by Kate Murphy
losing our ability to daydream Rebecca McMillan, Scott Barry Kaufman, and Jerome L. Singer, “Ode to Positive Constructive Daydreaming,” Frontiers in Psychology 4 (2013): 626, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00626; Claire Zedelius and Jonathan Schooler, “The Richness of Inner Experience: Relating Styles of Daydreaming to Creative Processes,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2016): 2063, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.02063; Christopher R. Long and James R. Averill, “Solitude: An Exploration of Benefits of Being Alone,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 33, no. 1 (2003): 21–44, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5914.00204; Samantha Boardman, “Why Doing Nothing Is So Scary—And So Important,” Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2016, https://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/06/20/why-doing-nothing-is-so-scary-and-so-important/.
greatest advances in science Ingrid Wickelgren, “Delivered in a Daydream: 7 Great Achievements That Arose from a Wandering Mind,” Scientific American, February 17, 2011, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/achievements-of-wandering-minds/.
arts and letters Maria Popova, “The Art of Constructive Daydreaming,” Brainpickings, October 9, 2013, https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/10/09/mind-wandering-and-creativity/.
Research conducted by Microsoft “Microsoft Attention Spans Research Report,” Scribd, https://www.scribd.com/document/265348695/Microsoft-Attention-Spans-Research-Report.
quibbled with how one measures Simon Maybin, “Busting the Attention Span Myth,” BBC World Service, March 10, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790.
advertisers and media companies are living Shawn Lim, “‘We Have to Focus on the Data’: Adobe on the Industry’s Short Attention Span,” The Drum, March 8, 2019, https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/03/08/we-have-focus-the-data-adobe-the-industrys-short-attention-span; Milana Saric, “How Brands Can Still Win Over Customers as Attention Spans Decrease on Social,” AdWeek, November 21, 2017, https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/how-brands-can-still-win-over-customers-as-attention-spans-decrease-on-social/; Michelle Castillo, “Millennials Only Have a 5-Second Attention Span for Ads, Says comScore CEO,” CNBC, July 21, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/21/comscore-ceo-millennials-need-5-to-6-second-ads-to-hold-attention.html.
about fifteen seconds Chartbeat proprietary data.
British advertising buyer Louise Ridley, “People Swap Devices 21 Times an Hour, Says OMD,” Campaign, January 3, 2014, https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/people-swap-devices-21-times-hour-says-omd/1225960?src_site=brandrepublic.
designed to grab and keep Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016); Nir Eyal, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, ed. Ryan Hoover (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2014); Henry Farrell, “It’s No Accident Facebook Is So Addictive,” Washington Post, August 6, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/08/06/its-no-accident-that-facebook-is-so-addictive/; “Why Can’t We Put Down Our Smartphones?,” 60 Minutes, April 7, 2017, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-cant-we-put-down-our-smartphones-60-minutes/.
sophisticated electronic exchanges Kate Murphy, “The Ad-Blocking Wars,” The New York Times, February 20, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opinion/sunday/the-ad-blocking-wars.html; George P. Slefo, “Six Leading Exchanges Sign Transparency Pact, But Fraud Concerns Remain,” AdAge, October 18, 2018, https://adage.com/article/digital/exchanges-sign-letter-invite-fraudsters/315308; Junqi Jin, Chengru Song, Han Li, Kun Gai, Jun Wang, and Weinan Zhang, “Real-time Bidding with Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning in Display Advertising,” In Proceedings of the 27th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, 2193-2201, ACM, 2018, https://www.doi.org/10.1145/3269206.3272021.
42 percent to 24 percent Debra Worthington and Margaret Fitch-Hauser, Listening: Processes, Functions and Competency (New York: Routledge, 2016), 4–5.
speed-listening Megan Garber, “The Rise of ‘Speed-Listening,’” Atlantic, June 24, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/the-rise-of-speed-listening/396740/.
great difficulty maintaining their attention Judi Brownell, Listening: Attitudes, Principles, and Skills (New York: Routledge, 2018), 90.
mere presence of a phone on the table Andrew Przybylski and Netta Weinstein, “Can You Connect with Me Now? How the Presence of Mobile Communication Technology Influences Face-to-Face Conversation Quality,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 30, no. 3 (2013): 237–246, https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407512453827.
caregivers ignored their children Amy Novotney, “Smartphone = Not-So-Smart Parenting?,” American Psychology Association 47, no. 2 (2016), https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/02/smartphone; Cory A. Kildare and Wendy Middlemiss, “Impact of Parents Mobile Device Use on Parent-Child Interaction: A Literature Review,” Computers in Human Behavior 75 (2017): 579–593.
