Why listening well is harder -- and more powerful -- than you think, with Guy Itzchakov, PhD

Most people think they’re good listeners. But really listening well is harder than it seems. Guy Itzchakov, PhD, talks about what distinguishes high-quality listening from just staying quiet while someone else talks; how feeling heard affects speakers’ emotions, attitudes and relationships; why high-quality listening can reduce defensiveness during disagreements; and whether AI chatbots will ever be good listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 1:03Kim Mills?

  Talking is easy. Listening, not so much. When we think about conversation, we tend to focus on the speaker, his or her ideas, words, gestures, and emotions. But psychologists research suggests that often, it's the listener who sets the tone of such interactions. Quality listening can strengthen relationships and build bridges between people, while poor listening can do the opposite. So what is high quality versus low quality listening? Why is listening well so much harder than it sounds? How can good listening skills help us in our relationships, workplaces, and communities? And what are the limits of listening as a tool for understanding each other?

• 1:46Kim Mills?

  Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

• 2:00Kim Mills?

  My guest today is Dr. Guy Ichikoff, a professor in the Department of Human Services at the University of Haifa, where he directs the Interpersonal Listening and Social Influence Lab. His research focuses on how high-quality listening affects listeners and speakers' emotions, attitudes, and behaviors, and how listening drives interactions in settings ranging from close relationships to workplaces. His work has appeared in leading journals and publications, including The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Emotion, and the Harvard Business Review. He also writes a blog for Psychology Today called The Listening Lens. Dr. Ichikoff, thank you for joining me today.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  Thank you for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here.

• 2:45Kim Mills?

  Let's start with a basic question. What is high-quality listening and what distinguishes it from just everyday listening to another person talk?

• 2:53Speaker 03

  It is both a basic and complex question because there was a study back in 1989 that tried to organize the definitions of what is good listening, interpersonal listening, between people. And even back then, they found more than 50 different definitions for what listening is. But in a nutshell, what differentiate high-quality listening from ordinary listening or everyday listening is the listener's attempt to really understand the speaker and the positive intention toward the speaker.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  So this is what Carl Rogers referred to back in the more than 60 years ago as a nonjudgmental approach, meaning that I don't necessarily have to agree with what I hear. And we all, we have an inner need to evaluate what we hear. However, listeners can convey that the speaker has the freedom and the autonomy to express what they say. And when these three dimensions, which manifest in many behaviors, are executed well... People feel heard, they feel listened to,

• 4:21Speaker 03

  and there is a plethora, a fountain of positive outcomes for them.

• 4:28Kim Mills?

  Well, one of the main themes of your work is a good listening deeply affects not just the listener, but the speaker as well. What happens to people psychologically when they feel truly listened to, when they feel heard?

• 4:42Speaker 03

  So yeah, actually, most of our work has focused on people being listened to. So yeah, as you mentioned, on the speakers. And the psychological process that we see that is happening, especially in live conversations, which is the core of the study, the studies in my lab, is that first, speakers relax. Their state anxiety, state social anxiety evaluation, apprehension reduce. They feel more socially comfortable because of the listening that they receive.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Now, this relaxation, this social comfort, if you will, allows them to introspect, think more deeply about what they are saying. And of course, none of this could have been achieved without a good listener. Now, when they experience such listening, so this emotional process that leads to this cognitive process of deeper introspection and ability to look at myself from the side and often

• 5:57Speaker 03

  gain clarity, gain even complexity to see that what I initially thought, what my initial attitude was, there are other aspects, often, by the way, contradictory to my initial attitude. This is why we often find that experiencing good listening reduces extremity of attitudes. Now, this relax, so basically this. Comfort or relaxation broadens the thinking. And this broadening of the thinking allows for more complex, more open-minded introspection,

