutes.

  While the study participants for the most part expected to be least happy and least productive if they had to engage with a stranger, the researchers found the opposite was true. The people who talked to strangers were the happiest following their commutes and didn’t feel like it prevented them from doing work they would have otherwise done. And whereas the study participants were convinced other people wouldn’t want to talk to them and the exchange would be uncomfortable, none of them reported being rebuffed or insulted.

  Human beings detest uncertainty in general, and in social situations in particular. It’s a survival mechanism residing in our primitive brains that whispers, “Keep doing what you’ve been doing because it hasn’t killed you yet.” It’s why at parties you might gr
avitate toward someone annoying whom you know, rather than introducing yourself to a stranger. McDonald’s and Starbucks are testaments to how much humans crave sameness. Their success relies largely on the fact that you can go into any location, anywhere in the world, and get an identical Big Mac or Frappuccino.

  We love our daily routines and detailed calendars that tell us exactly what to expect. Occasionally, we might inject a little novelty into our lives, but more typically, we walk or jog the same routes, sit in the same seats in class or during work meetings, shop aisles in the same order at the grocery store, stake out the same spots in yoga class, return to the same vacation places, go to dinner with the same people, and have pretty much the same conversations.

  But paradoxically, it’s uncertainty that makes us feel most alive. Think of events that shake you out of your rote existence: maybe attending a family wedding, making a big presentation, or going somewhere you’ve never been. It’s on those occasions that time seems to slow down a little and you feel more fully engaged. The same holds true if the experience is risky, like mountain climbing or parasailing. Your senses are sharper. You notice more. Thanks to the release of a feel-good chemical in the brain called dopamine, you get a greater surge of pleasure from chance encounters with people than planned meetings. Good news, financial rewards, and gifts are more enjoyable if they are surprises. It’s why the most popular television shows and movies are the ones with unexpected plot twists and astonishing endings.

  And nothing is more surprising than what comes out of people’s mouths, even people you think you know well. Indeed, you’ve likely sometimes been surprised by things that came out of your own mouth. People are fascinating because they are so unpredictable. The only certainty you achieve by not listening to people is that you will be bored and you will be boring because you won’t learn anything new.

  During our clandestine meeting at the Four Seasons, McManus told me, “I feel like there’s very little I haven’t heard at this point, but still, I will walk out of a room and think, ‘I can’t believe that guy just told me that.’” Like when a doctor he was vetting for a wealthy client volunteered she had a drug habit or a yacht captain who admitted to habitually cutting himself. McManus scanned the bar again, which made me do the same. “But that’s the point,” he said, slowly returning his gaze to me. “That’s how you know you’re at the top of your game.”

  While McManus’s title at the CIA was chief interrogator, he said interrogation was his least preferred and least effective tactic. “I’ve never been big on interrogation. Trust me, I know what it is. If I berate the hell out of you, you’re going to give me something. But is it credible and reliable?” He shook his head and continued, “I’ve got to take the time and be patient enough and be a good listener to get information that is going to be useful.” His approach was to ask suspects to tell him their stories, not bully them to fess up.

  As an example, McManus told me about getting Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud to admit that he met with Osama bin Laden. This was shortly after 9/11 when the intelligence community was scrambling to hunt down the mastermind of the attacks. Rather than be adversarial, McManus built an odd rapport with Bashir by having a surprisingly long and illuminating conversation with him about the African American experience. “I’m just listening to him as he told me all about the civil rights movement and the travails of black people in America. He knew more about American history than I did,” McManus said. “After all that, I asked him wouldn’t he rather tell his story to someone like me than someone like ‘them.’ I wasn’t sure who ‘them’ was. I wanted him to create a picture in his mind of ‘them.’” The scientist said he’d rather tell McManus his story.

  Listening for things you have in common and gradually building rapport is the way to engage with anyone. Interrogation doesn’t work with terrorists, so why would it work when you meet someone at a social gathering? Peppering people with appraising and personal questions like “What do you do for a living?” or “What part of town do you live in?” or “What school did you go to?” or “Are you married?” is interrogating. You’re not trying to get to know them. You’re sizing them up. It makes people reflexively defensive and will likely shift the conversation into a superficial and less-than-illuminating résumé recitation or self-promoting elevator pitch.

