You're Not Listening

by Kate Murphy

  an excess of neurons Thomas A. Avino, Nicole Barger, Martha V. Vargas, Erin L. Carlson, David G. Amaral, Melissa D. Bauman, and Cynthia M. Schumann, “Neuron Numbers Increase in the Human Amygdala from Birth to Adulthood, but Not in Autism,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 14 (2018): 3710–3715, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1801912115.

  really happened in Oklahoma City Austin Prickett, “Police: Fight Over Star Wars and Star Trek Led to Assault,” KOKH Fox25, July 6, 2017, https://okcfox.com/news/local/police-fight-over-star-wars-and-star-trek-led-to-assault.

  what is known as learning Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), 25.

  “negative capability” John Keats, Selected Letters of John Keats, ed. Grant F. Scott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 60.

  known as cognitive complexity Jesse G. Delia, Ruth Anne Clark, and David E. Switzer, “Cognitive Complexity and Impression Formation in Informal Social Interaction,” Speech Monographs, 41, no. 4 (1974): 299–308, https://doi.org/10.1080/03637757409375854; Claudia L. Hale and Jesse G. Delia, “Cognitive Complexity and Social Perspective-taking,” Communication Monographs, 43, no. 3 (1976): 195–203, https://doi.org/10.1080/03637757609375932; Michael J. Beatty and Steven K. Payne, “Listening Comprehension as a Function of Cognitive Complexity: A Research Note,” Communication Monographs, 51, no. 1 (1984): 85–89, https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758409390186.

  make better judgments B. R. Burleson and J. J. Rack, “Constructivism: Explaining Individual Differences in Communication Skill,” in Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication, ed. L. A. Baxter and D. O. Braithwaite (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), 51–63; P. M. Spengler and D. C. Strohmer, “Clinical Judgmental Biases: The Moderating Roles of Counselor Cognitive Complexity and Counselor Client Preferences,” Journal of Counseling Psychology, 41, no. 1 (1994), 8–17, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.41.1.8.

  standing up to him Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 317.

  Jobs berated him Kim Scott, Radical Candor (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 80.

  8: FOCUSING ON WHAT’S IMPORTANT: LISTENING IN THE AGE OF BIG DATA

  hired by the United States Office Robert K. Merton, “The Focused Interview and Focus Groups: Continuities and Discontinuities,” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (1987): 550–566, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.890.112&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

  to research propaganda Peter Simonson, “Merton’s Sociology of Rhetoric,” in Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science, ed. Craig Calhoun (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 214–252.

  the so-called focused interview Liza Featherstone, Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation (New York: OR Books, 2017), 15–16.

  consumers in a focus group Ernest Dichter, The Strategy of Desire (New York: Routledge, 2017); Dinitia Smith, “When Flour Power Invaded the Kitchen,” New York Times, April 14, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/dining/when-flour-power-invaded-the-kitchen.html.

  people lie Will Leitch, “Group Thinker,” New York Magazine, June 21, 2004, https://nymag.com/nymetro/shopping/features/9299/.

  modernized Aunt Jemima Jon Berry, “Marketers Reach Out to Blacks,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1991, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1991-05-12-9102110986-story.html.

  Joseph Henry Hairston “Army’s First Black Helicopter Pilot Honored at George Washington University,” GW Today, November 4, 2014, https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/army%E2%80%99s-first-black-helicopter-pilot-honored-george-washington-university; “Joining a Segregated Army,” Joseph Henry Hairston interview, Digital Collections of the National WWII Museum, 2015, https://www.ww2online.org/view/joseph-hairston.

  half-billion-dollar brand “P&G’s Billion-Dollar Brands: Trusted, Valued, Recognized,” Procter & Gamble, https://www.pg.com/en_US/downloads/media/Fact_Sheets_BB_FA.pdf; John Colapinto, “Famous Names: Does It Matter What a Product Is Called?,” New Yorker, October 3, 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/famous-names.

  his book, Bit by Bit Matthew Salganik, Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).

  Darwin’s wide-ranging reading “Darwin Correspondence Project,” University of Cambridge, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/people/about-darwin/what-darwin-read/darwin-s-reading-notebooks.

