research project on attitudes towards study listening pdf

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Transforming students’ attitudes towards learning through the use of successful educational actions

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Linguistic and Literary Education, and Teaching and Learning of Experimental Sciences and Mathematics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Deusto, Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Roles Investigation, Project administration, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation CREA–Community of Research of Excellence for All, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

• Javier Díez-Palomar, 
• Rocío García-Carrión, 
• Linda Hargreaves, 
• María Vieites

• Published: October 12, 2020
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Previous research shows that there is a correlation between attitudes and academic achievement. In this article, we analyze for the first time the impact of interactive groups (IG) and dialogic literary gatherings (DLG) on the attitudes that students show towards learning. A quantitative approach has been performed using attitude tests validated by previous research. The data suggest that in both cases, the participants show positive attitudes. The social context has an important influence on students’ attitudes. The items with higher correlations include group work, mutual support, and distributed cognition. In the case of IGs, group work is much more appreciated, while in the case of DLGs, self-image and self-confidence are the two most clearly valued attitudes. The positive impact of IGs and DLGs on students’ attitudes may have potential for teachers in transforming their practices and decision-making within the classroom.

Citation: Díez-Palomar J, García-Carrión R, Hargreaves L, Vieites M (2020) Transforming students’ attitudes towards learning through the use of successful educational actions. PLoS ONE 15(10): e0240292. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292

Editor: Christian Stamov Roßnagel, Jacobs University Bremen, GERMANY

Received: April 9, 2020; Accepted: September 24, 2020; Published: October 12, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Díez-Palomar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: JDP, RGC, LH and MVC want to acknowledge the funding provided by the EU Commission under the grant num. 2015-1-ES01-KA201-016327, corresponding to the project Schools as Learning Communities in Europe: Successful Educational Actions for all, (SEAS4ALL), under the program ERASMUS +; and the Spanish Ramón y Cajal Grant RYC-2016-20967 for open access publication of the article.

Competing interests: No authors have competing interests.

Introduction

In this article, we address the following research question: What impact does participation in interactive groups (IGs) and dialogic literary gatherings (DLGs) have on the attitudes that students show towards learning? To define “attitudes”, we draw on the definition of Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones, Amodio and Gable [ 1 ], who characterize attitudes as “subjective evaluations that range from good to bad that are represented in memory” [ 1 ]. This definition is also consistent with the classic definitions about “attitudes” used in social psychology studies [ 2 ].

Previous research suggests that there is a clear relationship between students’ attitudes and their academic achievement [ 3 , 4 ]. Decades ago, classic studies in the field of educational research [ 5 ] concluded that teachers’ expectations about students’ attitudes and behaviors may explain students’ effective academic achievement. According to [ 4 ], the process of the “social construction of identity” explains why there are students who seem destined to obtain poor academic results. Drawing on the theoretical approach developed by Mead [ 6 ], Molina and her colleagues [ 4 ] argue that the way in which a student defines his/her own identity determines his/her own learning expectations and, as a consequence, his/her own academic career. In this sense, the process of constructing identity is social in essence.

According to Mead [ 6 ], the self emerges as a result of social interaction with other people who project their expectations and attitudes on the individual. The identity of a person is formed by two components. The first component is the me , which is of social origin and incorporates the attitudes of others about the individual; the second component is the I , which is the conscious reaction of each individual to those attitudes. A process is thus created in which identity is the result of the dialogue between the individual and others. This somehow explains why some students end up developing an identity as bad students, while others develop an identity as good students. This process has been called the “Pygmalion effect” by educational researchers [ 5 ]. As Flecha [ 7 ] suggests, drawing on successful educational actions (SEAs), teachers get their students to achieve better results, and that, in turn, explains why these students improve their self-concept as students (i.e., their me and I , in Mead’s terms). However, does that mean that they also change their attitudes towards learning in school?

Classic studies such as Learning to Work [ 8 ] suggest that students with low academic performance tend to be children who reject school. These students tend to manifest that feeling of rejection in wayward attitudes. These children also do not see school as a desirable or attractive place. In contrast, they show an attitude of rejection and resistance towards schooling, which is accompanied by low academic performance. Later researchers, such as Bruner, have suggested that this attitude is the result of the failure of the schools to respond to the expectations of these children (and their families) [ 9 ]. Students’ identities are defined in other spaces and with other references. This may have a negative impact on the ability of teachers to teach. Various studies have suggested that as some of these children grow, their interest in school diminishes. This happens especially in the transition between primary and secondary school, as some students lose interest in science, mathematics and other subjects. Given this situation, researchers have found that learning initiatives located outside of the school can change these attitudes towards learning, as in the case of visiting museums, laboratories, or research centers [ 10 ].

This article discusses the impact of participating in two educational activities previously defined as successful educational actions (SEAs) [ 7 ] on attitudes towards learning shown by students who have participated in these actions. Thus far, we have clear evidence of the positive impact that SEAs have on learning outcomes [ 11 – 15 ], and there are studies suggesting that there is also a positive effect on the coexistence and cohesion of the group-class [ 16 , 17 ]. However, previous studies have not explored the impact that such SEAs may have on students’ own attitudes. Therefore, this article discusses this dimension of learning, which, as the studies mentioned above claim, is a relevant aspect to understanding how learning works.

Theoretical framework

Attitudes and learning.

There is an assumed belief in education that there is a direct relationship between student attitudes and academic achievement. Renaud [ 18 ] distinguishes between dispositions and attitudes by stating that the former is more “resistant” to change than the latter. Dispositions are defined as “more general and enduring characteristics”, while attitudes are tendencies or internal states of the person towards anything that a person can evaluate, such as “learning math, extracurricular activities, or the general notion of going to school” [ 18 ]. Previous research that exists on attitudes and learning has found that there is a clear relationship between both aspects. Renaud [ 18 ] quotes literature reviews that indicate that there is a correlation between attitude and achievement in mathematics [ 19 – 21 ] and in science [ 22 ]. According to previous research, the relationship becomes stronger at higher educational levels [ 22 – 24 ].

