Myth #9
Listeners’ responses are emotionally attuned to what speakers say less than 5% of the time
Confession time: I’m partially responsible for this one. It appears in the book You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why it Matters and resulted from a loose interpretation of a study I published with Susanne Jones of the University of Minnesota and a few graduate students.
In that study, undergraduate students were asked to talk about an upsetting event to a listener who was trained to engage in one of three primary types of supportive talk.
Low Person-Centered (LPC) comfort criticizes, questions, or ignores a recipient’s emotional experiences. Unsurprisingly, recipients found these messages especially unhelpful, as research has shown them to increase stress reactivity.
You know, there are more important things in the world. Anyway, it’s a pretty dumb thing to be upset about; it’s really not worth worrying about. So, just try to forget about it. Think about something else.
Moderate Person-Centered (MPC) comfort expresses condolence and sympathy, but only implicitly. These messages do not name or otherwise explicitly encourage emotional exploration.
Well, that’s really too bad. But if it makes you feel better I’ve heard similar things from several other people. You’ll get ‘em next time.
Highly Person-Centered (HPC) comfort provides explicit recognition and validation of expressed thoughts and feelings. These messages are typically rated as more helpful, supportive, and sensitive than MPC or LPC messages.
Well, it makes sense that you feel bummed out. I mean, it’s frustrating to work so hard and not see the benefit. That can drive you crazy – it can sort of blow your self-confidence.
We created transcripts from the video recordings of these conversations and then coded the listener’s responses as LPC, MPC, or HPC. Here is what we found.
Across all conversations, listeners mainly produced MPC comfort. Nearly 75% of listener turns were classified as MPC (compared to 17% LPC and 9% HPC).
Percentages of LPC, MPC, and HPC comfort differed as a function of the listener’s assigned condition.
When told to enact LPC comfort, listeners mainly produced LPC comfort (48% of their turns, versus 51% coded as MPC and 1% coded as HPC).
When told to enact MPC comfort, listeners overwhelmingly produced MPC comfort (96% of their turns, versus 3% coded as LPC and 1% coded as HPC).
When told to enact HPC comfort, listeners enacted no LPC comfort but enacted HPC comfort only about 25% of the time; about three-quarters of listeners’ turns were HPC when they were told to be highly person centered.
One way to interpret our findings is to say that people, even when they get adequate training, are not primarily emotionally attuned to their conversational partner. But I think something else is going on. Here is how we described it in the article (pp. 16-17):
HPC conversations need to fulfill an array of functions expressed over a number of interdependent turns that cycle in and out of HPC comfort. PC qualities serve various coping functions. For instance, a message possessing MPC qualities might serve to express condolences or to ask content-related questions about what happened. Once further information about the stressful story is gleaned, HPC messages might serve to acknowledge and reframe the event, whereas LPC messages might serve to tell a speaker how to act or feel about it. As illustration, take the following excerpt, which features a discloser (D) and a listener (L) talking about D’s ill grandparent.
Excerpt: Conversation 13 (157 total utterances; Utterance 108–131)
1. L: Well, that’s cool (MPC). I mean, you got a family that cares about the fact that you gotta
stay busy in college, you know (HPC). And honor that you can’t be stressing and everything
(HPC).
2. D: I actually definitely stay busy.
3. L: Is it, is it hard and everything like to like, go about your daily business while you’re worrying
about it and stuff? (HPC)
4. D: I always think about it. But I can do my business, and then I call back home to see what
is going on.
5. L: I can’t imagine that (HPC).
6. D: It sucks.
7. L: I was gonna say, is it awesome that you are willing to talk (HPC).
8. D: Well it’s not a hundred percent bad luck. It’s not like I’m planning a funeral. [inaudible]
9. L: No, I don’t think I’d be able to just sit here and talk about something (HPC). That can’t
be easy. (HPC)
10. D: But it was within the last three weeks.
11. L: Is this something that happens often (MPC)? Like is she? (MPC) How long as she
been like in the hospital (MPC)?
12. D: She just got sick again a couple of weeks ago. She was in the hospital, uh, for, last year, I
think. She had uh, she was in emergency surgery.
From this excerpt we can tell that HPC messages occur over many turns and depend on the discloser’s unique responses to the listener’s question (e.g., turns 2-3). Specifically, the HPC listener shared context-specific information about what happened (e.g., turn 11), acknowledged the discloser’s feelings (e.g., turn 9), and attempted to reframe and contextualize the discloser’s thoughts and emotions (e.g., turn 1). The listener’s responses helped the discloser to cope with the ill relative and shifted the event into something more beneficial (i.e., attending to college tasks while staying connected with family). To accomplish this, the listener used both MPC and HPC responses, suggesting that HPC listeners can move into higher levels of the PC hierarchy to use HPC comfort.
In other words, there’s more to “emotional attunement” than naming and validating specific emotions. If you focused only on HPC comfort, it would be quite an odd conversation. “Good” supportive listeners employ a range of responses, including MPC support.