Listening: Overturning our biases

In our human past, it may have been advantageous, to categorize and exclude individuals different from us

to avoid potentially incompatible mixing of social, behavioral, or genetic traits.

Now more than ever we can identify and test the

compatibility of our respective social or behavioral traits. AND yet we still categorize and exclude people based on outdated and biased criteria. Why? Because identifying and testing our social compatibility with people takes effort.

Simple categorization is too easy

We have limitations on our time/effort and the processing power needed to categorize and label is much less than getting a more complete description of other people and their behavior. For example, using a single criterion such as "skin color" to find prospective friends is easy. It's either yes or no for whatever skin colors you are considering.

Not enough time!

Many people agree that a complex trait like "personality" would be a better way to find good friends. As anyone who has had a bad day knows, personality can't be defined in a single interaction. You have to meet, talk, and otherwise interact with someone multiple times to get a decent understanding of their personality. As the size of our potential social groups increase it becomes correspondingly difficult to fully understand other people because our time spent with individual people decreases. Thus the time spent trying to understand our neighbors is now split between more neighbors or coworkers and less time is spent with each of them.

Online facades

The internet has made it easier for us to interact with more people and it adds several layers of complexity that can make people easier to misunderstand. Online it is easier to, hide, smooth, or misrepresent yourself making it even more challenging to understand a person's actual personality. Not to mention texting and emails can additionally create unintentional fiascos through typos and misunderstood social/emotional contexts. Hurtful exclusionary behavior can be partially understood as faulty categorization based on the inability to understand other people. Humans can also learn exclusionary behavior through indirectly acquired information allowing incorrect categorizations to be spread without people knowing the original source of information. To reduce our mutual misunderstanding of each other, we first need personal experience to correct these faulty categorizations and propagate accurate information.

Taking the effort to listen

Exclusionary behavior is essentially based on our inability or unwillingness to listen, process, and understand people on an individual basis. Thinking hurts, takes time, and is difficult. We need people with the skills necessary to openly promote inclusive behavior. We don't necessarily need activists, we need everyday people with training in listening skills. Once we can listen to each other we can take action based on first-hand information. Once we learn how to listen, then we can use this skill for many things, including getting to know people first-hand.

Listening isn't easy

Listening can be taught, and actively practiced. Listening doesn't need to stay difficult. We should openly support training in active listening. This should be taught as the foundation of communication or social science classes. We put so much focus on speaking but so little on listening. We need to clearly teach that speaking goes hand-in-hand with listening and how to approach communication from a fundamental level. Through training in active listening, we can reduce the difficulting of getting to know people. Once we have increased skills in listening we can then ask ourselves how to reduce harmful exclusionary behavior.

Here are several ideas that could cultivate mutual understanding in combination with active listening.

1) Provide an environment with inclusive behavior and listening. This means a safe space with shared goals where students have adequate time and can prioritize active collaboration equally with productivity.

2) The process of listening-centered interactions must be iterative, communication cannot be achieved without confirmation and consistency. One conversation isn't enough, social interactions that involve active listening need to occur multiple times so that rapport can be established. We must always ask ourselves: "Are we really listening? and "Are we communicating in a clear way?"

3) Our culture needs to value information that is consistent with the original source. Truths about personal backgrounds are dependent on the individual and context. Once we have the skills to listen well then we can develop skills in sharing information accurately.

Summary: Communication is not as simple as just talking.

Communication is about listening and responding to what people are really saying. We need to start paying attention to the whole process and provide education to improve how we learn. Listening is a skill that we assume anyone can do, if our school systems and social media have told us anything, it is that listening isn't that simple. Once we learn how to listen, we can learn the personal experiences and perspectives of those around us. This is an important step towards establishing healthy communities that understand each other.