Ma and Kishor [ 19 ] analyze three indicators that refer to attitude to evaluate their impact on academic achievement: the self-concept about mathematics, the support of the family and the gender role in mathematics. According to their data, the most important correlation corresponds to the self-concept (p. 24). Masgoret and Gardner [ 23 ] found that motivation is more closely related to academic achievement than attitude. Attitude, on the other hand, seems to be related to achievement; however, it is related indirectly through motivation. Motivation and self-concept present a clear relationship (a correlation exists), but the research is not conclusive in regard to which direction the relationship works, i.e., we do not know (yet) if it is the motivation that gives rise to the person’s positive self-concept or if having a positive self-concept translates into an increase in terms of motivation. In any case, both variables seem to correlate directly with academic achievement; higher motivation and self-concept are associated with better academic results (in general terms).

The “symbolic interactionism” approach

The theoretical approach that has devoted the most effort to analyzing the relationship between attitudes, motivation, self-concept and academic achievement is that of symbolic interactionism. George H. Mead [ 6 ] is one of the best-known representatives of this theory. According to his findings, self-concept is of social origin. “The self is something which has a development; it is not initially there at birth” [ 6 ]. To explain this process, Mead proposes the concept of the generalized other. According to him, the generalized other is “the organized community or social group which gives to the individual his or her unity of self” [ 6 ]. Mead illustrates how this concept works to create the self-concept by drawing on the game metaphor. He uses the example of baseball. The baseball team is what Mead calls the generalized other. Each player has a specific role within the team, and he or she acts in accordance with what is expected of him or her in that position. The rest of the team does the same, so that individual actions are defined and carried out within the more global unit that defined is the team (i.e., the generalized other). Using this example and others, Mead [ 6 ] was able to show that the self is the result of a social process. Similarly, Vygotsky [ 25 ] claimed that higher psychological functions emerge through interpersonal connections and actions with the social environment until they are internalized by the individual.

Mead states as follows:

It is in the form of the generalized other that the social process influences the behavior of the individuals involved in it and carrying it on, i.e., that the community exercises control over the conduct of its individual members; for it is in this form that the social process or community enters as a determining factor into the individual’s thinking. [ 6 ]

This social process involves interaction with other individuals in the group through shared activities. The classroom is the perfect example of a group. The teacher and the students are part of a social group with defined norms [ 26 ] as well as an institutional objective (teaching and learning), where each “player” performs a specific role according to those (declared or implicit) norms.

In some investigations, this social unit has been defined as a “community of practice” [ 27 , 28 ]. Brousseau [ 29 ] uses the concept of “contracte didactique” to characterize this social unit and analyze its functioning in the mathematics classroom. According to Brousseau, there is a relationship between the different actors (individuals) participating in the mathematics classroom, in which each plays a specific role and has specific responsibilities. The teacher has the obligation to create sufficient conditions for the appropriation of knowledge by the students and must be able to recognize when this happens. Similarly, the responsibility of the students is to satisfy the conditions created by the teacher. Brousseau studies how the teacher performs what he calls the didactic transposition of scientific knowledge to be taught in school. S/he has to identify the epistemological obstacles and the cognitive obstacles that make it difficult or students to learn in the classroom.

However, other studies have suggested that there are factors of another nature (neither cognitive nor epistemological) that also influence the academic achievements reached by students. This is the case with interactions [ 16 , 30 , 31 ]. As Mead [ 6 ] suggested, the self-concept created by an individual is the result of the internalization of the expectations that each individual has of himself or herself by the role s/he plays in the group to which s/he belongs. For example, the student who always tries hard and answers the teacher’s questions is fulfilling his or her role within the good student group. The group expects him or her to play that role. It is part of his/her identity. In addition, s/he acts accordingly. The effect of the positive or negative projection of expectations on students has been widely studied in education [ 32 , 33 ]. What we know is that teachers have to be cautious and try not to project negative expectations on students because that has a clear effect on their academic achievements, giving rise to well-studied interactions such as the Pygmalion effect, or the self-fulfilling prophecy [ 5 ].

However, the impact of successful educational actions [ 7 ] on the attitudes that students have towards learning at school in the context of interactive groups and dialogic literary gatherings has not been studied so far. This impact is what is discussed in this article.

The successful educational actions of interactive groups and dialogic literary gatherings

The research question discussed in this article is framed in the context of the implementation of two successful educational actions identified by the European Commission in the research project titled INCLUD-ED : Strategies for inclusion and social cohesion from education in Europe [ 34 ]. A successful educational action is defined as an action carried out in the school, the result of which significantly improves students’ learning [ 7 ]. The two successful educational actions that are discussed herein are interactive groups and dialogic literary gatherings.

Interactive groups.

Interactive groups (IGs) consist of a particular group-based teaching practice in which students are put together in small groups of approximately six or seven students, with an adult person facilitating the task. IGs must be heterogeneous in terms of their composition, including children with different ability levels, gender, socioeconomic background, etc. The adult person (the facilitator) is a volunteer who encourages dialogic interaction among the group members while performing the task designed by the teacher. The teacher splits the students among four or five IGs (depending on the number of children in the classroom and the time available for the lesson). Each group of students has a task assigned, which the teachers have previously designed. There is a total of four or five tasks (the same number as the number of IGs). The assignments are about the subject that is being focused on in the lesson plan (i.e., mathematics, language, science, history, etc.). To perform the assigned task, groups have fifteen or twenty minutes of time (depending on the total time allocated for that activity in the school day). After this interval, the teacher asks the students to move to the next IG, where they will find another task. When the class is over, each of the children must have gone through all of the tasks. All of the children perform four or five different tasks designed by the teacher to cover the curriculum requirements. In some schools, the kids move from one IG to the next. In other cases, the teachers prefer to ask the facilitators to move between the groups to avoid the noise and disorder created by the children getting up and moving to the next table (task).