food industry research “Noise Level in Restaurants,” National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, July 22, 2016, https://www.noisyplanet.nidcd.nih.gov/have-you-heard/noise-levels-restaurants; Tiffany Hsu, “Noisy Restaurants: Taking the Din Out of Dinner,” Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2012, https://www.latimes.com/food/la-xpm-2012-jun-08-la-fi-restaurant-noise-20120504-story.html; Jill Lightner, “Yup, Seattle’s Restaurants Have Gotten Noisier: How to Reverse This Trend? We’re All Ears,” Seattle Times, February 26, 2019, https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/your-suspicions-are-right-seattle-restaurants-are-getting-noisier-how-to-reverse-this-trend-were-all-ears/; Julia Beliuz, “Why Restaurants Became So Loud—And How to Fight Back,” Vox, July 27, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17168504/restaurants-noise-levels-loud-decibels; Kate Wagner, “How Restaurants Got So Loud,” Atlantic, November 27, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/how-restaurants-got-so-loud/576715/; Jonathan Kauffman, “Are San Francisco Restaurants Too Loud? A New App Helps Diners Navigate the Noise,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 21, 2018, https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/sf-restaurants-quietest-loud-app-soundprint-which-13475928.php.
Zagat Dining Trends Survey “Zagat Releases 2018 Dining Trends Survey,” Zagat (blog), January 8, 2018, https://zagat.googleblog.com/2018/01/zagat-releases-2018-dining-trends-survey.html.
overeat and make less healthy Nanette Stroebele and John M. De Castro, “Effect of Ambience on Food Intake and Food Choice,” Nutrition 20, no. 9 (2004): 821–838, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2004.05.012; Thomas Roballey, Colleen McGreevy, Richard R. Rongo, Michelle L. Schwantes, Peter J. Steger, Marie Wininger, and Elizabeth Gardner, “The Effect of Music on Eating Behavior,” Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 23, no. 3 (1985): 221–222, https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329832; Dipayan Biswas, Kaisa Lund, and Courtney Szocs, “Sounds Like a Healthy Retail Atmospheric Strategy: Effects of Ambient Music and Background Noise on Food Sales,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 47, no. 1 (2019): 37–55, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-018-0583-8.
makes customers more vulnerable Richard Yalch and Eric Spangenberg, “Effects of Store Music on Shopping Behavior,” Journal of Consumer Marketing 7, no. 2 (1990): 55–63, https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000002577; Emily Anthes, “Outside In: It’s So Loud, I Can’t Hear My Budget!,” Psychology Today, June 9, 2016, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201009/outside-in-its-so-loud-i-cant-hear-my-budget; Charlotte Kemp, “Why are High Street shops so NOISY? As M&S Bans Muzak, Our Test Shows Other Stores Are Nearly as Deafening as Nightclubs,” Daily Mail, June 2, 2016, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3620719/Why-High-Street-shops-NOISY-M-S-bans-Muzak-test-shows-stores-nearly-deafening-nightclubs.html; Richard F. Yalch and Eric Spangenberg, “Using Store Music for Retail Zoning: A Field Experiment,” in NA—Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 20, ed. Leigh McAlister and Michael L. Rothschild (Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research: 1993), 632–636.
consistently shows that you cannot Dominique Lamy, Liad Mudrik, and Leon Y. Deouell, “Unconscious Auditory Information Can Prime Visual Word Processing: A Process-Dissociation Procedure Study,”
Consciousness and Cognition 17, no. 3 (2008): 688–698, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2007.11.001; Christine Rosen, “The Myth of Multitasking,” New Atlantis 20 (2008): 105–110; Loukia Loukopoulos, R. Key Dismukes, and Immanuel Barshi, The Multitasking Myth: Handling Complexity in Real-World Operations (New London: Routledge, 2016).
The often used phrase ‘pay attention’ Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 23.
families eating together Sharon Fruh, Jayne A. Fulkerson, Madhuri S. Mulekar, Lee Ann J. Kendrick, and Clista Clanton, “The Surprising Benefits of the Family Meal,” Journal for Nurse Practitioners 7, no. 1 (2011): 18–22, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2010.04.017; Megan Harrison, Mark L. Norris, Nicole Obeid, Maeghan Fu, Hannah Weinstangel, and Margaret Sampson, “Systematic Review of the Effects of Family Meal Frequency on Psychosocial Outcomes in Youth,” Canadian Family Physician 61, no. 2 (2015): e96–e106; https://www.cfp.ca/content/61/2/e96; Barbara Fiese and Marlene Schwartz, “Reclaiming the Family Table: Mealtimes and Child Health and Wellbeing,” Social Policy Report 22, no. 4 (2008); https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2379-3988.1008.tb00057.x.
an anthology of works Eudora Welty and Ronald Sharp, eds., Norton Book of Friendship (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991).
invited protesters to join “Dallas Police Chief Holds a News Conference,” CNN, July 11, 2016, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1607/11/ath.02.html; “David Brown Press Conference on July 11, 2016,” YouTube video, 49:16, posted by “brimi925,” July 13, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_uYQIMpIn4.
