Listening Competence in Initial Interactions I: Distinguishing Between What Listening Is and What Listeners Do

Abstract

The impressions we form of others during initial interactions are powerful. These impressions are a product of various implicit theories — mental representations of people and actions. This article investigates the structure of implicit theories of listening used when forming impressions of others after an initial encounter. Specifically, three studies are reported that, together, iteratively build an empirical database of the attributes (what competent listening is) and behaviors (what competent listeners do) associated with effective listening in initial interactions. The results help construct an evidence-based, preliminary model that can be used to investigate the role and structure of implicit theories of listening.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by funds from the 2009 Synergist Award presented to Graham Bodie and James Honeycutt by the Research Committee of the International Listening Association and a 2010 Summer Research Grant awarded to Graham Bodie by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at The Louisiana State University.

Notes

¹For instance, the category “eye contact” was listed in the first box by 47 participants who generated a mean listening competence rating of 5.36 (SD = 1.07) and in the fourth box by 13 participants who generated a mean listening competence rating of 5.15 (SD = 1.07).

²Since participants were asked to rate how characteristics are associated with listening, having them rating “listens well” seemed unnecessary.

³The effect size for the paired-samples t-test was computed using the means and standard deviations as opposed to the t-value. This method takes into account that the paired means are correlated, in this sample, at a magnitude of .42. The unadjusted effect size was .48.

⁴The average percentage ratio of top 10 to bottom 9 rankings was 72/28; the range was from 79/21 (asks questions) to 66/34 (answers questions).

⁵The average percentage ratio of top 10 to bottom 9 rankings was 34/66; the range was from 20/81 (employs hand gestures) to 45/55 (engages in appropriate facial expressions).

⁶All of these results are available upon request.

⁷The sheer number of similar articles precludes a comprehensive list of sources to be cited here. More generally (and alarmingly) claims about the importance of good listening are not localized to the popular literature. For example, undergraduate textbooks in interpersonal communication stress that “good listening” behaviors make people more attractive (e.g., McCornack, 2010; Orbe & Bruess, 2005), whereas texts focused on business communication stress the importance of listening to first impressions within the job interview setting (Stewart & Cash, 2002). These claims are rarely followed by citations, and when they are the sources are often not empirical research. This general trend seems to warrant an extended discussion and investigation by listening scholars and practitioners alike (Bodie, Janusik, & Valikoski, 2008).

⁸This causal structure seems more plausible than the reverse (attributes behaviors) based on principles of parsimony (i.e., storing five attributes is much simpler than storing 19 behaviors) and on past research on implicit theories of personality (Wyer & Gruenfeld, 1995; Wyer & Srull, 1989). In addition, research has demonstrated that people lose behavioral information that leads to trait descriptions while attribute-level data remains in memory suggesting that the latter but not the former is stored for later retrieval and used when forming impressions of others (Allen & Ebbesen, 1981). Of course, the temporal ordering of the impression formation process as it plays out in initial interactions and with specific relation to listening should be empirically demonstrated.