  In the Chicago commuter study, the participants who engaged with strangers were told to try to make a connection. They were instructed to find out something interesting about the other person and to share something about themselves. It was a give-and-take. Had they aggressively started asking personal questions about the person’s employment, education, and family, it wouldn’t have gone so well. Instead, they might have started out by talking about the commute or maybe noticing someone’s Chicago Cubs ball cap, asking if the person ever goes to games—listening and letting the conversation build organically. By being genuinely curious, courteous, and attentive, the study’s participants discovered how correspondingly gracious—and ultimately, interesting—their fellow commuters could be.

  Curious people are those who will sit at the airport with a book in their lap but never open it or who forget about their phones when they are out and about. They are fascinated by, rather than fearful of, the unpredictability of others. They listen well because they want to understand and connect and grow. Even people who you would think had heard it all—CIA agents, priests, bartenders, criminal investigators, psychotherapists, emergency room intake nurses—will tell you they are continually amazed, entertained, and even appalled by what people tell them. It’s what makes their lives interesting, and it’s what makes them interesting to others.

  4

  I Know What You’re Going to Say

  Assumptions as Earplugs

  “You’re not listening!”

  “Let me finish!”

  “That’s not what I said!”

  After “I love you,” these are among the most common refrains in close relationships. While you might think you’d be more likely to listen to a loved one than a stranger, in fact, the opposite is often true. It’s a phenomenon psychologist Judith Coche knows all too well. She is widely recognized as an authority on couples’ group therapy, and her success at saving seemingly hopeless marriages was documented in the book The Husbands and Wives Club by Laurie Abraham.

  When I met Coche in her downtown Philadelphia office late one evening, the sofa and chairs were still warm and the throw pillows twisted and disheveled from the couples’ group that had just left. I was there to find out why people so often feel unheard and misunderstood by their partners. Coche’s answer was pretty simple: people in long-term relationships tend to lose their curiosity for each other. Not necessarily in an unkind way; they just become convinced they know each other better than they do. They don’t listen because they think they already know what the other person will say.

  Coche gave the example of spouses who answer questions or make decisions for each other. They might also give gifts that miss the mark, resulting in disappointment and hurt feelings. Parents can make the same sorts of mistakes, assuming they know what their children like or don’t like and what they would or would not do. We actually all tend to make assumptions when it comes to those we love. It’s called the closeness-communication bias. As wonderful as intimacy and familiarity are, they make us complacent, leading us to overestimate our ability to read those closest to us.

  This was demonstrated by researchers at Williams College and the University of Chicago who, in an experimental setup similar to a parlor game, had two married couples, who didn’t know each other, sit in chairs arranged in a circle facing away from each other. Each participant, in turn, was instructed to say phrases used in everyday conversation that could have multiple meanings. The participants’ spouses said what they thought their partners meant, and then the strangers gave their best guesses. A sample statement was something like “You look different today,” which could mean “You look terrible,” or “See
, I do notice your looks,” or “Hey, I like the new look!” or “Hmm, I feel like something is different, but I can’t put my finger on it.” While participants were convinced their spouses would understand them better than strangers, they did no better than strangers, and sometimes worse.

  In a similar experiment, the researchers showed that close friends also overestimated how well they grasped each other’s meaning. Pairing subjects with a close friend and then a stranger, the researchers had the subjects direct one another to take items from a large box divided into grid-like compartments in which there were various objects with the same names—for example, a computer mouse and stuffed furry mouse. Some of the cubbies were visible to only one person while others were visible to both. The friends’ intimacy created an illusion of like-mindedness, making them more likely to assume their friends could see the same things they did. They were less likely to make that mistake with strangers—that is, they were more likely to immediately reach for the correct mouse, the one visible to both people, when directed by the stranger.

  “The understanding, ‘What I know is different from what you know,’ is essential for effective communication to occur,” said Kenneth Savitsky, professor of psychology at Williams College and lead author of the study. “It is necessary for giving directions, for teaching a class, or for ordinary conversation. But that insight can be elusive when the ‘you’ in question is a close friend or spouse.”

  It’s as if once you feel a connection with someone, you assume it will always be so. The sum of daily interactions and activities continually shapes us and adds nuance to our understanding of the world so that no one is the same as yesterday nor will today’s self be identical to tomorrow’s. Opinions, attitudes, and beliefs change. So it doesn’t matter how long you have known or how well you think you know people; if you stop listening, you will eventually lose your grasp of who they are and how to relate to them.