The facilitators never provide solutions to the tasks executed by the students. Instead, they encourage students to share, justify, explain, their work to their group mates. Their responsibility is encouraging students to use dialogic talk [ 15 ], which is based on the principles of dialogic learning [ 35 ]. Research evidence on IGs suggests that using dialogic talk increases participants’ chances of improving their academic achievements [ 15 , 30 , 36 ]. When students are asked by the facilitator to justify their answers to a task, they need to conceptually defend their claims; this implies that they must be able to not only understand the concept or concepts embedded in the assigned tasks but also explain them to their group mates. The type of talk (speech) that appears when children engage in this type of interaction has been defined as dialogic talk [ 30 ] because it is oriented towards validity claims [ 37 ], not towards the power position that children occupy within the group.

Dialogic literary gatherings.

Dialogic literary gatherings (DLGs) are spaces in which students sit in a circle and share the reading of a classic literary book. The gathering is facilitated by the teacher, whose role is not to intervene or give his/her opinion, but to organize the students’ participation by assigning them turns. Every child who wants to share his/her reading raises his/her hand and waits until the teacher gives him/her a turn. Readings come from classic literature, such as works by Shakespeare, Cervantes, Kafka, Tagore, etc. [ 38 , 39 ]. Students read at home the assigned number of pages (it either could be a whole chapter or a certain number of pages, according to the teacher’s criteria). When reading the assignment, the student highlights a paragraph and writes down the reason for his/her choice. Then, during the DLG session in school, the children bring the paragraph or paragraphs they want to share with the rest of their classmates. At the beginning of the session, the teacher asks who wants to share his/her paragraph. S/he writes down the name of the students offering to share on a list. Then, the teacher starts with the first name on the list and that student reads aloud his/her paragraph; s/he also identifies on which page of the text it is so that the rest of the participants in the DLG can follow the reading and explains the reason for his/her choice. After the reading, the teacher opens the floor for questions. S/he always prioritizes the children who participate less often. When the teacher considers that the topic has been sufficiently commented on either because the idea that led to the intervention has been fully commented on or because the children's questions drifted to other irrelevant topics, s/he moves to the next name on the list. The process is repeated until the session ends.

Children, when talking about their paragraph, become involved in a process called “dialogical reading” [ 40 ], which is based on the application of Bakhtin’s concept of “dialogism” [ 41 ]. Bakhtin explains this concept using the idea of “polyphony” to refer to the use of multiple voices in a narrative work, such as the case of Dostoevsky’s poetics [ 41 ]. According to Bakhtin, no voice is the result of a single speech but rather it integrates different voices. This concept has been reused and reinterpreted in educational research. Drawing on those authors, knowledge is the result of internalizing the voices of multiple people (teachers, family members, friends, classmates, and other people) that we have encountered throughout our lives. DLGs recreate that multiplicity of voices through the dialogues that generate a space in which all children contribute with their opinions, ideas, and understandings about the paragraph being discussed. In this sense, reading understanding develops in a much deeper way than if the child had to read the material individually because s/he can incorporate the points of view of his/her peers into his/her own final comprehension.

Methodology

The data used to discuss the research question come from a research project titled SEAs4All–Schools as Learning Communities in Europe . The dataset has been submitted to this journal as supporting data for public use. Six schools from the four European countries of Cyprus, United Kingdom, Italy and Spain participated in this project. Five of them were primary schools, and the last one was a middle/high school. All of the schools were selected because they applied successful educational actions (SEAs) [ 7 ]. After implementing IGs and DLGs, a survey was conducted in three of the schools to evaluate the impact of using these two types SEAs on students’ attitudes and perceptions towards learning. Children between 7 and 11 years old participated in the survey. Two of the surveyed schools are located in the United Kingdom, and the third one is located in Italy. All of the schools are located in different contexts. One of the schools in the United Kingdom is in an area where families have a high economic status and high cultural capital (Cambridge), while the other English school is located in a neighborhood considered to be of a medium-level SES (Norwich). The Italian school is located in a low SES area of Naples. A total of 418 children participated in the survey (251 participating in DLGs and 167 engaging in IGs), as shown in Table 1 .

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t001

To collect the data, the SAM questionnaire, developed at the Universities of Leicester and Cambridge, UK, was used as a model for the evaluation of the impact of the implemented educational actions. The original SAM questionnaire consists of 17 items that are measured using a 5-point Likert scale, which ranges between “strongly agree” and “strongly disagree.” The questionnaire used in the current study was amended by drawing on previous results from a pilot test and was thus reduced to 12 items [ S1 File ].

The children answered a paper version of the questionnaire. The data were then coded and entered into an Excel matrix that was later used to analyze the data in SPSS (version 25.0). To debug the database and detect possible errors in the transcription, univariate descriptive analysis was conducted using the table of frequencies for each item to check that all codes and weights were aligned with the data collected through the paper questionnaires. Whenever an anomaly was detected, we proceeded to review the original questionnaire on paper to verify the information and data transcribed in the matrix.

To analyze the data, a descriptive report was first made by tabulating the data in frequency tables using the mean, median and mode, as well as the variance and standard deviation.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t002

Before performing Bartlett’s test, four of the items were recoded (#1, #3, #4, and #6) since the grading vector of the Likert scale used in these three items went in the opposite direction as that used for the rest of the items. These four items were displayed in a negative tone (i.e., “we learn best when the teacher tells us what to do”, “learning through discussion in class is confusing”, “sometimes, learning in school is boring”, and “I would rather think for myself than hear other people’s ideas”), unlike the rest of the items in which the tone of the answers was positive. Therefore, the labels of “strongly agree”, “agree a little”, “not sure”, “disagree a little”, and “strongly disagree” for items #1, #3, #4, and #6 referenced to a scale with a negative associated vector, whereas for the rest of the items, the same labels refer to a positive vector. For this reason, the responses of these four variables were recoded into four new variables that reversed the original direction of the response vector.