  Amazon’s algorithmic recommendations Greg Linden, Brent Smith, and Jeremy York, “Amazon.com Recommendations Item-to-Item Collaborative Filtering,” IEEE Internet Computing, January–February 2003, https://www.cs.umd.edu/~samir/498/Amazon-Recommendations.pdf.

  9: IMPROVISATIONAL LISTENING: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO WORK

  Google commissioned a study Charles Duhigg, “What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” New York Times, February 25, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html.

  the most productive teams “Guide: Understand Team Effectiveness,” re: Work, https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness/steps/introduction/.

  job growth since 1980 David Deming, “The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 132, no. 4 (2017): 1593–1640, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx022.

  ballooned by 50 percent Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant, “Collaborative Overload,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 2016, 74–79, https://hbr.org/2016/01/collaborative-overload.

  Many large companies “Current and Former Clients,” Business Improv, http://businessimprov.com/clientspartners/.

  Carl Jung, early in his career Nelle Morton, The Journey Is Home (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1985), 209.

  competence and confidence T. Bradford Bitterly, Alison Brooks, and Maurice Schweitzer, “Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 112, no. 3 (2017): 431–455, https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000079.

  intimacy and security E. De Koning and R. L. Weiss, “The Relational Humor Inventory: Functions of Humor in Close Relationships,” American Journal of Family Therapy 30, no. 1 (2002): 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/019261802753455615.

  feelings of connectedness John C. Meyer, Understanding Humor Through Communication: Why Be Funny, Anyway (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 81–87.

  put-down or mean humor Nathan Miczo, Joshua Averbeck, and Theresa Mariani, “Affiliative and Aggressive Humor, Attachment Dimensions, and Interaction Goals,” Communication Studies 60, no. 5 (2009): 443–459, https://doi.org/10.1080/10510970903260301; Meyer, Understanding Humor Through Communication, 88–89.

  10: CONVERSATIONAL SENSITIVITY: WHAT TERRY GROSS, LBJ, AND CON MEN HAVE IN COMMON

  with a lump of clay Katherine Hampsten, “How Miscommunication Happens (and How to Avoid It),” TED-Ed animation, https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-to-avoid-miscommunication-katherine-hampsten#review.

  call it conversational sensitivity John A. Daly, Anita L. Vangelisti, and Suzanne M. Daughton, “The Nature and Correlates of Conversational Sensitivity,” Human Communication Research 14, no. 2 (1987): 167–202, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1987.tb00126.x.

  related to cognitive complexity Don W. Stacks and Mary Ann Murphy, “Conversational Sensitivity: Further Validation and Extension,” Communication Reports 6, no. 1 (1993): 18–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/08934219309367557.

  intuition, often called the sixth sense Herbert Simon, “What Is An Explanation of Behavior?,” Psychological Science 3, no. 3 (1992): 150–161, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb00017.x.

  personal stuff is discussed Stacks and Murphy, “Conversational Sensitivity.”

  a million words “How Many Words Are There in English?,” Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq-how-many-english-words.

  tipping out their muck Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus (New Yo
rk: Persea Books, 2005), 93.

  compacted composition of all Walt Whitman, The Portable Walt Whitman, ed. Michael Warner (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 557.

  dozens of regional dialects Bert Vaux, Harvard Dialect Survey, 2003, http://dialect.redlog.net/.

  good sex Sara McClelland, “Intimate Justice: Sexual Satisfaction in Young Adults,” (Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 2009), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00293.x.

  are full of echoes “The Only Surviving Recording of Virginia Woolf,” BBC, March 28, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160324-the-only-surviving-recording-of-virginia-woolf.

  Sapir-Whorf hypothesis Konrad Koerner, “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: A Preliminary History and a Bibliographical Essay,” AnthroSource, December 1992, https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.1992.2.2.173.

  demonstrated linguistic relativity Emanuel Bylund and Panos Athanasopoulos, “The Whorfian Time Warp: Representing Duration Through the Language Hourglass,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 146, no. 7 (2017): 911–916, https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000314.

  higher degree of self-awareness Jennifer R. Salibury and Guo-Ming Chen. “An Examination of the Relationship Between Conversation Sensitivity and Listening Styles,” Intercultural Communication Studies, 16, no. 1 (2007): 251–262.; Daly et al., “The Nature and Correlates of Conversational Sensitivity”; Stacks and Murphy, “Conversational Sensitivity.”

  known as self-monitoring Daly et al., “The Nature and Correlates of Conversational Sensitivity.”

  his 1948 book Theodor Reik, Listening with the Third Ear (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1948).

