The effects of listening on speaker and listener while talking about character strengths: an open science school-wide collaboration

Healthcare professionals routinely work under conditions that make high emotional and physical demands. Identifying workplace resources that mitigate burnout and reduce turnover intentions is crucial for maintaining workforce stability during crises. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources model, this study tested whether (a) healthcare workers who perceive their managers as highquality listeners would report lower turnover intentions, and (b) this protective effect would be especially pronounced among employees experiencing high emotional exhaustion. Methods: A total of 329 Israeli healthcare professionals, including physicians (n = 96), nurses (n = 103), and support staff (n = 130), completed validated measures of managers’ listening quality, emotional exhaustion, social support, negative affect, and turnover intentions during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Results: Managers’ listening quality predicted lower turnover intentions, supporting Hypothesis 1. This effect was significant for employees with high, but not low, emotional exhaustion, supporting Hypothesis 2. Subgroup analyses indicated that associations between managerial listening and turnover intentions were consistent across physicians, nurses, and other staff, with no significant subgroup differences. Conclusion: Managers’ listening quality emerged as a critical relational resource in healthcare settings, particularly under high strain. High-quality listening may help buffer the negative effects of emotional exhaustion and reduce turnover intentions. Practical interventions that enhance managers’ listening skills could therefore serve as a low-cost strategy to support staff well-being and retention during crises. Because this study used a cross-sectional design, causal relationships cannot be inferred, and future longitudinal and intervention studies are needed to confirm the protective role of managerial listening over time. Plain Language Summary: Healthcare workers face intense emotional and physical demands, especially during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. This can lead to emotional exhaustion and a strong desire to leave their jobs, threatening healthcare systems’ stability. Our study looked at whether the quality of listening by healthcare managers could help reduce these turnover intentions. We surveyed 329 healthcare professionals in Israel, including doctors, nurses, and support staff, during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Participants reported how well they felt their managers listened to them, how emotionally exhausted they were, and whether they intended to leave their jobs. The results showed that when employees felt their managers listened carefully and empathetically, they were less likely to want to quit. This effect was strongest among those who were highly emotionally exhausted. In other words, good listening by managers helped especially those struggling the most. These findings highlight the important role that managers’ listening plays in supporting healthcare staff’s emotional well-being and retention. Listening is more than just a communication skill; it is a relational resource that makes employees feel valued and understood. Improving managers’ listening skills could be a practical, lowcost way to help healthcare workers cope with stress and reduce staff turnover, which is critical during challenging times.

Theoretical work on attitudinal ambivalence suggests that anticipated regret may play a role in causing awareness of contradictions that subsequently induce a feeling of an evaluative conflict. In the present paper we empirically examined how the anticipation of regret relates to the association between the simultaneous pre- sence of contradictory cognitions and emotions (objective ambivalence), and the evaluative conflict associated with it (subjective ambivalence), in the context of decision-making. Across three studies (Ns = 204,127,244), manipulating both objective ambivalence and regret, we consistently found that when a dichotomous ambiva- lent choice had to be made, (objectively) ambivalent attitude holders for whom feelings of anticipated regret were made salient reported higher levels of subjective-attitude ambivalence than participants in the other conditions. Moreover, in Studies 2 and 3 we found that the effect of anticipated regret on subjective ambivalence had consequences on information processing. Specifically, anticipating regret made ambivalent participants search for attitude-congruent information. This effect was mediated by the increase in subjective ambivalence. This work provides the first empirical evidence for the role of regret in the association between objective-and- subjective attitude ambivalence, and its consequences.