The key ideas

You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters

Kate Murphy, 2020

A scientist gives his wife the “perfect” gift, and the very thought of it makes her sick. People confide secrets to near-strangers rather than loved ones. Journalist Kate Murphy spent two years asking intelligence officers, negotiators, bartenders, and improvisational actors how they listen, and explains why listening is so difficult and what gets lost.

Who it is for

For anyone who feels unheard, and anyone wanting to understand loved ones, colleagues, and people with different views better.

Listening does not mean or even imply agreeing with someone. It simply means recognizing the legitimacy of another point of view and allowing that you might learn something from it.

What the book is about

Journalist Kate Murphy began noticing something strange: people she asked about business matters would suddenly start talking about personal things unrelated to the topic. As though they had long lacked someone to talk to.

This raised her question: when did you last truly listen to someone without thinking about what to say in reply? For two years, she interviewed people whose job involves listening: intelligence officers, people who negotiate with terrorists, a focus-group moderator, bartenders, and improvisational actors.

This is a journalist’s book: stories plus studies the author cites. Many of its conclusions are her interpretations rather than rigorous science.

Idea 1. The gift that missed the mark

Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago, decided to give his wife the perfect present. She had once said she wanted to swim with dolphins. He bought a behind-the-scenes aquarium tour where she could feed dolphins, belugas, and penguins.

His wife was not pleased. She was pregnant and suffering from morning sickness, and the thought of dead fish made her nauseous. Epley later acknowledged that he had not listened closely enough to understand what she was experiencing at the time.

Epley studies a phenomenon called closeness-communication bias. In experiments Murphy describes, people expected to understand friends and spouses more accurately than strangers. In practice, they often understood them no better, and sometimes worse.

You tell your mother about a new job, and halfway through a sentence she says, “Well, that’s just like you.” Then she stops listening.

The better we know someone, the easier it is to stop listening: the answer seems known in advance. People may change faster than our picture of them.

Read in Livria

About the author

Kate Murphy is a Houston-based journalist and contributor to The New York Times. You’re Not Listening is her first book, translated into dozens of languages according to the publisher.

All books by this author: Kate Murphy

Terms from the book

  • Closeness-communication bias: The tendency to listen to and understand people close to us less well because we feel we already know what they will say. Studied by researchers including Nicholas Epley.
  • Shift-response: In Derber’s account, a response that shifts attention from the speaker to the person replying.
  • Support-response: In Derber’s account, a response inviting the speaker to say more, such as an open question.
  • Conversational narcissism: Sociologist Charles Derber’s term for the habit of pulling a conversation toward yourself. A description of communication style rather than a psychiatric diagnosis.
  • Negative capability: Poet John Keats’s expression, which Murphy applies to good listeners: the ability to tolerate contradictions and uncertainty without rushing to a conclusion. An image rather than a scientific term.

All terms

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