Why aren’t we smarter “‘Called to Rise’: Dallas Police Chief on Overcoming Racial Division,” All Things Considered, NPR, June 6, 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/06/06/531787065/called-to-rise-dallas-police-chief-on-overcoming-racial-division.
15: WHAT WORDS CONCEAL AND SILENCES REVEAL
researchers graphed around fifty thousand pauses Stephen Levinson and Francisco Torreira, “Timing in Turn-Taking and Its Implications for Processing Models of Language,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015): 731, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00731.
Studies of Dutch and German Jan Peter De Ruiter, Holger Mitterer, and Nick J. Enfield, “Projecting the End of a Speaker’s Turn: A Cognitive Cornerstone of Conversation,” Language 82, no. 3 (2006): 515–535, https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2006.0130; Carina Riest, Annett B. Jorschick, and Jan P. de Ruiter, “Anticipation in Turn-Taking: Mechanisms and Information Sources,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015): 89, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00089.
People in Japan Takie Sugiyama Lebra, “The Cultural Significance of Silence in Japanese Communication,” Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 6, no. 4 (1987): 343–358, https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.1987.6.4.343.
Japanese businesspeople tolerate Haru Yamada, “Yappari, as I Thought: Listener Talk in Japanese Communication,” Global Advances in Business Communication 4, no. 1 (2015): 3, https://commons.emich.edu/gabc/vol4/iss1/3.
Doctor-patient interactions in Japan Sachiko Ohtaki, Toshio Ohtaki, and Michael D. Fetters, “Doctor-Patient Communication: A Comparison of the USA and Japan,” Family Practice 20, no. 3 (2003): 276–282, https://doi.org/10.1093/fampra/cmg308.
The silent man is Larry Samovar, Edwin R. McDaniel, Richard E. Porter, and Carolyn Sexton Roy, Communication Between Cultures (Ontario, Canada: Nelson Education, 2015), 334.
Finns place greater value Diana Petkova, “Beyond Silence: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between Finnish ‘Quietude’ and Japanese ‘Tranquility,’” Eastern Academic Journal 4 (2015): 1–14; https://www.academia.edu/19764499/Beyond_Silence._A_Cross-Cultural_Comparison_between_Finnish_Quietude_and_Japanese_Tranquility; Donal Carbaugh, Michael Berry, and Marjatta Nurmikari-Berry, “Coding Personhood Through Cultural Terms and Practices: Silence and Quietude as a Finnish ‘Natural Way of Being,’” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 25, no. 3 (2006): 203–220, https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X06289422.
sign of a secure relationship Namkje Koudenburg, Tom Postmes, and Ernestine H. Gordijn, “Conversational Flow Promotes Solidarity,” PLOS One 8, no. 11 (2013): e78363, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078363.
Higher-status people Namkje Koudenburg, Tom Postmes, and Ernestine H. Gordijn, “Conversational Flow and Entitativity: The Role of Status.” British Journal of Social Psychology 53, no. 2 (2014): 350–366, https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12027; Namkje Koudenburg, Tom Postmes, and Ernestine H. Gordijn. “Beyond Content of Conversation: The Role of Conversational Form in the Emergence and Regulation of Social Structure,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 21, no. 1 (2017): 50–71, https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868315626022.
interpret silences longer than Felcia Roberts, Alexander L. Francis, and Melanie Morgan, “The Interaction of Inter-Turn Silence with Prosodic Cues in Listener Perceptions of ‘Trouble’ in Conversation,” Speech Communication 48, no. 9 (2006): 1079–1093, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2006.02.001.
nuance their expressed opinion Namkje Koudenburg, Tom Postmes, and Ernestine H. Gordijn, “Resounding Silences: Subtle Norm Regulation in Everyday Interactions,” Social Psychology Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2013): 224–241, https://doi.org/10.1177/0190272513496794.
Tim Cook’s propensity for silence Kim Scott, Radical Candor (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 83.
feelings of belonging and well-being Namkje Koudenburg, Tom Postmes, and Ernestine H. Gordijn, “Disrupting the Flow: How Brief Silences in Group Conversations Affect Social Needs,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47, no. 2 (2011): 512–515, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.006.
not to be found in the notes “Gustav Mahler himself in the Netherlands (1903, 1904, 1906, 1909 and 1910),” Mahler Foundation Archive, https://mahlerfoundation.info/index.php/plaatsen/241-netherlands/amsterdam/1511-gustav-mahler-himself-in-amsterdam.
to what words conceal and silences reveal Theodor Reik, Listening with the Third Ear (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1948), 121–127.
silence is a “pocket of possibility” R. Murray Schafer, Ear Cleaning: Notes for an Experimental Music Course (Toronto, Canada: Clark & Cruickshank, 1967).
