Sowing the seeds of love: Cultivating perceptions of culture of companionate love through listening and its effects on organizational outcomes
Abstract
Fostering a culture of companionate love in the workplace
offers numerous benefits for employees, yet the
methods for achieving this remain unclear. We propose
that high-quality listening, characterized by undivided
attention, understanding, and a positive and nonjudgmental
intention toward the speaker, could be a
key facilitator. We hypothesized that such listening
could enhance employees' perceptions of companionate
love. Additionally, we hypothesized that an enhanced
perception of companionate love would increase
employees' subjective well-being, resilience, affective
commitment, and willingness to cooperate at work. To
examine these hypotheses, we conducted four studies.
Study 1 was a preregistered and highly-powered field
study (N = 752) involving employees from various
organizations. Study 2 (N = 37), was a longitudinal
research that included a listening training of 16 hours
for teachers in a single school. Study 3 was a quasi-field
experiment within a risk-management company, with
employees receiving 12 hours of listening education
while a waitlist served as a control group (N = 67).
Study 4 was a quasi-experiment that served as a conceptual
replication and extension of Studies 2 and
3. The study involved listening training for employees
in a global communications company, providing
14 hours of online listening training. An active control
group (N = 60) was included. Across all studies, we
found that feeling listened to by colleagues led to
increased perceptions of companionate love in the
organization, which, in turn, increased employees' subjective
well-being, resilience, affective organizational
commitment, and willingness to collaborate. Theoretical
and practical implications are discussed.
Harmonizing hearts: High-quality listening and Kama Muta among listeners and speakers.
Dvori Saluk, Della Janam, Guy Itzchakov, Kenneth G DeMarree, Angelia Venezia
Listening
Kama Muta, a relatively new construct, is an emotion of social connection that describes the feeling of being moved to love through five key dimensions. Despite the growing body of research on the beneficial outcomes of Kama Muta, little is known about its antecedents. To fill this gap, this research focuses on the emergence of Kama Muta during social interactions by specifically examining what triggers this emotion in conversations. The theory on Kama Muta suggests it emerges in response to sudden relationship intensification. We propose that, in conversation, this intensification is most likely triggered by high-quality listening. We examined whether high-quality listening, characterized by undivided attention, understanding, acceptance, nonjudgment, and positive intentions, is associated with Kama Muta for both speakers and listeners. Data were collected across three studies (total N = 1,126), employing scenarios (Study 1), recall (Study 2), and live online conversations conducted via Zoom (Study 3). We found general support for our hypotheses. Specifically, both speakers (Studies 1–3) and listeners (Studies 2–3) experiencing high-quality listening reported greater Kama Muta compared to those exposed to lower quality listening. The consistency of these results varied across different dimensions of Kama Muta. This work offers novel insights into a previously unexplored social behavior that can act as an antecedent of Kama Muta and contributes to the listening literature, which has predominantly focused on the effects on speakers. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
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Communicating for workplace connection: A longitudinal study of the outcomes of listening training on teachers' autonomy, psychological safety, and relational climate
Guy Itzchakov, Netta Weinstein, Eli Vinokur, Avinoam Yomtovian
Listening
Training teachers to listen may enable them to experience increasingly attentive and open peer relationships at work. In the present research, we examined the outcomes of a year-long listening training on school teachers' listening abilities and its downstream consequences on their relational climate, autonomy, and psychological safety. Teachers in two elementary schools engaged in a similar listening training program throughout the entire school year. The measures included indicators of a supportive relational climate that are known to be important to teacher well-being, namely, autonomy, psychological safety, and relational energy. Results of growth curve modeling showed linear increases in all three outcomes, such that more listening training corresponded to a more positive relational climate. Specifically, the teachers reported increasingly higher quality listening from their group member teachers, felt more autonomy satisfied, psychologically safe, and relationally energetic. Furthermore, latent growth curve modeling indicated that the teachers' listening perception was positively and significantly associated with all three outcomes. We concluded that listening training is associated with teachers perceiving higher quality listening from their peers and, therefore, feeling more autonomy-satisfied, psychologically safe, and relationally energetic and discussing theoretical and practical implications.
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