In both cases, (IGs and DLGs), Bartlett’s test suggests that we can accept the null hypothesis, which means that we can use factor analysis to discriminate which principal components are the ones that explain the greatest percentage of the variance. The results of this analysis are discussed below.

Ethic statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethics Committee of the Community of Research on Excellence for All, University of Barcelona. Schools collected the families’ informed consent approving the participation of their children in this study.

The Ethics Board was composed by: Dr. Marta Soler (president), who has expertise within the evaluation of projects from the European Framework Program of Research of the European Union and of European projects in the area of ethics; Dr. Teresa Sordé, who has expertise within the evaluation of projects from the European Framework Program of Research and is a researcher of Roma studies; Dr. Patricia Melgar, a founding member of the Catalan Platform against gender violence and researcher within the area of gender and gender violence; Dr. Sandra Racionero, a former secretary and member of the Ethics Board at Loyola University Andalusia (2016–2018); Dr. Cristina Pulido, an expert in data protection policies and child protection in research and communication and researcher of communication studies; Dr. Oriol Rios, a founding member of the “Men in Dialogue” association, a researcher within the area of masculinities, as well as an editor of “Masculinities and Social Change,” a journal indexed in WoS and Scopus; and Dr. Esther Oliver, who has expertise within the evaluation of projects from the European Framework Program of Research and is a researcher within the area of gender violence.

Students’ attitudes towards learning

The data collected suggest that the students who participate in the IGs and the DLGs have positive attitudes towards learning in general terms. Table 3 indicates that the answers for almost all the items are clearly positive; this is true for between 75% and 80% of the responses, except for three items (#3, #4, and #6). This outcome is understandable since in these three items, the interviewer changed the meaning of the question, i.e., instead of phrasing the questions positively, as with the rest of the items, the questions were phrased negatively, with the expected outcome being that the positive trend in the answers would be reversed, which is what occurred. Surprisingly, in the case of item #1, which we expected to function similar to items #3, #4 and #6, the responses are aligned with the rest of the items.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t003

The answers to item 1 (“We learn best when the teacher tells us what to do”) may indicate an active role by the teacher, which a priori would not be the expected answer in the context of using IGs and DLGs. In contrast, what we would expect in that context is for students to show a preference for answers related to an active role of the student, which is the case for the rest of the items analyzed. However, the fact that the respondents also claim that they learn better when the teacher tells them what to do either suggests that there is a bias in the student responses that is either due to what Yackel and Cobb [ 26 ] call the “norms”, which are also theorized as the “didactic contract” in Brousseau’s terms [ 29 ] and which regulate the social interactions within the classroom, or because the role of the teacher as a leader is recognized by these students.

Table 4 summarizes the previous results in two categories (agree and disagree). The trend noted above can now be clearly seen.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t004

Items #4 and #10 are crucial to understanding the attitudes that students have towards learning. In the first case, half of the respondents contrarily claim that learning is a boring activity. If we assume that for a boy or a girl between 7 and 11 years old, defining an activity as fun or boring can be a clear way of indicating their attitude towards that activity, the fact that half of the students participating in the survey declare that learning is not boring suggests that their participation in doing mathematics in the IGs and DLGs makes these two activities in some way attractive to them.

On the other hand, another relevant aspect regarding the students’ attitudes is the feeling of self-confidence. Previous research has provided much evidence that suggests the importance of this aspect in the attitudes that children can have towards learning [ 5 ]. Boys and girls who have confidence in themselves tend to show a clearly positive attitude towards learning. The data suggest that this is what happens when students participate within IGs or DLGs, i.e., three out of four children affirm that they feel more self-confident with regard to learning in school than they normally do. This result is relevant because it suggests that both IGs and DLGs have a clear impact on the positive transformation of attitudes towards learning. The data show that this is true for children in the three schools that participated in the survey, regardless of the country or the context in which they are located.

Principal components analysis

The KMO test indicates whether the partial correlations between the variables are small enough to be able to perform a factorial analysis. Table 2 shows that in this case, the KMO test has a value of 0.517 for the students participating in IGs and 0.610 for the students participating in the DLGs, which allows us to assume (although with reservation) that we can perform a factor analysis to find the principal components explaining the variance. Bartlett’s sphericity test (which contrasts the null hypothesis assuming that the correlation matrix is, in fact, an identity matrix, in which case we cannot assume that there are significant correlations between the variables) yields a critical value of 0.000 in both cases, which suggests that we can accept the null hypothesis of sphericity and, consequently, that we can think that the factorial model is adequate to explain de data.

After performing ANOVA several times, considering the several items in the tested models, we managed to find two models (one for the students who had participated in the IGs and another for those engaged in the DLGs) that explained more than half of the variance. Tables 5 and 6 introduce the obtained results.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t005

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t006

As Tables 5 and 6 indicate, the items that are included in the SAM test contribute to better explaining the attitudes that the students participating in the study have regarding DLGs than those they have regarding the IGs. For the DLGs, we observed that there are four components above 1, explaining 74.227% of the variance. In contrast, in the case of IGs, we find only two components above the value of 1, which together explain only 63.201% of the variance. This suggests that the SAM test is probably the best instrument to measure attitudes in the case of the DLGs.

