In boardrooms, town halls, and dinner table debates, a common piece of wisdom prevails regarding how to change someone’s mind. The advice suggests that before you can persuade another person, you must first listen to them. This idea posits that by offering high-quality, nonjudgmental attention, a listener satisfies the speaker’s psychological need to be heard. This process is thought to lower defensiveness and open the door for a counter-argument.
Consultants, conflict resolution experts, and political strategists frequently rely on this theory. It traces its roots back to Aristotle’s concept of “ethos,” which suggests that a speaker’s character and likability influence their ability to persuade. The assumption is that listening builds rapport, and rapport builds agreement.
Despite the popularity of this approach, scientific evidence directly testing it remains sparse. A team of researchers recently set out to determine if this conventional wisdom holds up under experimental conditions. They published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Their investigation sought to separate the effects of listening from the effects of the argument itself to see what truly drives a change of opinion.
Identifying the Knowledge Gap
The research team included Erik Santoro from Columbia Business School, David Broockman from the University of California, Berkeley, Joshua Kalla from Yale University, and Roni Porat from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They recognized that while many scholars argue that listening enhances persuasion, few have tested this in live, face-to-face interactions.
Existing research presented a conflicting possibility. Recent studies in media consumption have shown that people are capable of learning from sources they actively dislike. For example, viewers of partisan news channels can still be persuaded by arguments presented on opposing networks, even if they distrust the network itself.
This creates a tension in the theoretical understanding of persuasion. If people can be persuaded by sources they do not like, the role of interpersonal rapport might be smaller than previously thought. The researchers aimed to investigate whether making a person feel heard actually acts as a lubricant for persuasion, or if the persuasive message stands on its own merits.
Designing the Experiment
To test these competing ideas, the researchers designed a large-scale field experiment. They recruited 1,485 participants from across the United States. The researchers screened these participants to ensure they all held a specific view: they opposed allowing undocumented immigrants to access in-state college tuition.
The study centered on a video conversation held over Zoom. The researchers told participants they would be speaking with another volunteer. In reality, the conversation partner was a trained confederate. These confederates were professional canvassers who followed a strict script based on random assignment.
The researchers structured the experiment to isolate two specific variables. The first variable was the “persuasive appeal.” This took the form of a personal narrative. The confederate would share a story about an undocumented immigrant to humanize the issue and advocate for the policy.
The second variable was “high-quality listening.” In conditions involving this variable, the confederate engaged in active listening behaviors. They asked probing follow-up questions, maintained eye contact, nodded, and avoided expressing judgment while the participant explained their views.
The Four Scenarios
The team divided the interactions into four distinct conditions to measure how these variables interacted.
In the first group, the confederate offered neither listening nor a story. They simply stated their support for the policy and moved on. This served as the placebo control group.
In the second group, the confederate engaged in high-quality listening but did not offer a persuasive story. They listened to the participant’s objections but did not attempt to counter them with a narrative.
In the third group, the confederate shared the persuasive narrative but did not engage in high-quality listening. They delivered the message without spending time unpacking the participant’s views.
In the final group, the confederate combined both strategies. They listened intently to the participant and then shared the persuasive narrative. This condition represented the “gold standard” of conversational persuasion that many experts advocate.
Analyzing the Interactions
The researchers measured the outcomes immediately after the ten-minute conversations. They also conducted a follow-up survey five weeks later to see if any changes in opinion were durable. The primary metrics were the participants’ attitudes toward the specific tuition policy and their general prejudice toward undocumented immigrants.
The analysis included checks to ensure the experiment ran as intended. Surveys confirmed that participants in the listening conditions reported feeling heard and understood. Likewise, participants in the narrative conditions confirmed they recalled hearing a story.
The researchers also analyzed the video recordings. They measured how much the participants spoke and the specific language the confederates used. This data confirmed that the “listening” condition successfully prompted participants to share more of their perspective.
The Results of the Investigation
The data revealed a clear pattern regarding the persuasive narrative. Participants who heard the story showed a significant reduction in prejudice and a marked increase in support for the policy. This effect was substantial and remained consistent five weeks later. The narrative alone proved to be a powerful tool for changing minds.
The results regarding listening were unexpected. The team found that adding high-quality listening to the persuasive narrative did not increase the level of persuasion. The group that received both listening and the story changed their minds to the same degree as the group that heard only the story.
The analysis showed that listening did have interpersonal benefits. Participants who were listened to reported liking the confederate more. They felt less defensive and perceived the confederate as more trustworthy. However, this increased likability did not translate into increased agreement with the policy.
Understanding the Mechanism
To understand why listening failed to boost persuasion, the researchers examined how the participants processed the information. They looked for signs of a chain of events often described in persuasion theory. The theory suggests that listening leads to lower defensiveness, which leads to deeper thinking, which finally leads to a change in attitude.
The data confirmed the first step of this chain. Listening reduced defensiveness and increased feelings of safety. However, the chain broke at the next link. The participants who were listened to did not report thinking more deeply about the topic than those who just heard the story.
The researchers found that the persuasive narrative captured the participants’ attention regardless of whether the speaker listened to them first. The participants reported learning new information from the story in both conditions. This suggests that the narrative itself provided enough stimulation to change attitudes, rendering the warm-up act of listening redundant for the specific goal of persuasion.
Implications for Professional Communication
This study offers specific insights for businesses and professionals involved in negotiations, sales, or conflict resolution. The findings indicate that when the primary goal is to change a specific opinion or policy preference, the content of the message drives the outcome. A well-constructed narrative appears to carry the weight of persuasion independently of the relationship dynamics.
Professionals often invest significant time in building rapport through listening, believing it is a prerequisite for a transaction or agreement. This research suggests that while listening improves the social atmosphere and likability, it may not be efficient for altering a specific viewpoint. If time is limited, prioritizing the delivery of a strong, narrative-based argument may yield equal results in terms of attitude change.
However, the researchers note that listening is not without value. It successfully reduced defensiveness and improved the perception of the speaker. In long-term business relationships where trust and likability are central to ongoing cooperation, listening remains a valuable tool. The study simply highlights that these interpersonal gains do not automatically result in winning a debate.
Directions for Future Inquiry
The findings from Santoro and his colleagues open several new avenues for investigation. The study focused on a single, one-off interaction between strangers. Future research might explore whether the effect holds true in established relationships, such as those between colleagues or family members.
Another area for study involves the type of topic being discussed. This experiment utilized a contentious political issue. It remains to be seen if listening plays a larger role when the disagreement is about less polarized topics, such as business strategy or product features.
Finally, the researchers point to the need to investigate “recruitment” into conversations. While listening did not change the outcome of the debate, it may make people more willing to enter the debate in the first place. Future studies could test if listening increases a person’s willingness to stay at the table, even if it does not directly change their vote. The current data clarifies that while listening builds a bridge between people, the message itself must do the work of crossing it.
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