Graham Bodie, Ph.D.Professor, IMC (U Mississippi)

Chief Listening Officer, LFP

Listening with Empathy

Groups 1-6: Listening

Groups 7-12: With

Groups 13-19: Empathy

Empathy and Listening: A Few Connections

• No “agreed upon” definition, but agreed multi-dimensional• Listening – affective, behavioral, cognitive

• Empathy – empathic concern (feelings), perspective taking (thinking), fantasy (transposing, imagination), personal distress

• Involve the “whole brain”• There is no “empathy center” or “listening spot” within the brain

• Feeling with or thinking like others lights up multiple parts of the brain

• When we listen, we invoke multiple parts of the brain (and use more than sense of hearing)

• Developmental• From the cradle to the grave

• Learned, over time (both are “skilled accomplishments”)

SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM

AND NEW MEDIA

WHAT IS

LISTENING?

Content Meaning – the spoken words and subject

matter of the conversation.

Relational Meaning – what the speaker is trying to

convey in speech; how the speaker sees the

relationship

Listening is a critical life skill, deeply rooted in the context of its ability to help create, maintain, and enhance positive relationships.

What does it mean to listen

WITH empathy?Einfühlung

Barbara, 53 year-old salesperson

“I feel like Alex wouldn’t listen to me

because I’m a woman. He listened to you

when you made the same point.”

What if you don’t have any similarexperiences upon which to draw?

Perspective Taking vs. Listening

Wearing Their Shoes

• While you are reading about the other participant’s problem, try to imagine how you yourself would feel if you were experiencing what has happened to the other participant and how this experience would affect your life. Try not to concern yourself with attending to all the information presented. Just concentrate on trying to imagine how you yourself would feel.

Wearing Your Shoes

• While you are reading about the other participant’s problem, try to imagine how the other participant feels about what has happened and how it has affected his or her life. Try not to concern yourself with attending to all the information presented. Just concentrate on trying to imagine how the other participant feels.

Buffone, E.K., et al. (2017). Don't walk in her shoes! Different forms of perspective taking affect stress physiology. Journal of

Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 161-168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.04.001.

Their Shoes

Your Shoes

Listening = Perspective Getting

Situation

It’s your best friend’s birthday. You

want to gift them a “special” gift –

something they will really enjoy.

Back to your groups

How do you go about finding the

“perfect” gift?

Listening = Perspective Getting

Their Shoes

Your Shoes

No Shoes (or socks)

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

To Yourself

• Do I understand this person’s situation?

• Do I really KNOW what this person desires?

• What am I missing? Assuming?

• What do I NOT know?

• Do I actually disagree with this person?

• Does this matter?• Why does this matter to me?

• Can I fairly paraphrase this person’s point of view?

• Is there SOMETHING I can validate?

• What do I actually believe?

To Your Partner

• Did that happen as you expected?

• What can I do to help?• What do you wish people asked you more about?

• What sense of purpose / mission / duty guides you in your life?

• What would your best friend say about who you are and what inspires you?

• What are your hopes and concerns for your community and/or the country?

• I can tell you have thought a lot about this and that you care deeply. Can you help me understand a bit more how you came to that conclusion?

• What specifically about [issue/topic] makes you think that way?

Two Major Tasks Helpers Should Accomplish before Giving Advice

• Provide emotional support

• Assess relevance of advice• ONLY IF RELEVANT, undertake an analysis of the problem WITH the recipient

BEFORE arriving at a plausible solution to the problem

• STEPWISE ENTRY OF ADVICE (health care and counselling) • Question-Answer sequences LAY THE GROUNDWORK FOR ADVICE

Feng, B. (2009). Testing an integrated model of advice giving in supportive interactions. Human Communication Research, 35, 115–

129. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2008.01340.x

Write, as accurately as you can,

what this person said.

Three “Parts” to a Story

• Event•What happened?

•Durative Descriptive Information•Why is the event important?

• Evaluative Information•Which parts are most imperative?

What did you jot down?

What you might say to express

empathy to “the wife”?

Others’ minds will never be an open book. The

secret to understanding each other better seems to

come not through an increased ability to read body

language or improved perspective taking but,

rather, through the hard relational work of putting

people in a position where they can tell you their

minds openly and honestly…If we want to

understand what’s on the mind of another, the best

our mortal senses can do may be to rely on our

ears more than our inferences.

Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want. Random House.

Knowing others’ minds

requires asking and listening,

not just reading and guessing.

Can you have empathy when you disagree?

Listening is a critical life skill,

deeply rooted in the context of its

ability to help create, maintain, and

enhance positive relationships.

Listening with empathy is a

process of REAPPRAISAL

• Be Curious, not Furious

• Turn to Wonder

• Validation isn’t agreement

Does pineapple belong

on pizza?

ONE THING: People behave for a reason.

Listening with empathy means discovering that

reason.

1. Attitude = Curiosity

2. Behaviors = Discovery Oriented

3. Cognitions = Their Shoes, My Shoes, No Shoes

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