The sedimentation graphs make it easier to visualize this result. In the left image of Fig 1 (the sedimentation graph obtained for the IGs), a clear inflection is observed from component 2. In contrast, in the case of the DLGs, the inflection occurs from component four and onward.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.g001

The matrix of components suggests that, in the case of the IGs, factor 1 is formed by the components that we can label as “active peer-support” (#9 “Helping my friends has helped me to understand things better”) and “active listening” (#8 “It is good to hear other people’s ideas”). Factor 2, on the other hand, is formed by the component of “participation” (#2 “We can learn more when we can express our own ideas”). For the IGs, the component “individualism” (#6 “I would rather think for myself than hear other people’s ideas”) is clearly the least explanatory (-0.616), which is a fact that seems to suggest that collaboration within the groups is a fundamental aspect of the learning dynamic occurring within them. Table 7 shows that the most explanatory factor of the variance is the first factor. On the other hand, factors 2, 3 and 4 are less important since their weights are almost irrelevant.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t007

When we observe the results for the case of the DLGs, the component matrix ( Table 8 ) indicates that factor 1 is formed mainly by the components of “positive discussion” (#11 “I like discussing the books we read with the class”), “self-confidence in school” (#10 “I am more confident about learning in school than I used to be), and “participation” (#2 “We can learn more when we can express our own ideas”). In contrast, Factor 2 contains a single component (#1 “We learn best when the teacher tells us what to do”). In the case of factor 3, the more explanatory component is the sixth component (#6 “I would rather think for myself than hear other people’s ideas”). Finally, factor 4 includes the third component of the SAM test (#3 “Learning through discussing in class is confusing”).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t008

Fig 2 shows the graphs of the loading scores for each component in a rotated space, both for the IGs and the DLGs. The data confirm the interpretation of the previous tables. The graphs show that for the IGs (the left side of Fig 2 ), variables #8 and #9 tend to explain the maximum variance of factor 1, while in the case of DLGs, the three-dimensional component chart shows the two slightly differentiated groups of variables.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.g002

Construction of subscales of attitudes towards learning in IGs and DLGs

The collected data allow us to think that the variables obtained with the SAM test may explain the attitudes that students have towards learning in the context of IGs and DLGs. However, according to previous theoretical models, it would seem plausible to assume that not all variables are equally precise in the explanation of the attitudes towards learning showed by the students interviewed in both contexts. For this reason, in this section, we compare two possible scales for each context (IGs and DLGs) to identify which variables would be more reliable in explaining those attitudes.

In the case of the IGs, we created two subscales. The first subscale (Tables 9 – 11 ) includes items #1 (“We learn best when the teacher tells us what to do”), #7 (“I enjoy learning when my friends help me”) and #10 (“I am more confident about learning in school than I used to be”). In contrast, subscale 2 (Tables 12 – 14 ) incorporates items #2 (“We learn more when we can express our own ideas”), #5 (“Learning in school is better when we have other adults to work with us”) and #11 (“I like discussing the books we read with the class”). Table 9 shows the Cronbach’s alpha value for subscale 1, which is rather mediocre (0.412), while Table 12 indicates that subscale 2 is a much more reliable subscale (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.794), suggesting that the subscale 2 works better than the first one to characterize the components explaining the results obtained within the IGs. The difference between the two subscales is that in the first one, the role of the teacher is not included, while in subscale 2, item #5 (“Learning in school is better when we have other adults to work with us”) is the one that presents the highest correlation (0.613), as seen in Table 13 , which shows the interitem correlation matrix for the variables of subscale 2.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t009

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t010

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t011

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t012

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t013

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t014

Regarding DLGs, we also created two subscales, i.e., subscales 3 (Tables 15 – 17 ) and 4 (Tables 18 – 20 ). Subscale 3 is formed by variables #1 (“We learn best when the teacher tells us what to do”), #5 (“Learning in school is better when we have other adults to work with us”), #10 (“I am more confident about learning in school than I used to be”) and #11 (‘I like discussing the books we read with the class”). In contrast, subscale 4 includes variables #2 (“We learn more when we can express our own ideas”), #7 (“I enjoy learning when my friends help me”), #8 (“It is good to hear other people’s ideas”) and #9 (“Helping my friends has helped me to understand things better”).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t015

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t016

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t017

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t018

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t019

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.t020

Table 15 shows the results for subscale 3 (DLGs), including a high Cronbach’s alpha value (0.820), indicating that this subscale is a good proposal. According to data shown in Tables 16 and 17 , the subscale 3 works better when component #10 is removed from the model (increasing Cronbach’s alpha from 0,820 to 0,829). This result suggests that self-confidence is not a relevant component for attitudes towards participating in DLGs. Subscale 3 is better than subscale 4, which presents a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.767, which, although high, is lower than that found in subscale 3.

The clearest difference between both subscales (3 and 4) is that the first one (subscale 3) includes item #11 (“I like discussing the books we read with the class”), which is the one item more focused on the context of the DLGs. The other items are more related to the interaction among the students (Tables 18 – 20 ). However, the amount of correlation explained is lower than the amount explained by subscale 3. This fact may explain why subscale 3 is more reliable in measuring students’ attitudes towards learning in social/interactional contexts, such as DLGs.

Discussion and conclusions

Previous research in education has provided enough evidence to claim that attitudes have a relevant impact on learning [ 42 – 46 ]. Studies such as those of Fennema and Sherman [ 3 ] have confirmed almost half a century ago that the “affective factors (…) partially explain individual differences in the learning of mathematics” [ 3 ]. Currently, we know that the results of learning depend, to a certain extent, on the attitudes that students have towards it. When there is a clear resistance to school and school practices, it is more difficult for students to achieve good results. Aspects such as motivation or self-concept, for instance, are relevant to explaining a positive attitude towards learning. These aspects often appear to be correlated [ 19 ]. When a child has a poor self-concept as a student, s/he often feels very unmotivated to learn in school. The literature reports numerous cases of students who actively or passively resist or even refuse to make an effort to learn their lessons because they felt that they cannot learn anything. In contrast, when students’ self-image is positive, then it is easier for them to learn. In those cases, the data provide evidence of positive correlations between learning achievements and attitudes. Rosenthal and Jacobson [ 5 ] called this type of behavior the Pygmalion Effect.

