Feeling Unheard? Here's How to Bridge Gaps in Everyday Chats |
If you feel frustrated in conversation these days, you’re not alone. People often report not feeling heard. This is a missed opportunity, because we all want to feel seen and heard. And it makes a big difference to how discussions go.
Experiments show that, even when talking about highly charged ideological topics, if one person listens attentively and is receptive to the other’s ideas, the other person is likely to also listen and become more receptive.
In addition to not feeling heard, we often grossly overestimate how clearly we’ve made a point.
A 2022 study found that when someone asked an ambiguous question in a conversation, both parties thought its meaning was understood almost three-quarters of the time, when they were actually on the same page less than half of the time. That’s a massive understanding gap. (Participants overestimated their shared understanding even when they were speaking different languages, apparently expecting that meaning could be gleaned from tone of voice.)
There’s another major way discussions get confused and frustrating. People get tripped up on this: What type of question are we even talking about?
Imagine a hypothetical chat about college education. There are different kinds of questions that might come up, each with different