• 6:36Speaker 03

  which then leads to a many attitudinal and behavioral consequences. So this is often the process that, one of the processes that we see, we also see a very strong shift in positive emotions. And one of the most, the interesting findings that we have is reduction in negative emotions. For example, in one of the projects, we had five studies where the topic was the effect of listening on speakers' state loneliness. And the speakers shared an experience where they felt socially rejected.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  Now, this was really interesting because I initially thought that, okay, but if you share something that happened to you 20 years ago, it might not be relevant. But we were surprised to see how much the social rejection, when people talk about it, it still affects them. Now, when we compared, and we're doing live conversations, when we compared speakers who conversed with a listener who provided high-quality listening, we found that they reported significantly and very strong effect on reduced, on reduction in state loneliness

• 8:00Speaker 03

  relative to participants who conversed with a moderate listener, listener who provided average or moderate-quality listening. And this effect, by the way, was explained in this project through increased in how related, relatedness they felt towards their listener, basically how socially connected they felt towards their listener, and the extent to which they felt autonomy. So the extent to which they felt that they have the right to express, to genuinely express their thoughts.

• 8:36Kim Mills?

  A lot of people have heard the term "active listening", right, a technique of reflecting back what someone says, you paraphrase and ask questions. But you've written about the limitations of active listening as it's often taught and practiced. So what is the difference between active listening and high-quality listening?

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Listening has so many adjectives. I don't think that there is another social behavior that has as many adjectives as listening: active, empathic, supportive.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  Now, if you think about it, one of the interesting things that we infer when we say "active listening" is actually a misperception that listening is passive. Because we would never say "active speaking". Of course, speaking is active, of course. But for listening, in order for listening to feel special, we need to say it's active. Now, I know this is the most frequently used adjective. And so, yeah, I wrote about it in one of my blogs. I thought like, what would Carl Rogers, who coined the term, think about how active listening, and it's a very powerful technique. It's one of many listening techniques. The issue is, as I mentioned,

• 9:52Speaker 03

  that the name incorporates the misperception that listening is passive. And it really depends how it is practiced. Because if we want to achieve deep conversations, help or have social connection with the other person, we need a genuine intention or a positive intention or sometimes even called like a listening attitude, my assumption that by listening alone, I will help the other person. Now, when this becomes too technical, so like every time I give an interview, they ask me, "Okay, now give me the tips how to be a good listener."

• 10:37Speaker 03

  So this is, there are tips, but it's basically saying, "Give me the tips on how to be a good swimmer. You have to practice it."

• 10:44Kim Mills?

  Right.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Now, so the behaviors are very powerful, very powerful, question-asking, paraphrasing, validation, the back-channel behavior. The issue is, are they really...

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Genuine and authentic. And here, I think that what I wrote about is Rogers didn't even often disagree to give talks about the active listening, because every conversation was different for him. So he refused to give a checklist. And there is a paper from 2011, not my paper, but a really interesting paper on how organizations, some organizations use active listening techniques to manipulate customers, because it's very powerful. So what I wrote was like, what would Carl Rogers think about active listening today?

• 11:40Speaker 03

  So I'm all in favor, and we're doing all of these behaviors in my lab. And when I give workshops, very powerful. The issue is, is the intention of the listener really to help the speaker or to get the speaker to somewhere that I wanted to get them before? Now, this is a key difference in my experience.

• 12:06Kim Mills?

  That brings to mind what you run into a lot today, which is, you know, you call customer service and about the second or third question is, what's your name? And then they want to call you by your name over and over again, as if that indicates that they're somehow more empathetic. I mean, is there anything to that? Is repeating the speaker's name something that is going to make them feel they're listened to?

• 12:28Speaker 03

  We tried it in some of our experiment where we mentioned the name again. It helps, but like most of the things, it helps if you do it to the right extent. For example, it's like nodding. So when someone nods when I speak, at the beginning, I'm gonna probably think, okay, they're paying attention. But if I see them going like this with their head, the entire dog, you know, there is this doll of a dog you put on the dashboard of your car that goes with the head when you drive? So it, or when someone says, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So all of these behaviors, they're good if they're in the right time and space during the conversation. If I do them artificially or overdo them...