  People think Johnson talks “Robert Caro on the Fall of New York, and Glenn Close on Complicated Characters,” New Yorker Radio Hour, WNYC, May 4, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/robert-caro-on-the-fall-of-new-york-and-glenn-close-on-complicated-characters.

  lying is often a cooperative act Pamela Meyer, Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010), 22.

  con artist Mel Weinberg Robert D. McFadden, “Mel Weinberg, 93, the F.B.I.’s Lure in the Abscam Sting, Dies,” New York Times, June 6, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/obituaries/mel-weinberg-dead-abscam-informant.html.

  congressmen in the Abscam sting “ABSCAM,” FBI, https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/abscam.

  keep hopin’ we’re for real Leslie Maitland, “At the Heart of the Abscam Debate,” New York Times Magazine, July 25, 1982, https://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/25/magazine/at-the-heart-of-the-abscam-debate.html.

  people who are well motivated Sasan Baleghizadeh and Amir Hossein Rahimi, “The Relationship Among Listening Performance, Metacognitive Strategy Use and Motivation from a Self-determination Theory Perspective,” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 1, no. 1 (2011): 61–67, https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.1.1.61-67; Jeremy Biesanz and Lauren Human, “The Cost of Forming More Accurate Impressions: Accuracy-Motivated Perceivers See the Personality of Others More Distinctively but Less Normatively Than Perceivers Without an Explicit Goal,” Psychological Science 21, no. 4 (2009): 589–594, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610364121; James Hilton and John Darley, “The Effects of Interaction Goals on Person Perception,” ed. Mark P. Zanna, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 24 (1991), 235–268; Daly et al., “The Nature and Correlates of Conversational Sensitivity.”

  around 250,000 deaths “Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.,” Johns Hopkins Medicine, May 3, 2016, https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us.

  valuable reminders Laura Silvestri, “The Heuristic Value of Misunderstanding,” Civilisations 65, no. 1 (2016), 107–126, https://www.cairn.info/revue-civilisations-2016-1-page-107.htm; Amy Lee, Rhiannon D. Williams, Marta A. Shaw, and Yiyun Jie, “First-Year Students’ Perspectives on Intercultural Learning,” Teaching in Higher Education 19, no. 5 (2014): 543–554; Lipari, Listening, Thinking, Being, 8.

  In the words of Miles Davis Paul Maher Jr. and Michael Dorr, eds., Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2009), 70.

  11: LISTENING TO YOURSELF: THE VOLUBLE INNER VOICE

  do it in our heads Jane Lidstone, Elizabeth Meins, and Charles Fernyhough, “Individual Differences in Children’s Private Speech: Consistency Across Tasks, Timepoints, and Contexts,” Cognitive Development 26, no. 3 (2011): 203–213, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2011.02.002.

  same parts of our brains Ben Alderson-Day, Susanne Weis, Simon McCarthy-Jones, Peter Moseley, David Smailes, and Charles Fernyhough, “The Brain’s Conversation with Itself: Neural Substrates of Dialogic Inner Speech.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11, no. 1 (2015): 110–120, https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv094; Alain Morin and Breanne Hamper, “Self-Reflection and the Inner Voice: Activation of the Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus During Perceptual and Conceptual Self-Referential Thinking,” Open Neuroimaging Journal 6 (2012): 78–89, https://doi.org/10.2174/1874440001206010078.

  taking the perspective of another Charles Fernyhough, The Voices Within (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 74.

  higher performance on cognitive tasks Tuija Aro, Anna-Maija Poikkeus, Marja-Leena Laakso, Asko Tolvanen, and Timo Ahonen, “Associations Between Private Speech, Behavioral Self-Regulation, and Cognitive Abilities,” International Journal of Behavioral Development 39, no. 6 (2014): 508–518, https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025414556094; Ben Alderson-Day and Charles Fernyhough, “Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions, Phenomenology, and Neurobiology,” Psychological Bulletin 141, no. 5 (2015): 931–965, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000021.

  more involved parents Douglas Behrend, Karl Rosengren, and Marion Perlmutter, “The Relation Between Private Speech and Parental Interactive Style,” in Private Speech: From Social Interaction to Self-Regulation, ed. Rafael Diaz and Laura Berk (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992), 85–100.