SEAs [ 7 ] such as IGs and DLGs are framed within the dialogic learning theory, one of whose main principals is that of transformation. As Freire [ 47 ] claimed, people “are beings of transformation, and not of adaptation.” Education has the capacity to create opportunities for people to transform themselves. Drawing on the assumption that “education needs both technical, scientific and professional training, as well as dreams and utopia” [ 47 ], SEAs integrate practices endorsed by the international scientific community to create real opportunities for learning for children. The data presented in the previous section suggest that children participating either in IGs or DLG have a clear positive attitude towards learning. Table 4 suggests that these children truly enjoy learning. Less than half of the participants say that learning at school is “boring” (41.8%). In contrast, almost eight out of ten children interviewed said they love learning (78.6%). The SAM test items, validated in previous studies [ 10 , 48 , 49 ], have been confirmed as components with which to measure children’s attitudes towards learning. For the first time in the context of studying the impact of actions included within the SEAs [ 7 ], we have been able to identify (and measure) the positive relationship between implementing SEAs, i.e., boys and girls engaged in the IGs and/or the DLGs showed a clear positive attitude towards learning. We can therefore claim that in the context of SEAs, students show positive attitudes towards learning. The data analyzed suggest that participating within IGs and DLGs empower students to transform their own attitudes towards learning.

On the other hand, we know that social contexts have a powerful influence on people’s attitudes. The context of positive empowerment, based on the idea of “maximum expectations” [ 50 , 51 ], is able to transform the attitudes that students have towards learning (especially those who are more resistant to learning and school). In contexts where school and school practices are not valued, children have to overcome the social tendency to openly show resistance against school (and everything that represents the school, such as teachers, attitudes of compliance with the school activities, norms, etc. ) and embrace a new tendency of valuing all these aspects. However, as previous studies framed within the symbolic interactionism approach have largely demonstrated [ 6 , 8 ], it is hard to turn against the social pressure of the group. We define our identity as a result of our interactions with others. If the group finds it attractive to resisting schooling, school norms and practices, then it is going to be difficult for individual students to achieve good academic results (unless they receive a different context from elsewhere) because they have to fight against the social pressure of not valuing school, in addition to the inherent difficulties of learning itself (in cognitive and curricular terms). In contrast, when the context is transformed (to adopt the terms of Freire and Flecha) and learning becomes a valued practice, children usually transform their attitudes, which previous research has correlated with successful learning achievement [ 14 , 15 , 33 ]. The data collected and discussed herein provide evidence for how changing the context (drawing on the two SEAs of IGs and DLGs) can transform students’ attitudes towards learning. As we stated in the previous section, 78.6% of the students participating in the survey claimed that they like to learn after participating in either IGs or in DLGs. They claim that they like “when my friends help me.” Along the same lines, 78.3% of the respondents said that “it is good to hear other people’s ideas,” while 76.7% claim that “helping my friends has helped me to understand things better.” This type of answer clearly demonstrates that IGs and DLGs create a context in which learning is valued positively. Attitudes such as solidarity, willingness to help the other, friendship seem to indicate the preference for a context that is oriented towards learning rather than resisting it. Hence, transforming the context also changes how individuals recreate their own identities using different values as referents, which, drawing on Mead [ 6 ], is how identity creation works. The evidence collected herein suggests that IGs and DLGs work to increase students’ academic performance because they transform the students’ context; hence, students transform their own attitudes (as expected according the theory of symbolic interactionism).

By analyzing more in detail what happens in both the IGs and the DLGs, we have been able to verify that the attitudes that emerge among the students participating either in the IGs or the DLGs are slightly different. In the case of the IGs, the data collected reveal that children value much more the collaborative work with the rest of their classmates, as seen in the answers to items #8 (“It is good to hear other people’s ideas”) and #9 (“Helping my friends has helped me to understand things better”). These two items are the main components explained by the variance detected. On the other hand, in the case of the DLGs, the ability to express one’s ideas is especially valued. In this case, the variance is explained above all by items #2 (“We learn more when we can express our own ideas”), #10 (“I am more confident about learning in school than I used to be”) and #11 (“I like discussing the books we read with the class”). The last component (#11) clearly belongs to a context similar to that of the DLGs. However, the two previous components (#2 and #10) suggest that participation in DLGs is related to the development of a positive self-image as learner. The chi-square test indicates that the correlations are significant in both cases. Therefore, the data obtained suggest that participating in IGs and/or DLGs is related to showing positive attitudes towards learning (both as an individual and as member of the group, i.e., in a social sense).

On the other hand, when analyzing the reliability of the results, it can be verified that in the case of the IGs, the most important correlation appears in the case of item #5 (“Learning in school is better when we have other adults to work with us”). This finding is very relevant since it constitutes empirical evidence of something that Vygotsky already suggested when he proposed his concept of ZPD, which is that in order for the process to work, there must be an adult or a more capable peer to help those who are learning achieve what they can with the support of these adults who act as facilitators. The difference between IGs and other collaborative learning groups is exactly that, i.e., in the IGs, there is always an adult who dynamizes the activity (who does not provide the answers but encourages the children to engage in a dialogic interaction [ 15 ]).

Regarding the DLGs, the most important correlation appears in the case of item #11 (“I like discussing the books we read with the class”), which is an aspect that makes sense in the context of the gatherings. Children affirm that they like to read books together with their other classmates. As we know, this activity has clear advantages from the point of view of the development of reading understanding [ 41 , 52 ].

A surprising finding is the high response rate to item #1 (“We learn best when the teacher tells us what to do”). This would seem to be inconsistent with using IGs or DLGs, where the role of the teacher is rather marginal or passive (the teacher organizes the activity but does not give answers, and they explain the academic content such as in a master’s class, etc.). Perhaps a possible reason to explain this result is that the school, as an institution, is characterized by a series of social norms [ 26 ]. Waiting for teachers’ directions is part of those norms. It is assumed that when attending the school, we must pay attention to what the teacher says. This idea corresponds to the social image of the teacher as a transmitter of knowledge, which is part of the social norm characterizing the school institution. It is possible that even though the children participating in this study have engaged in IGs and DLGs, there are not excluded from the norms of the social context, so that their attitudes are tinged with them.

