It is widely believed that receptive listening, or demonstrating openness to someone’s point of view, is key to political persuasion.
But a new study co-led by UC Berkeley Political Science Professor David Broockman suggests that signalling receptiveness during a persuasive conversation may not be as important as previously thought.
The study, titled “Listen for a change? A longitudinal field experiment on listening’s potential to enhance persuasion,” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and done in collaboration with Broockman, Columbia Business School Postdoctoral Researcher Erik Santoro, Yale University Political Science Professor Joshua Kalla, and Hebrew University of Jerusalem Political Science and International Relations Senior Lecturer Roni Porat.
The study examined how effectively different persuasion techniques influenced people’s views on undocumented immigrants. Participants engaged in conversations where they were either listened to receptively (e.g., given full attention and not interrupted); presented with an engaging personal narrative (e.g., told a story about an undocumented immigrant the speaker knows); or both.
The results were surprising: participants who engaged in conversations that used receptive listening before hearing a personal narrative were no more persuaded than those who only heard the personal narrative. This suggests that showing receptiveness in interpersonal conversations may not be as crucial for facilitating persuasion as prior research has claimed, Broockman said.
“This could mean that perhaps people are more interested in the message itself, than if the messenger is kindly listening to them,” he said.
These findings could have significant implications on political campaigns, debates or any conversation aimed at reducing prejudice against a particular group. For example, political candidates may place greater emphasis on sharing personal narratives during debates as a strategy to influence public opinion.
Broockman added that if interpersonal listening and rapport-building are not as crucial as researchers believed for strategies like political canvassing and door-to-door campaigning, it could save time and resources that would otherwise go into training people to develop these skills.
The study also sheds light on a deeper aspect of human psychology, Broockman said.
“One way of viewing these results is a kind of pessimistic take, where listening feels good and sounds nice but actually isn’t important,” he said. “But another way of viewing them is that maybe people aren’t as manipulatable as we think, and are actually assessing arguments based on the merits of the content of the persuasive appeal itself — and I think that’s a heartening takeaway.”
Looking ahead, Broockman hopes to build on this research by testing these persuasion techniques with various political issues; utilizing different personal appeals; and exploring alternative styles of receptive listening.