Good listening is thought to be a positive quality that makes a speaker feel safe and accepted. But a study published in the Journal of Social Psychology suggests that for some personalities, listening quietly to them actually makes them feel anxious. The experiment found that listening without interruption reduces social anxiety when speakers are high in narcissism yet increases social anxiety when speakers are high in depression.
The benefits of effective listening have been widely discussed in both the media and in scientific literature. Listening techniques are used by therapists to help patients feel safe and in the business world as part of sales tactics. But the science of listening — and the techniques to improve it — remain uncertain.
To add to the research on listening behavior, study authors Hadar Weis-Rappaport and Avraham N. Kluger conducted a study to test a listening technique called time-sharing. Time-sharing is when conversation partners take turns listening and speaking. During the speaker’s turn, the listener remains silent but signals listening with cues like nodding or saying “mhm.” This technique touches on three components of listening: paying attention to the speaker, communicating understanding, and conveying an attitude of non-judgment.
“I met a woman who conducted time-sharing workshops in her home,” said Kluger, the Charles I. Rosen Chair of Business Administration at the Hebrew University Business School. “She shared that she had been hospitalized for mental health issues as a young adult but later recovered and became a social worker. She uses time-sharing to assist people with mental health concerns and their families to communicate effectively. I was amazed at the impact a short conversation had on me when the listener was attentive and silent.”
Building on past research, the authors wanted to explore how time-sharing might differently impact people with different personalities. They proposed that time-sharing would lower social anxiety among speakers with high levels of narcissism since such individuals will likely enjoy being able to dominate the conversation uninterrupted. Time-sharing may, however, increase social anxiety among speakers with high levels of depression since these individuals might interpret the listener’s silence as social rejection.
A sample of 100 university students participated in a lab experiment where they were divided into 50 pairs. Each pair was randomly assigned to a free conversation condition or a time-sharing condition. The instructions for the two conditions were similar — one participant was instructed to talk for three minutes while the other listened, and the participants were then asked to switch roles for the next three minutes. But in the time-sharing condition, listeners were explicitly asked to listen silently and to only respond with facial expressions, nods, and “uh-huh.”
In questionnaires, speakers answered questions assessing their social anxiety (e.g., “I worried about what the listener thought of me.”). All participants also completed measures of depression and narcissism.
The results revealed that participants’ reactions to the two conditions seemed to depend on their personalities. In the time-sharing condition, speakers showed lower social anxiety if they had high levels of narcissism, but higher social anxiety if they had high levels of depression. This suggests that time-sharing was beneficial for speakers with narcissism but harmful for speakers with depression.
“Some experts propose guidelines for effective listening, such as ‘don’t interrupt,'” Kluger told PsyPost. “However, our research suggests that these rules are overly simplistic. Some speakers may prefer not to be interrupted, while others may appreciate interruptions as a sign of engagement.”
Interestingly, listeners with high levels of narcissism experienced heightened social anxiety in the time-sharing condition while speakers with high levels of narcissism experienced heightened social anxiety in the free conversation condition. Narcissism is a personality trait defined by a high sense of self-importance and a lack of consideration for others. It follows that someone with this personality would experience heightened discomfort when they cannot be the center of attention, whether it is because they are acting as listeners in a time-sharing conversation or as speakers in a free-for-all conversation.
The authors say their findings suggest that the effects of listening interventions may depend on the speaker’s personality. “Listening and listening techniques, such as time-sharing, active listening, listening circles, and many more, are typically advocated by practitioners and researchers without considering the potential interaction between the technique and the speaker’s personality,” Weis-Rappaport and Kluger write. “Our research on time-sharing effects joins fledgling research on other personality traits that may moderate the benefits of listening in general.”
A limitation of the study was that it did not assess whether the duration of time-sharing might influence its effects. According to the authors, a potential topic for future studies would be to test the optimal duration of time-sharing for positive outcomes.
“The sample size of our study is relatively small, and the participants may have limited experience with being listened to,” Kluger said. “Further research, including a larger sample and participants who have received training in listening, is needed to confirm the robustness of our findings.”
“Listening research often overlooks that the effectiveness of a listener’s behavior may depend on the personalities of both the speaker and listener and their dynamic. A deeper understanding of how personalities contribute to successful communication could lead to more effective ways of fostering productive conversations.”
The study, “The effects of listening with ‘time-sharing’ on psychological safety and social anxiety: the moderating role of narcissism and depression”, was authored by Hadar Weis-Rappaport and Avraham N. Kluger.