• 13:14Speaker 03

  And I will often interrupt my speaker because if I am, if I say their name too much, it sounds a bit weird or, or it sounds like they're, because this doesn't happen in everyday conversations, or even if I say, mm hmm, mm hmm, mm hmm, or nod my head, the entire conversation, we're coming again to the authentic nature of, of, of the, of, of the listener. So, yeah, so the, like, like every psychologist, the answer is yes and no. Yes, it helps, but not to overdo it.

• 13:51Kim Mills?

  What role does listening play in maintaining close relationships with our partners, families, and friends?

• 13:58Speaker 03

  This is what my research has focused on for the past 15 years. I think, I think that listening is the spark for social connection, the spark, in, in the sense that we all want to feel socially connected to others. And the question is, how do we do it? I cannot just tell people, okay, now you connect. I need to give people, you know, a technique, a tool. And what I consistently find in my lab, that when people feel listened to, they

• 14:38Speaker 03

  feel socially connected to the other person. And, and we, we, we found it using so many different constructs of social connection. And, and one, one of the reasons that this happens, I often ask them, say like, why? Why does listening? Because we know it increases social connection between the speaker and the listener. One of the interesting thing about listening is that it sends meta messages. A meta message is a message that is not conveyed through words.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  For example, one of the mistakes that listeners do is telling their speakers, "I know what you mean." Now, every time I say it, it sounds really weird. "Why, but I know what you mean." It's so... The mistake here is that often when I say, "I know what you mean," one of two things happens, or both. I become the speaker instead of the listener. "Yes, Kim, I know what you mean. Something similar happened to me a while ago and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And then I become the speaker. Now, a more subtle but very powerful mistake. And this is... I'm saying a mistake, but it's human and it's natural. The thing is, this is why listening requires training,

• 15:53Speaker 03

  is when I think, "I know what you mean," I stop listening to you. And if I'm patient and I'm polite, I'm waiting until you finish, but I close my ears, metaphorically. And when I do listening training, I often... When we challenge this assumption, really, because you and I can share a similar experience, but the subjective experience would be completely different for us, even if we use the same emotion. The extent to which I say, "I felt excited," and you'll say, "I felt excited," is completely different for both of us. In order to really step into the person's shoes, the speaker's shoes, I need to challenge this basic assumption, Rogers call it, the need to evaluate. "What... I understand what Kim said.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  I will... I'm patient. I will wait until she finishes and then I will tell her what I think." This is where miscommunication happens. Because when we challenge this assumption, we often realize that what we initially thought we understood is not what the speaker meant. Now, the reason I went to this misperception, this is only one misperception. I know saying, "I know what you mean," is basically like saying, "Trust me." No one will trust me if I actually say, "Trust me." This is a direct message. A meta-message is a message that is conveyed through behaviors. So during a conversation, when the listener exhibits high-quality listening,

• 17:19Speaker 03

  using many behaviors, but they signal to their speakers, "You belong. You are important." When I paraphrase what you're saying and I ask you at the end, "Kim, did I understand you correctly? Did I miss anything?" I don't need to tell you I understand you. You will feel that I understand you. And this is the this meta messages. You belong, you are competent, you are worthy of my time, builds a sense that we call togetherness.

• 17:57Kim Mills?

  So just to shift a little bit, you know, I think some people are just innately really good listeners and some people they're not. And I'm just wondering, what are the personality characteristics of a of a good listener? And if you're, say, a narcissist, can you be a good listener?

