Listening

The Listening Circle: A Simple Tool to Enhance Listening and Reduce Extremism Among Employees

Abstract

An employee’s listening ability has implications for the effectiveness of the work team, the organization, and for the employee’s own success. Estimates of the frequency of listening suggest that workers spend about 30% of their communication time listening. However, the ability to listen might be even more important to managers, as empirical evidence suggest that they spent more than 60% of their time listening. Hence, the success of both the employee and the manager in communication, and thus in the organization, rests in part on possessing good listening abilities.
Guy Itzchakov & S. Christian Wheeler
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Listening
Consumers’ decisions are intricately interwoven with their conversations. Whether it is an animated discussion with a trusted friend extolling the virtues of a newly acquired car (i.e., Word-of-Mouth), an engaging dialogue with a salesperson, or a clarifying call to a help center seeking guidance on a just-purchased smartwatch, every exchange hinges on a pivotal factor: the quality of listening. Listening quality shapes perceptions, affects social influence, drives behavioral intentions, and, ultimately, determines purchase and post-purchase outcomes. Yet, despite its importance to these consumer behavior outcomes, listening has received scant attention in consumer psychology. In this paper, we review the effects of listening on consumer behavior-relevant outcomes and unpack the components of quality listening to reveal their independent mechanisms. We also point to new frontiers in listening research beyond the in-person, dyadic interactions that have been the primary focus of listening research to date. By doing this, we elucidate how listening and consumer behavior are connected and encourage more research on listening in consumer psychology.
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Guy Itzchakov, Liad Uziel , Wendy Wood
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Attitudes
Changing attitudes does not necessarily involve the same psychological processes as changing behavior, yet social psychology is only just beginning to identify the different mechanisms involved. We contribute to this understanding by showing that the moderators of attitude change are not necessarily the moderators of behavior change. The results of three studies (Ns = 98, 104, 137) employing an ego depletion manipulation indicate that although people are more likely to agree with a persuasive message when executive control is reduced they are not more likely to change their behavior. Rather, under conditions of ego depletion, attitudes became less correlated with behaviors after persuasion. Moreover, in Study 3, we provide an explanation for this phenom- enon: People are more likely to agree with a persuasive message when depleted but are also more likely to fall back on habits that may conflict with their new evaluations. A mini meta-analysis of the data indicated that ego- depletion had a medium effect size on the difference between attitude change and behavior change, N = 339, d = −0.51, 95% CI [−0.72, −0.29]. Jointly, these studies suggest an integrative, resource-based explanation to attitude-behavior discrepancies subsequent to persuasion.
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