We can therefore conclude that the SAM test demonstrates that children who participate in IGs and/or DLGs clearly show positive attitudes towards learning after participating in these two SEAs. Perhaps this is one of the fundamental variables explaining the successful learning results that other studies have found among children using SEAs [ 11 – 15 ].

Future implications

This research confirms some aspects of learning, while it leaves others open for further study. We have observed that children who participate in SEAs show positive attitudes towards learning. However, what we do not know (yet) is whether it is the use of these SEAs that explains why these children show these attitudes or if the transformation lies in other reasons. To clarify this lack of information, it is necessary to conduct further experimental research comparing groups of students using SEAs and other groups of students using other types of educational actions.

On the other hand, the data that we have discussed herein suggest that there is a social component that has a critical influence on the type of attitudes that students report in the survey. According to the criteria of how the IGs and DLGs work, solidarity, interaction, and sharing seem to explain why these children develop positive learning attitudes. However, it would be interesting to continue with this line of research to see if this outcome also presents when other educational actions are used in which the principals of action are different (when they are centered on the individual, for example).

Finally, evidence seems to support the statement that the successful academic performance of children who participate in IGs and DLGs is explained by the fact that participating in these two types of SEAs transforms the children’s context to a positive orientation towards learning. Indeed, the results are hopeful. However, we need to further replicate this study to confirm (or refute) that statement. In any case, confirming that statement and covering the preceding research questions presents the clear implication that teachers have to put their effort into designing their lessons, as how they organize their classes truly encourages students’ learning.

Supporting information

S1 file. sam questionnaire: what i think about learning in school..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.s001

S2 File. Dataset.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240292.s002

• View Article
• PubMed/NCBI
• Google Scholar
• 5. Rosenthal R, Jacobson L. Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development. Holt, Rinehart & Winston: New York; 1968.
• 6. Mead GH. Mind, self and society. University of Chicago Press.: Chicago; 1934.
• 7. Flecha R. Successful educational actions for inclusion and social cohesion in Europe. Springer: Cham; 2014 Nov 14.
• 8. Willis PE. Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. Columbia University Press; 1981.
• 9. Bruner J. The culture of education. Harvard University Press; 1996.
• 18. Renaud RD. Attitudes and Dispositions. International Guide to Student Achievement. In: Hattie J, Anderman EM. International guide to student achievement. New York, London: Routledge 2013. P. 57–58.
• 25. Vygotsky LS. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press; 1978.
• 27. Lave J, Wenger E. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge university press; 1991 Sep 27.
• 28. Wenger E. Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge university press; 1999 Sep 28.
• 37. Habermas J. The theory of communicative action. Boston: Beacon. 1984.
• 39. Soler-Gallant M. Learning through dialogue: toward an interdisciplinary approach to dialogic learning in adult education (Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education).
• 41. Bakhtin MM. The dialogic imagination: Four essays. University of Texas Press: Austin; 1981.
• 47. Freire P. A la sombra de este árbol. Barcelona: El Roure; 1997.
• 49. Galton M., Comber C. & Pell T. ‘The consequences of transfer for pupils: attitudes and attainment’. In Hargreaves L. & Galton M. (Eds.) Transfer from the primary classroom 20 years on. London: Routledge Falmer. 2002;131–158.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Can high quality listening predict lower speakers' prejudiced attitudes? ☆

Guy itzchakov.

a University of Haifa, Israel

Netta Weinstein

b University of Reading, United Kingdom

Nicole Legate

c Illinois Institute of Technology, United States of America

d Ono Academic College, Israel

Associated Data

Theorizing from humanistic and motivational literatures suggests attitude change may occur because high quality listening facilitates the insight needed to explore and integrate potentially threatening information relevant to the self. By extension, self-insight may enable attitude change as a result of conversations about prejudice. We tested whether high quality listening would predict attitudes related to speakers' prejudices and whether self-insight would mediate this effect. Study 1 (preregistered) examined scripted conversations characterized by high, regular, and poor listening quality. In Study 2, we manipulated high versus regular listening quality in the laboratory as speakers talked about their prejudiced attitudes. Finally, Study 3 (preregistered) used a more robust measure of prejudiced attitudes to test whether perceived social acceptance could be an alternative explanation to Study 2 findings. Across these studies, the exploratory (pilot study and Study 2) and confirmatory (Studies 1 & 3) findings were in line with expectations that high, versus regular and poor, quality listening facilitated lower prejudiced attitudes because it increased self-insight. A meta-analysis of the studies ( N  = 952) showed that the average effect sizes for high quality listening (vs. comparison conditions) on self-insight, openness to change and prejudiced attitudes were, d s = 1.19, 0.46, 0.32 95% CIs [0.73, 1.51], [0.29, 0.63] [0.12, 0.53], respectively. These results suggest that when having conversations about prejudice, high-quality listening modestly shapes prejudice following conversations about it, and underscore the importance of self-insight and openness to change in this process.

• • Little is known about whether the experience of listening influences speakers' prejudice.
• • We tested whether the experience of high quality listening reduces moderate levels of prejudice for speakers.
• • High quality listening, relative to regular and poor listening quality, predicted lower speakers' prejudice.
• • The effect was mediated through increasing self-insight and openness to change.
• • Findings inform the nascent literature on intrapersonal outcomes of listening.

