Myth #3

You can tell instantly when someone is not listening to you

 The third myth, that it is easy to tell whether someone is listening to you, is related to the first two. Like the 93% myth, this one seems true at first blush. If someone responds to a text message as you’re speaking or stares blankly after you ask a question, they weren’t listening to you in the first place, right?

Sure, there are behaviors that can make us feel heard like eye contact or relevant responses, but is the feeling that someone is listening to us the same as them actually listening?

This concept was explored in a multi-study article published in the Journal of Experimental  Psychology. That research group, led by Dr. Hanne Collins, asked this basic question (p. 490):

Do our perceptions of whether someone is listening accurately “reflect the internal experience of listening (i.e., being heard) or merely reflect an illusory subjective experience in the mind of the speaker (i.e., feeling heard)?” 

Using a variety of methods across five studies, their article found support for three primary hypotheses (p. 490):

  1. Perceptions of conversational listening often do not align with listeners’ internal cognitive experiences; 

  2. Attentive listeners behave similarly to inattentive listeners (at least across several nonverbal behaviors they coded in the study); and, 

  3. We primarily overestimate the extent to which our conversation partners are listening.

This suggests that we might not always be able to detect whether or not someone is listening to us. Our mind often wanders as we try to pay attention to others, and these momentary lapses are not always detectable. We seem to have a “good listening” bias, which causes us to assume our conversational partner is listening even when their attention is elsewhere. Outward signs of listening (e.g. eye contact, minimal encouragers) are also not very good indicators of whether someone is actually listening or merely pretending.

In the academic literature, the distinction between what Collins and his colleagues call being heard and feeling heard is described this way:

Though fundamentally cognitive, listening is displayed behaviorally; it is the behaviors that form our basis of evaluating another’s listening. 

Listening is a complex set of cognitive processes. It involves us not only hearing the words others are using (a physiological process), but comprehending, understanding, and making sense of the meaning behind those words. What are they trying to tell us?  Are they making a promise? Telling a story to teach us a lesson? Giving us a command? How are they expecting us to react by saying those words (and not some other words)?

Listening is also a complex set of behavioral processes. It involves the nonverbal display of attention, affection, empathy, curiosity, or their opposites. 

While speakers can see our behaviors, they can’t read our minds. Our behavior is the only information someone has to go on when deciphering whether or not we’re listening. Sometimes our behaviors and thoughts match up. Other times, there’s a mismatch. We might be faking attention, or we might not be enacting the behaviors our conversational partner expects of us, even when we are fully processing for every word.