• 18:14Speaker 03

  So the the short answer is actually yes. Research to date has not found a personality characteristic that differentiates between good and poor listeners. And many studies try because they're often the the assumption that makes sense that, you know, if a person is extroverted, maybe they will be poor listeners because they want to speak more. And maybe if someone is introverted, they will be better listeners. There was some study that found that people who are high on agreeableness are better, were perceived as better listeners. But overall, personality traits are not so associated with being perceived

• 18:59Speaker 03

  and as a good listener. What actually matters here is it's a skill. It's a skill. It's a muscle that requires training. And when you train this muscle, whether you're a narcissist or you're an introvert or an extrovert or whatever, you will become better at listening. One of the more the interesting findings from a paper led by my colleague and supervisor, Avi Kluger, was that we found in a study that listening is actually dyadic. So meaning that being perceived as a good listener depends on the person that I'm talking to. So for example,

• 19:41Speaker 03

  I can be a great listener to my neighbor, perceived as a great listener to my neighbor, but a horrible listener, perceived as a horrible listener to you. So the perception of listening quality depends on the listener speaker diet. This is what we often find that it's, we tested this question like, okay, is there something in the person that makes them being perceived as good listeners? Or the speaker, or maybe there's something in the speaker that some people are just easier to listen to. So, so far, we didn't find so much effect on the, it's mostly dyadic. Now, if I may, another interesting finding that we recently wrote about it

• 20:24Speaker 03

  in a paper about, we call it the puzzles of listening, the contradictions and paradoxes in listening research. What is interesting is in conversations between strangers, the association between how the listener perceives their listening quality, how a speaker perceives how well they were listened to, and how an observer perceives the conversation. The associations are small to moderate. And we found it in several, in several works that we conducted, which really, you know, raises an interesting question like,

• 21:09Speaker 03

  do people live in different worlds? Like, are we in the same? Listeners tend to overestimate how well they, they listen.

• 21:18Speaker 03

  I read this paper that had people rate their ability in everyday behaviors, and listening was the behavior that they rated that they are at the top. So seventy one percent rated themselves above the midpoint of a scale between zero to a hundred. I looked at this paper and I said, wow, this is really strong. But I wonder what is it that's strong? I replicated this effect and find, found ninety two point three percent of the, of the, of the people, of the people that reported more than the midpoint of the scale. Now, this is interesting because there are other papers showing that people at work, especially women and people who do not hold the managerial role,

• 22:04Speaker 03

  perceived that they're not satisfied by the listening effort that they receive. Wait, we have all these terrific listeners. And at the same time, we have speakers who do not feel heard. But these are the same people. So like, you know, this is a puzzle that is really, for me, is really interesting to to further explore.

• 22:30Kim Mills?

  We're going to take a short break. When we return, I'll talk with Dr. Itchikoff about what happens when two people disagree but still feel listened to and about how high quality listening can defuse extremism.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 23:16Speaker 04

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• 23:48Kim Mills?

  So I want to talk about disagreements, which is an area where you've done a lot of research and you've found that high quality listening can make people feel less defensive and less extreme in their views. What, what are the reasons for that?

• 24:03Speaker 03

  So the reasons are twofold. The first reason is the one that we talked about before, an experience of social connection with, with the speaker. You know, when you come to a, to a conversation, when you know, or you realize that the person disagrees. And one of the fears that comes is psychological reactance. I feel that my freedom to hold my attitude might be threatened. I feel that I might not be perceived as a competent or self or or or my self esteem would. How will I represent myself?

