Listening

Listening is the act of paying attention to sounds. While often described as attention to sound, listening is increasingly understood as an interpretive process shaped by context and prior experience. It includes listening to the sounds of nature, listening to music, and perhaps most importantly, interpersonal listening, i.e. listening to other human beings. When listening to another person, one hears what they are saying and tries to understand what it means. Despite its broad applications, discussions of listening in interdisciplinary fields such as sound studies and art remain underrepresented.

Interpersonal listening involves complex affective, cognitive, and behavioral processes. Affective processes include the motivation to listen to others; cognitive processes include attending to, understanding, receiving, and interpreting content and relational messages; and behavioural processes include responding to others with verbal and nonverbal feedback.

Interpersonal listening is a skill for resolving problems. Poor interpersonal listening can lead to misinterpretations, thus causing conflict or dispute. Poor listening can be exhibited by excessive interruptions, inattention, hearing what you want to hear, mentally composing a response, or having a closed mind.