“They’re really bringing that topic up again?”
As this thought echoes in your head, you start to lose focus on the conversation. Your mind turns your attention away from the topic you are bored of, annoyed by, or uninterested in, instead focusing on your own internal thoughts and feelings. Almost automatically, you consider how you are going to challenge this person’s point or redirect the conversation entirely.
You have shifted from active listening to reactive listening without even realizing it.
Reactive listening has become a normalized way of interacting with others. Whether it’s strangers, friends, or colleagues, it seems to be the way a lot of us show up in conversations. When we start to hear something that seems disagreeable or confusing, that tickles something uncomfortable in our minds, or that just doesn’t sit well with us, we tend to lose focus on that point and transfer our focus to our own thoughts about how to counter that uncomfortable or disagreeable thought we’re being faced with.
Recently I was speaking on a panel of transgender people navigating the current health care system. Responding to audience questions is part of most panel presentations, but some audience questions are more thoughtfully worded than others. This time, one person asked a question that came off a bit like Swiss cheese; it was full of holes that could cause one to interpret the question as negative or positive depending on your own perspective of where you believed the person asking it was coming from.
I intently observed the answers each panel member gave, and how they handled someone who seemed to have a genuine curiosity but wasn’t sure how to appropriately phrase it. Some were defensive, some were open, and that trend continued in the following dialogue. Observing this play out in that room has given me a new perspective on watching how similar response patterns can play out in other conversations around me ever since.
Experiences like this led me to do some digging, and I found that this phenomenon is very well studied. There have been countless studies done exploring the human instinct to judge based on first impressions, which are made very quickly, assume many things, and are often purely emotionally based. In 2017, a University of Toronto study found that people decide in as little as five seconds whether the person they are speaking with is charismatic enough to be considered a friend or not. Another study, through University of York, found that facial impressions of as little as 33 milliseconds can decide whether a person finds an individual to be trustworthy or not. In 2019, a University of Queensland study found that different parts of a person’s brain reacted on an MRI scan, not to what emotion another person was displaying, but rather based on what emotion the study participant EXPECTED that person to be displaying.
The more I’ve read about the science behind first impressions, the more attention I’ve paid to how I interact in conversations, especially with strangers. How often have I entered a room and allowed my unconscious, or sometimes even conscious, bias impact how I engaged with the people I found there? I’ve been paying strong attention to my initial assumptions, and have put a lot of effort into responding to what the person I’m interacting with says or does, rather than what I EXPECT them to do.
Sometimes, my initial suspicions were totally on point; often, I’ve discovered that someone who asked a question or made a point in a way I disagreed with was actually just unsure of the most appropriate way to phrase the thought. When asking people to reiterate these kinds of statements, I am able to help that person feel fully heard and simultaneously give myself a chance to respond more thoughtfully.
Reactive listening happens most frequently when we are talking with people we don’t get along with, or with people we have already assumed are going to think very differently than we think ourselves. With current tensions being so high, it is understandable to feel that someone who thinks very differently than us is someone who means us harm, but it is important to not immediately believe this thought every time. When we suspect, even subconsciously, that someone intends to harm us, our defenses go up, and our minds shut off to that person, focusing instead on the next chess piece we need to move to win the game.
When we are focused on moving our next metaphorical chess piece, how often do we miss the key points we could be learning? How often do we miss a chance at a possible connection with other individuals?
When we focus on our own rebuttal rather than on the person we’re speaking to, we lose track of the bigger conversation. This means we’re likely to miss important pieces of information, which likely include points that are relevant to whatever our counter argument is about to be. When we do this, we actually reinforce a bigger disconnect with one another, because we’re more focused on being able to defend our side than in being present with another person. Sometimes, it is necessary to sit uncomfortably with a thought we don’t agree with, and fully hear it out before we respond.
We are constantly inundated with information and asked to make quick judgments in today’s world, whether it’s about swiping right or left or choosing what brand to buy or which advertisement to listen to. People seem to be getting louder and louder, and yet still struggling to be heard. It’s easy to become frustrated when we are constantly overwhelmed in these ways! Society reinforces the idea that each choice is right or wrong, win or lose, but many things don’t fall into those binary categories.
I often reflect on the idea that experiences are either win or LEARN; you either complete something “correctly” or learn new abilities and skills to navigate it differently next time. We don’t need to WIN every interaction, but we CAN learn from every interaction.
It seems we often forget that the goal of a conversation is to connect, not just to be heard. In our current climate, it is vital to remember that, and to do our best to adjust the way we listen. Next time you hear that judgemental voice in your head saying “here we go again,” take a moment to focus on the conversation, instead of on your reaction, and see if things go any differently than you expect!
Ace Ricker is a member of the Connecticut Mirror’s Community Editorial Board.