Principles › Hearing each other
Hearing each other
Understand before answering
Show you’ve heard them before making your own point.
For example
Porcupine · a tipSam, before you answer, you might say back what you heard Jordan ask for.
How Porcupine uses it
- When you’re first hearing each other out, Porcupine’s usual suggestion is to say back what you heard.
- It points out when the other person has raised the same need more than once.
- Ready-made lines like “I can see this really matters to you” are there when you want them.
- It never adds understanding or agreement you didn’t write. That move is yours to make.
In practice
Say what you heard before adding your view.
Acknowledge that their feeling makes sense, even if you see the facts differently.
Curious follow-up questions show you’re listening and invite them to share.
Why it helps
Feeling understood tends to lower people’s guard. In experiments, people who were listened to well felt less anxious and defensive and held their views less rigidly, and people who heard their words reflected back felt more understood than people who got advice. Reflecting back what you heard, acknowledging that a feeling makes sense, and asking a real question are small ways to show you’ve understood. Feeling understood doesn’t require agreement, and it doesn’t guarantee the disagreement will settle, but it can make the rest of the conversation easier.
What we don’t know yet
Most of the listening studies involved strangers or coworkers in short conversations, and the studies of couples were mostly of satisfied couples. Feeling understood also isn’t the same as being persuaded: in one large experiment, listening made a conversation go better without making it any more convincing.
See it in a conversation
- How to talk about money with your partner without fightingPartners
- How to ask someone you’re dating where things are goingDating
- How to co-parent when you disagree on rulesCo-parents
- How to stay friends with your exExes
- How to tell your family you’re not coming home for the holidaysAnyone in the family
- How to ask a friend to pay you backFriends
The research
Studied with couples
In seven studies of couples, including experiments, a diary study and couples discussing a disagreement in the lab, conflict did much less harm to relationship satisfaction when people felt their partner understood them. The benefit wasn’t just a matter of the disagreement getting resolved.
Studied with adults in general
In four experiments on disagreements, including live conversations, people who were listened to attentively and without judgment felt more connected to the listener, reflected on their view less defensively, and held it less extremely. The listeners were trained, and the conversations were short.
Studied with adults in general
In a field experiment with 1,485 people in the U.S., trained canvassers had short video conversations with them about immigration. When the canvassers listened well, people saw them more favorably and thought more about the conversation, but listening didn’t make the canvassers any more persuasive.
More research
Studied with adults in general
In experiments, people who were listened to well felt less anxious and defensive, and held their views less rigidly, than people who were listened to poorly.
Studied with coworkers
A registered review of research on listening at work found that people who felt listened to reported better relationships with the listener and better performance. Most of the studies relied on people’s own reports, but the link held, more weakly, in the studies that didn’t.
Studied with adults in general
In an experiment, people who got active-listening responses, including paraphrasing, felt more understood than people who got advice or simple acknowledgments.
Studied with couples
In a controlled study, couples who took PREP, a five-session program that teaches communication skills including a structured way to take turns speaking and reflecting back, communicated more positively and less negatively four to five years later than couples who didn’t. It tested the whole program, not reflecting back alone.
Studied with adults in general
In a lab experiment, people who got invalidating responses during a stressful task had more negative feelings, and a higher heart rate and skin conductance, than people who got validating responses.
Studied with adults in general
In experiments, people asked to pose more questions, especially follow-up questions, were better liked by their conversation partners.
Library last updated October 2026.