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Because this is a situation, this is a disagreement, is a stress evoking situation. Now, what we found is when speakers conversed with listeners who exhibited high quality listeners, and they reported increased positivity resonance. Positivity resonance is a really interesting construct that depicts social connection in a conversation. So to what extent did they feel the flow between myself and the and the listener? To what extent did they feel that that mutual emotions and thoughts, even though we disagree? So the first step was the connection that reduces the threat. So I don't feel threatened anymore. I feel accepted.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  I feel connected to the person, even though we disagree. Then this led to an increase in self insight. Self insight is to what extent did I manage to think of my attitude from different perspectives? To what extent did they was I able to explore my attitude in a deeper sense? And to what extent did they learn new things about my attitude? So this is the cognitive process that maybe like the more open minded increased self insight was the more open minded thinking. And this led to a reduction in attitude extremity. So participants rated their attitude more a less extreme.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  And we measured it before their attitude before the conversation and also afterwards. And interestingly, they also they also measured like we measured self reported attitude change. To what extent did you feel that your attitude towards the issue changed? And we found that they they reported that their attitude has changed. And also that it became more similar to their listeners attitude. Now, this was really interesting because the listener did not convey any persuasive attempt. If if you think about it, this is exactly the opposite of of arguments or of destructive conversations, because and this is how the the core idea I had for this study.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  We live in a world of destructive conversations, which leads to a lot of polarization. Now, the psychological process that works, that operates in destructive conversation or in arguments is the opposite of listening. When someone is arguing with me and tell and is telling me that I'm wrong, I want I'm not able to listen to them. I initially defend psychologically, like if someone would come into my house, I would physically defend. When someone threatens my right and freedom and autonomy to hold a position, I defend psychologically.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Now, when they speak, I'm not really listening to them. I'm thinking of counter arguments, how I'm gonna act back, how I'm gonna win, right? I'm gonna need to win this conversation. There is no prize, but I need to win this conversation. And this this evokes defensiveness. Now, we we often see that arguments lead people to actually this is called the boomerang effect. When we argue, we can argue constructively, when we argue destructively, telling each other why we are wrong, why we are immoral, why our attitude should not be expressed in this manner, we become defensive. And when we become defensive, we cannot change.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  We actually bolster our initial attitude because we we drove into parallel lanes. We didn't listen to one another. We thought about how we're gonna counteract. And this is what we see. We see bolstering of the initial attitudes. With listening, we see the opposite, because when you give the person the psychological safety, the social connection, say, I don't need to agree with you, but I I validate, I acknowledge what you're saying. I validate your emotions. Then people can see the person behind the attitude. Now, by the way, in a paper that is forthcoming in the same journal,

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we found that during disagreements, when speakers perceive, receive high-quality listening, they report increased subjective well-being during this disagreement relative to lower quality of listening. And this was explained by satisfaction of basic psychological needs, autonomy, relatedness, and competence. And another interesting finding there was that we found that listening was more important than agreement to people's subjective well-being. So maybe winning an argument isn't whether I spoke louder than the other person,

• 29:44Speaker 03

  is whether I felt really listened to and learned new things about my attitude. Perhaps this is the real win that we want to achieve. But the finding that listening, and it was conversation between strangers. So I don't want to extrapolate as a scientist. I'm really careful in what I'm making of my studies. But there is some preliminary evidence that listening, if I say it cautiously, at least as important as having someone agree with us. In our studies, we found that it's actually more important.

• 30:18Kim Mills?

  I want to talk about how we learn to listen. I mean, for parents and caregivers who might be listening to us, I hope they're listening. How can they teach their children to be better listeners? At what age do we begin to internalize the concepts necessary to become good listeners?

• 30:37Speaker 03

  You know, one of my dreams is that listening will be taught in schools, from elementary school to high school to universities. Like we teach reading, we teach writing, we need to teach listening. By the way, as parents, before we try to train our kids, we need to train ourselves. The kids will learn from the example. And interestingly, by the way, when in the workplace, managers report that listening is one of the top three skills that they look for in an employee. However, most of their studies showing focused on business schools who, you know, train future leaders, the vast majority of them do not teach listening. A dean in a very prestigious business school told me once,

• 31:22Speaker 03

  everyone, everyone knows how to listen. We need to teach our students how to speak. Then we did together some listening exercises and he learned that it's not so easy. But per your question, my dream is from, from, from first grade to teach it and also to adults. It doesn't mean that the more we grow, doesn't mean we become better at listening. If we don't train this muscle, age will not guarantee that we become good at it. Now, when we talk about parents and kids, the issue become more complex. Because a question that I often receive is like, okay, how do I listen to my child? And they don't want to talk to me because as parents,

