To Be Heard, Listen

We have all walked into a disagreement with the best of intentions to listen carefully, show empathy, take our partner’s perspective, and avoid a fight. However, once confronted with aggressive arguments, rude interruptions, or unfounded conclusions, our good intentions quickly dissipate, and we begin to fight fire with fire. Later we might wonder how a conversation that we wanted to be civil ended so badly. 

Frances Chen and I provide a new way to think about the dynamics of disagreement. The key concept we study is receptiveness to opposing viewsthe willingness to expose yourself to, consider, and evaluate opposing views in a similar manner to how you treat arguments for your own side. Our newest idea is that receptiveness actually involves both parties, because it is established and modified throughout every interaction. In other words, the world is not divided into good listeners and bad ones, or the intellectually humble versus intellectually arrogant. Instead, our behavior shapes and is shaped by our interaction partners.

Of course, some people do have a greater tendency toward receptiveness than otherswe know this from our daily lives, and also researchers have often documented this.  However, the most fundamental truth of social psychology is that behavior is shaped by both personal tendencies and features of the situation, and this truth applies powerfully to behavior in conflict.

Remember the Other Person

The important thing to keep in mind is that the most prominent feature of a conflictual situation is the other person. That person is being influenced by their own habitual tendencies but also your behavior toward them. The end result is a shifting and dynamic level of receptiveness that is not easily predicted from the characteristics of the people who walked into the disagreement. Instead, research shows that a powerful predictor of how a conflict will turn out is how the parties perceive each other’s receptiveness toward them. In other words, it’s not about who you are or what you think you are doing to maintain a civil tone, it is about what your partner is seeing and how they are interpreting your behavior.

In an earlier set of studies, my colleagues and I studied how people who are high on self-reported receptiveness to opposing views actually communicate during disagreements. You might think such people know how they are behaving, but it’s not clear they do. People who are receptive to opposing views in their heads, don’t clearly show this tendency through the language they use. However, we did identify a clear set of words and phrases that counterparts interpret to be signals of receptiveness. These words and phrases form a coherent pattern that we term “conversational receptiveness,” which is easy to learn and apply.

What Is Conversational Receptiveness?

Our distillation of receptiveness language produced an acronym, “HEAR.” Here are some examples:

  • Hedge your claims
    “I think it’s possible that…”
    “This might happen because…”
    “Some people tend to think…”
  • Emphasize agreement
    “I think we both want to…”
    “I agree with some of what you are saying…”
    “We are both concerned with…”
  • Acknowledge other perspectives
    “I understand that…”
    “I see your point…”
    “What I think you are saying is…”
  • Reframe to the positive
    “I think it’s great when…”
    “I really appreciate it when…”
    “It would be so wonderful if…”

The counterparts of people who used conversational receptiveness found them to be more trustworthy, more reasonable, and more objective. They were more willing to interact with their partners in the future and thought they had better judgment. Most importantly, in our studies, we found that people mimicked each other’s language such that the level of conversational receptiveness exhibited by one person affected the behavior of their counterpart. Again, a person’s conversational receptiveness is partly determined by their partner’s behavior toward them.

In another set of studies, my colleagues and I asked whether conflict dynamics are influenced by one’s beliefs regarding a counterpart’s willingness to learn about our own perspective. We found that the same arguments, phrased in the same manner, are interpreted differently depending on whether participants in a disagreement believe that their counterpart is out to persuade them or learn about them. Both in the case of Americans on the opposite sides of the political divide, and even in the case of Israelis evaluating arguments from a Palestinian counterpart, beliefs about the other’s desire to learn influenced the participant’s own evaluations of the interaction and intentions for the future relationship.

Thinking about receptiveness to opposing views as arising in the course of an interaction between two opponents has important implications. First, rather than focusing on people’s intentions or self-perceptions, it might be better to focus on externally visible behaviors. First, a person’s behavior may be both easier to modify and have greater effects on conflict dynamics than how that person thinks or feels. Second, if someone’s level of receptiveness is a reaction to their perceptions of their counterpart’s receptiveness, then the Golden Rule applies: If you want people to be receptive to your arguments, show them that you are being receptive to theirs!


For Further Reading

Minson, J. A., Chen, F. S., & Tinsley, C. H. (2020). Why won’t you listen to me? Measuring receptiveness to opposing views. Management Science66(7), 3069-3094. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3362

Minson, J. A., & Dorison, C. A. (2022). Toward a psychology of attitude conflict. Current Opinion in Psychology43, 182-188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.07.002
 

Julia Minson is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is a decision scientist with research interests in conflict, negotiations, judgment, and decision-making.