  Appalachian families Laura Berk and Ruth Garvin, “Development of Private Speech Among Low-Income Appalachian Children,” Developmental Psychology 20, no. 2 (1984): 271–286, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.20.2.271.

  low-income urban families Laura Berk, “Development of Private Speech Among Preschool Children,” Early Child Development and Care 24, no. 1–2 (1986): 113–136, https://doi.org/10.1080/0300443860240107.

  rated the external sound Xing Tian, Nai Ding, Xiangbin Teng, Fan Bai, and David Poeppel, “Imagined Speech Influences Perceived Loudness of Sound,” Nature Human Behavior 2, no. 3 (2018): 225–234, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0305-8.

  we sound out words Marianne Abramson and Stephen D. Goldinger, “What the Reader’s Eye Tells the Mind’s Ear: Silent Reading Activates Inner Speech,” Perception & Psychophysics 59, no. 7 (1997): 1059–1068, https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205520.

  pace consistent with the speech Jessica Alexander and Lynne Nygaard, “Reading Voices and Hearing Text: Talker-Specific Auditory Imagery in Reading,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 34, no. 2 (2008): 446–459, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.34.2.446.

  reading direct versus indirect speech Bo Yao, Pascal Belin, and Christophe Scheepers, “Silent Reading of Direct versus Indirect Speech Activates Voice-selective Areas in the Auditory Cortex,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23, no. 10 (October 2011): 3146–3152, https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00022.

  teamed up with The Guardian Ben Alderson-Day, Marco Bernini, and Charles Fernyhough, “Uncharted Features and Dynamics of Reading: Voices, Characters, and Crossing of Experiences,” Consciousness and Cognition 49 (2017): 98–109, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2017.01.003.

  certain pitch of excitement Rob Couteau, “The Romance of Places: An Interview with Ray Bradbury,” in Conversations with Ray Bradbury, ed. Steven L. Aggelis (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 122.

  self-administering shocks Timothy Wilson, David Reinhard,
Erin C. Westgate, Daniel T. Gilbert, Nicole Ellerbeck, Cheryl Hahn, and Casey L. Brown, “Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind,” Science 345, no. 6 (2014): 75–77, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1250830.

  I argue with myself James Gleik, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (New York: Pantheon, 1992), 230.

  appreciating where we are Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, ed. Jeffrey Robbins (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1999), 110.

  12: SUPPORTING, NOT SHIFTING, THE CONVERSATION

  I was the cleverest woman Dick Leonard, The Great Rivalry: Gladstone and Disraeli (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013), 202–203; “Stanley Weintraub: Disraeli: A Biography,” C-SPAN video, 58:56, February 6, 1994, https://www.c-span.org/video/?54339-1/disraeli-biography.

  angel in the marble “Angels in the Marble?,” Economist, September 6, 2001, https://www.economist.com/united-states/2001/09/06/angels-in-the-marble.

  hundred informal dinner conversations Charles Derber, The Pursuit of Attention (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  like an insider Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Free Press, 2018).

  “Beckerisme,” is required reading Adam Gopnik, “The Outside Game,” New Yorker, January 5, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/12/outside-game.

  open and empathetic listeners Leonardo Christov-Moore, Elizabeth Simpson, Gino Coudé, Kristina Grigaityte, Marco Iacobonia, and Pier Ferrari, “Empathy: Gender Effects in Brain and Behavior,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 46, no. 4 (2014): 604–627, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.09.001.

  women focus more on David Geary, “Sexual Selection and Human Vulnerability,” in Evolution of Vulnerability (San Diego: Academic Press, 2015), 11–39, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-801562-9.09996-8; Debra Worthington and Margaret Fitch-Hauser, Listening: Processes, Functions and Competency (New York: Routledge, 2016), 32–34; Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), 74–95.