Are Extroverts Better Listeners?
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What common belief about listeners does Chris Winchester challenge?
Smart, sharp, and slightly unhinged, Late Night's Fresh Perspective, The Last Show with David Cooper. Want to make a friend who's a really good listener? Make friends with an introvert. That is the common wisdom. But what if a chatty extrovert in the room is actually better at listening than an introvert? A new research study suggests that might be true. I am here with Chris Winchester, a management professor at Texas Tech University, to discuss all of this. Chris, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, David. I'm thrilled to be here. Let's attack this stereotype that the quiet person in the room sitting there saying nothing is the best listener. What made you curious to test that assumption?
Yeah, so all of my co-authors and I were actually all introverts. And so just to preface the notion that, oh, it's extroverts trying to poke a hole in this and just say extroverts are better listeners.
What sparked Chris Winchester's curiosity about listening styles?
No, we were all introverts. And we had seen on social media and books and articles and the pop press suggesting that introverts are better listeners. And so we were really excited to provide the first like really robust scientific evidence that introverts are indeed better listeners. But no, we did not find that.
So you went in a little arrogant. You're trying to prove what you thought about yourselves, that we are a group of great listeners and you got humbled by the science. Before we get to those results, though, how do we define good listening? What makes a good listener? Also, what are we talking about? I lost my train of thought.
Very good. I mean, good listening, which I mean, normally, David, you're very good at as a podcast host. The reason I love this question so much is because often we talk about, oh, yeah, you're a good listener or not. But at the end of the day, we don't even know what listening actually is. And what makes it so critical is listening is a process. And so we usually like to be like, what's the difference between like hearing and listening? Well, the first thing you hear some auditory cue. In our context, we focus on conversations. And from there, that dovetails into what listening actually entails. And it starts with a series of unobservable behaviors, like what's going on in your mind, which then drives the things that you can see people do, the observable behaviors, things like the eye contact, the nonverbals, repeating back what you hear.
And that ultimately influences, are you a good listener or not? And that, are you retaining, understanding, and responding to those initial auditory cues?
I really hope my mom is listening. She's probably hearing this interview, but I'm not sure she's listening. So observable behaviors, is that like interrupting you and recapping what you just said? Maybe not interrupting, but recapping. Is it nodding? Like what are the observable behaviors that would let me know that someone is in fact listening well?
Yeah, I mean, you're spot on. You literally hit two of the three most common and three of the ones that we look at. So you mentioned interruptions. There's actually two types of interruptions. Usually when you think like, oh, like stop interrupting me. Those are very intrusive interruptions. Like to refocus it back on me or just like randomly talk about, oh, but the weather today was nice. Like we weren't talking about the weather today. What are you doing? But there's also cooperative interruptions. Where if you were to interrupt me right now, I'd be like, well, what was the first interruption that you just said? It shows that you're listening and engaged. And so that's one key piece. Another one that you mentioned, it's the nonverbals, the eye contact.
When someone says something funny, you smile. Or if they're saying something that's like really upsetting, you frown. And not the vice versa, where someone tells you they're like, oh, a relative just died and you're smiling. You're clearly not paying attention. And so there's key pieces on that.
Okay, so that's how we know. So then, how did you test this? How did you test whether extroverts or introverts are, in fact, better at listening?
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