16: THE MORALITY OF LISTENING: WHY GOSSIP IS GOOD FOR YOU
two-thirds of adult conversation Robin Dunbar, “Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective,” Review of General Psychology 8, no. 2 (2004): 100–110, https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.8.2.100; Nicholas Emler, “Gossip, Reputation, and Social Adaptation,” in Good Gossip, ed. R. F. Goodman and A. Ben-Ze’ev (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 117–138. Viatcheslav Wlassoff, “This Is Your Brain on Gossip,” PsychCentral, July 11, 2018, https://psychcentral.com/blog/this-is-your-brain-on-gossip/; Freda-Marie Hartung, Constanze Krohn, and Marie Pirschtat, “Better Than Its Reputation? Gossip and the Reasons Why We and Individuals with ‘Dark’ Personalities Talk About Others,” Frontiers in Psychology 10 (2019): 1162, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01162.
Men gossip as much as women Eyal Eckhaus and Batia Ben-Hador, “Gossip and Gender Differences: A Content Analysis Approach,” Journal of Gender Studies 28, no. 1 (2019): 97–108, https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2017.1411789.
children are adept gossipers Jan Engelmann, Esther Herrmann, and Michael Tomasello, “Preschoolers Affect Others’ Reputations Through Prosocial Gossip,” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 34, no. 3 (2016): 447–460, https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12143.
We all do it Marianee Jaeger, Anne A. Skleder, Bruce Rind, and Ralph L. Rosnow, “Gossip, Gossipers, Gossipees,” in Good Gossip, ed. R. F. Goodman and A. Ben-Ze’ev (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1994); Jordan Litman and Mark V. Pezzo, “Individual Differences in Attitudes Towards Gossip,” Personality and Individual Differences 38, no. 4 (2005): 963–980, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2004.09.003; Francis McAndrew, Emily K. Bell, and Contitta Maria Garcia, “Who Do We Tell and Whom Do We Tell On? Gossip as a Strategy for Status Enhancement,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 37, no. 7 (2007): 1562–1577, https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2007.00227.x.
listening to positive gossip Elena Martinescu, Onne Janssen, and Bernard A. Nijstad, “Tell Me the Gossip: The Self-Evaluative Function of Receiving Gossip About Others,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40, no. 12 (2014): 1668–1680, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167214554916.
learn a lesson from it Roy Baumeister, Liqing Zhang, and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Gossip as Cultural Learning,” Review of General Psychology 8, no. 2 (2004): 111–121, https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.8.2.111.
readily gossiped about others Matthew Feinberg, Robb Willer, and Michael Schultz, “Gossip and Ostracism Promote Cooperation in Groups,” Psychological Science 25, no. 3 (2014): 656–664, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613510184.
accurate or not so accurate Miguel Fonseca and Kim Peters, “Will Any Gossip Do? Gossip Does Not Need to Be Perfectly Accurate to Promote Trust,” Games and Economic Behavior 107 (2018): 253–281, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2017.09.015.
extension of observational learning Baumeister et al., “Gossip as Cultural Learning.”
only 3–4 percent of it is truly mean-spirited Robin Dunbar, Anna Marriott, and Neil Duncan, “Human Conversational Behavior,” Human Nature 8, no. 3 (1997): 231–246, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02912493.
grooming behavior of apes Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
up to four individuals Robin Dunbar and Daniel Nettle, “Size and Structure of Freely Forming Conversational Groups,” Human Nature 6, no. 1 (1995): 67–78, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02734136.
gossip in economic terms Frederico Boffa and Stefano Castriota, “The Economics of Gossip and Collective Reputation,” The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation (2019): 401, https://www.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190494087.013.21; Ronald Burt and Marc Knez, “Trust and Third-Party Gossip,” in Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, eds. Roderick Kramer and Tom Tyler (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,1996), 68–89; Ronald Burt, “Bandwidth and Echo: Trust, Information, and Gossip in Social Networks,” in Networks and Markets: Contributions from Economics and Sociology, eds. A. Casella and J. E. Rauch (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), 30–74; Charlotte De Backer and Michael Gurven, “Whispering Down the Lane: The Economics of Vicarious Information Transfer,” Adaptive Behavior 14, no. 3 (2006): 249–264, https://doi.org/10.1177/105971230601400303.