Why People Have Become Resistant to Listening
Listening is often confused with hearing. Roland Barthes (1985) distinguishes between hearing and listening, stating: “Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act.” Even if all members of the intended audience hear, it does not mean that they listen too. And when there are listening problems, difficulties in understanding the transmitted message could not be avoided.
Effective listening could be prevented by many “habits” which characterize listeners, according to O’Rourke, J. S. (2013) in his book Management communication: International edition:
1. Thinking a lot about talking, can result in not paying attention to listening.
2. Lack of interest/attention to the subject.
Often a barrier to effective communication is the lack of interest, mood and capabilities of the receiver to concentrate on the message being transferred by the transmitter. This has as a result not to be captured or captured incorrectly part of the message and thus altering its meaning. Many times when the speaker make an effort to transfer a message, the listener does or thinks other things, daydreams, prepares its own answer - message to the transmitter, talks or deals with anything other than the endeavor to capture, process and properly interpret the message that is sent. This is not only resulting in poor capture, processing and understanding of the message content, but also discourages the transmitter to express and continue communication. (Mpourantas D., 2002)
3. Prejudice/Stereotypes/Biases cripple the efforts to get the message.
Each person is characterized more or less by preconceptions and prejudices against other people. Thus, when operating as a receiver, the messages, being got, pass through this filter of biases and prejudices. This phenomenon results in not understanding the real meaning of the message, but a distorted, misleading and even corrupted meaning would fit to the transmitter according to the bias of the receiver. When individuals
Effective listening could be prevented by many “habits” which characterize listeners, according to O’Rourke, J. S. (2013) in his book Management communication: International edition:
1. Thinking a lot about talking, can result in not paying attention to listening.
2. Lack of interest/attention to the subject.
Often a barrier to effective communication is the lack of interest, mood and capabilities of the receiver to concentrate on the message being transferred by the transmitter. This has as a result not to be captured or captured incorrectly part of the message and thus altering its meaning. Many times when the speaker make an effort to transfer a message, the listener does or thinks other things, daydreams, prepares its own answer - message to the transmitter, talks or deals with anything other than the endeavor to capture, process and properly interpret the message that is sent. This is not only resulting in poor capture, processing and understanding of the message content, but also discourages the transmitter to express and continue communication. (Mpourantas D., 2002)
3. Prejudice/Stereotypes/Biases cripple the efforts to get the message.
Each person is characterized more or less by preconceptions and prejudices against other people. Thus, when operating as a receiver, the messages, being got, pass through this filter of biases and prejudices. This phenomenon results in not understanding the real meaning of the message, but a distorted, misleading and even corrupted meaning would fit to the transmitter according to the bias of the receiver. When individuals