• 32:05Speaker 03

  we are very, because we want to help our kids and we want to like, you know, cover them, hug them and, and protect them, we are very quick to give advice. Now, often the kids do not want an advice. There is a big difference between seeking advice and giving advice. Now, when, when, when our kids receive an advice, like every person, by the way, that they did not ask for, they become irritated. Now, it's true for every conversation, but it's especially true with parental listening.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  So I will address this with, with a story. I gave a listening workshop for tour guides. And one of the managers came to me and she's a mother. She told me I have an adolescence at home and she, I can converse with her. Like she's getting, gets upset with me and everything and what can I do? So I tell, I told her, let's try one thing. Next time she, she comes to talk to you, refrain from giving her advice.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  Just listen to her and tell me how it went. And actually, she called me after and said, you know, she opened up to me and then she wanted to speak with me again. Now, it's easier said than done. This is what we call, by the way, a listening attitude. And it can be developed, but it's not easy. A listening attitude is the extent you believe that you will help the other person by listening alone. Now, the stronger the listening attitude you have, the more you will prevent yourself from giving an unsolicited advice or feedback when no one asked for. So this is with kids and parents, like the advice is a big issue. For people who are bad, but there is, there are enemies,

• 33:57Speaker 03

  by the way, to listening. I'm presenting it like it's all, and it's, relative to other interventions, listening is very safe, by the way. But there are enemies in, you know, in metaphorically. One of the enemies of listening, one of the misperceptions about listening is that listening is free. Our listening is basically being silent and waiting until the other person finishes speaking. Listening is not free. It is costly. It requires volition, it requires motivation, energy, time and effort. Now, we have a limited resources of this, of these resources. When you talked about caregivers or people, for example,

• 34:38Speaker 03

  social workers or nurses, people or occupational therapists. I'm now doing, by the way, a listening training to autistic youngsters. People of, I'm learning so many interesting things using this workshop. Now, in these settings, listeners, so nurses, social workers often experience what is called compassion fatigue. Because, you know, when we hear, when we are engaged in conversations that are difficult conversations, negative content, traumatic content, secondary trauma, we catch these negative emotions

• 35:21Speaker 03

  or we catch these difficulties. And this often leads people in this profession to experience compassion fatigue. That I cannot be empathic anymore. I cannot be compassionate anymore because it's a limited resource. What I think should be done is they need people who, to listen to them. In order to do it, but it is important to realize that listening has costs. And like every resource, it needs to be allocated in a smart way. Because we don't have an endless amount of it.

• 35:56Kim Mills?

  You know, you wrote about another challenge that some listeners may face, which is, how do you react when someone keeps repeating the same story or complaint? So how can you listen effectively in those kinds of situations?

• 36:11Speaker 03

  That's a tough one.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  Usually, and you know, we're talking about human behavior. So there is no one size fits all solution. But from my experience, usually when someone repeats the same, it's like a broken CD. I don't know if people, young people today will know what a CD is, but I don't know. I don't have a better equivalent. So like a broken CD, when someone repeats the same content over and over, there is usually something, something stuck there. Now, in these situations, what I found to be beneficial

• 36:53Speaker 03

  is to try to identify and reflect the emotion that is manifests this repetition. So for example, let's say that I'm telling you a story about how unfair my manager was towards me, and I keep repeating, repeating. Now, if you reflect on the content, I will just repeat what I say, what I said again and again and again. What will be helpful, how to move from this point on and to advance the conversation is often try to reflect on the emotion. So for example, so if I understand, if what the emotion I hear from you is that

• 37:34Speaker 03

  you feel very angry, you feel hurt, and you feel even betrayed by this manager. Is that correct? And usually when, when the emotion is accurately perceived by the listener, then the speaker can move to a more deep level of the conversation. Why do you feel this way? What, so, so there are ways, but it's not easy. It's not easy in this context.

• 38:01Kim Mills?

  Let's talk about AI, which seems to be everywhere these days. It's a huge part of our life and getting bigger. And people are turning to chatbots for emotional support and advice. Is AI a good listener? Or is there something that's fundamentally missing in those interactions that you might have with AI or a chatbot?

• 38:24Speaker 03

  So I think that AI to date, you know, it's advancing exponentially. So, you know, we talk about it today. It will probably be in a completely different phase even in one month or so. I don't think that what we're actually doing with AI is listening per se. Often people ask me, okay, so especially for young people. When you tell to them listening, they think about texting, WhatsApp to one another. So with texting, what is missing is all the, you know, nonverbal components of listening. But you know, nowadays you can even do it with video or audio. So let's say that we can do it with, we're doing it with video and audio.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  So AI can be a terrific listener. But there is a problem with the way that AI is doing the listener between, because AI is currently built to be very agreeable, to validate us, to...

• 39:23Kim Mills?

  It's almost actively listening, right? I mean, it's using those techniques.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. It doesn't challenge us. Now, we talked about high quality listening, but there are different types of listening. There is challenging listening. There is, and not always, supportive listening, like the AI does in a very perfect way. But it's very supportive. It is not always the listening that the person needs. And often, by the way, it can have very harmful consequences. So just for, as an example, there is a study back from 2020. Where employees vented about their managers.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  And the researchers asked them, which type of listening do you wanna receive? Supportive listening, like the AI does, there was no AI back then, but supportive listening, which is basically very similar to what AI does, or challenging listening, which is listening that, a listening that tries to reframe the situation. So the vast majority of participants chose the supportive listener. Yeah, I'm venting, I wanna supportive listener. However, the listening style that was more beneficial for these angry employees was actually challenging listening, because it helped them reframe the situation and feel less angry.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Now, the reason I'm saying it in response to the AI question is sometimes we need, we need a listener that challenges us. For example, if I'm depressed and the AI validates me, I might become more depressed or more anxious. There are stories about how an AI helped a person, I think a young, I don't know if it was, it was a boy or a girl, write their suicide letter. I think it was in the US and I think there was more than one case. Now, this is, this is the thing that scares me, because the AI is too validating. And we wrote about it in a recent paper, in the, in the puzzles of listening and the

• 41:37Speaker 03

  paradoxes of listening, that everyone thinks that, okay, so the person-centered supportive listening is the best type of listening always. No, it depends on the situation. Now, here you have to have, so the, the AI is perfect, is perfect in imitating human behavior, perfect, better than us, better than human, but it cannot understand human behavior, because it's not human. So it imitates it perfectly, but it doesn't understand. And we still need this understanding when, when the situations are difficult.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  So, so, so, and this is, this is a big question with, with, with the, the AI now. One of the, and again, I'm not, I'm not, of course, I'm not against it, you know, AI is the, it's like, you know, the transition from the phone, like to, my daughters do not know what's her, like before the smartphone, like before the smartphone was the dinosaur era, right? So, you know, like, like the transition to smartphone, that it's, it's here to stay. It's a different level of evolution. And however, one of the things that I'm, I want to, I want, I, I'm, I'm interested to see how it will work is what it will do to the social connection, to the amount of conversation that people convey.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  There always, there is a new study, a very interesting study, that found that people speak more than, on average, and it was, that study was until 2019, 330 words less on average per day. So people speak less. And if people speak less with one another, it means that they also listen less. Now, this was before the AI era. So now with the AI, if we turn only to AI, because it's, you know, it's validating, we're always correct. If I will lead an argument, if I tell the AI that they had an argument, you know, I'm always correct. Like, I'm never correct, you know, I'm, you know, when a man arguing with his wife is never correct. Now for the AI, it can tell me I'm correct.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  It's great, it's a great avenue to, but, but it's not, it's not realistic. And, and this is something that will be interesting to see how it develops.

• 43:50Kim Mills?

  Well, Dr. Ichikoff, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been a very interesting conversation. Thank you.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Thank you for inviting me.

• 43:57Kim Mills?

  You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please follow us and leave a review. If you have comments or ideas for future episodes, you can email us at [email protected].

• 44:19Kim Mills?

  Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Thank you for listening to the American Psychological Association. I'm Kim Mills.

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