High quality listening is the focal strategy of most therapeutic interventions ( Friedman, 2005 ). In offering such listening the therapist aims to increase client introspection ( Gilbert, 2010 ; Perls et al., 1951 ; Rogers, 1951 ; Vargas, 1954 ), and it may be one of the primary reasons why, regardless of the specific modality, therapy generally helps people to change in a positive direction ( Lambert & Barley, 2001 ). Outside of the therapy context, however, we know less about the benefits of high-quality listening for helping people to change. The present paper explores the benefits of high quality listening outside of the therapeutic context to test the possibility that high quality listening might catalyze changes in one's attitudes – specifically lowering prejudiced attitudes. We posited that high quality listening can influence prejudiced attitudes by allowing individuals to introspect in an open-minded manner on the views they hold without fear of judgment, thus making it easier to be open to changing or modifying attitudes. The hypotheses are informed by the humanistic approach of Carl Rogers ( Rogers, 1951 , Rogers, 1980 ), Self-Determination Theory ( Deci & Ryan, 2011 ), and the nascent high quality listening literature (e.g., Itzchakov et al., 2017 ; Van Quaquebeke & Felps, 2018 ). Overall, this literature converges on a definition of high quality listening as listening that offers empathy (an understanding of the speaker's point of view), interest-taking, and unconditional regard (caring for the speaker, independent of expressed content and a non-judgmental stance). This operationalization of listening is aligned with the constructs of active and reflective listening ( Gordon, 1975 ; Levitt, 2001 ), and therapeutic listening ( Kemper, 1992 ), all of which broadly share these same supporting features.

1. High quality listening fosters self-insight

High quality listening (aka reflective, active, or therapeutic listening) is thought to be key for facilitating change by encouraging speakers' self-insight. This is because the listener offers a non-judgmental climate in which hidden and contradictory experiences can be safely explored ( Rogers, 1951 ). Self-insight is defined as a deeper reflection and understanding about how one relates to the topic under discussion – and this downstream consequence is a primary goal of many psychotherapies seen to underlie behavioral and attitudinal change (e.g., Bennett-Levy & Thwaites, 2007 ; Connolly Gibbons et al., 2007 ). However, self-insight is important to differentiate from seemingly similar constructs present in the literature. Insight has been studied at the dispositional level, though it is measured in terms of felt confusion about one's experiences alongside self-understanding ( Grant et al., 2002 ). This formulation is sensible for dispositional measures where insight reflects a sense of clarity rather than disorder around the self ( Campbell, Trapnell, Heine, Katz, Lavallee, & Lehman, 1996 ; Morrison & Wheeler, 2010 ), but less relevant when the insight relates to exploring currently held biases, where the absence of the previous self-reflection, rather than confusion, per se, is likely driving biases ( Verplanken et al., 2007 ). Said another way, in the context of attitude change, self-insight matters insofar as it reflects a process of learning about oneself.

Consistent with this is theorizing within self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2011 ) that views high quality listening as an integral aspect of providing autonomy support – the support for people to act according to their values and beliefs. Autonomy support is similar to high quality listening as conceptualized within the humanistic literature in that it involves demonstrating empathy and perspective-taking, encouraging interest taking in others' self-revelations, and providing unconditional regard ( Deci & Ryan, 2011 ). Though high quality listening is a necessary ingredient of autonomy support, it has not been isolated from other qualities of providing autonomy support (such as providing people choices or a meaningful rationale; Ryan & Deci, 2017 ). Yet SDT-based research offers evidence to support the expectation that high quality listening would promote self-insight in that autonomy support has been consistently shown to reduce defensiveness and increase introspection ( Caprariello & Reis, 2011 ; Hodgins & Knee, 2002 ; Hodgins et al., 2006 ; Pavey and Sparks, 2008 , Pavey and Sparks, 2012 ; Reis et al., 2018 ; Reis et al., 2017 ).

Furthermore, clients in therapy recognize these therapist qualities – providing a climate of empathic understanding and non-judgment – as the primary reason they are able to explore and self-disclose difficult material ( Bachelor, 1995 ; Bedi, 2006 ). Especially salient for attitude change, high quality listening fosters openness and lowers defensiveness, which helps individuals gain insights about themselves, their emotions, cognitions, and values ( Abbass & Town, 2013 ; Lacewing, 2014 ).

Furthermore, studies on mindful attention ( Haddock et al., 2017 ) describe that high attention is required for self-insight but place less focus on the learning and discovery qualities of interest here. We furthermore differentiate self-insight from insight about events, more broadly. Self-insight has to do with knowing oneself, understanding one's own internal emotional and cognitive responses ( Dunning, 2012 ), and with how the interpersonal exchanges foster this form of self-understanding ( Castonguay & Hill, 2007 ). Furthermore, although self-insight has an interpersonal component in this project, in that it is expectedly elicited through conversation with a partner who is empathic, it is distinct from broader experiences of interpersonal comforts, such as psychological safety - feeling safe for interpersonal risk-taking ( Edmondson, 1999 ), or identity security ( Tyler & Blader, 2003 ), which do not involve self-reflection and self-learning.

2. High quality listening during difficult conversations

Even outside of the context of psychotherapy, expressing difficult content such as negative attitudes, experiences, and emotions should also be sensitive to high quality listening because individuals may feel vulnerable, exposed, or judged. High quality listening is likely to reduce the defensiveness that can naturally arise when discussing negative attitudes and experiences ( Itzchakov & Kluger, 2018 ). In the absence of such listening, the result is too often an attitude change in the opposite direction. In this case, speakers become more firmly entrenched in their original stance (boomerang effect; Heller et al., 1973 ) because of the perceived threat ( Brehm, 1972 ), which prompts processing of information in a defensive manner ( Kunda, 1990 ). In the interest of self-protection, while each party is talking, the other party is mulling counter-arguments that would win the argument. On the contrary, when individuals experience high quality listening, they become more open-minded and process information in a less defensive and self-serving manner ( Itzchakov et al., 2017 ).

Furthermore, difficult and negative experiences, attitudes, and emotions may be particularly challenging to integrate or assimilate into self-knowledge or identity, because this knowledge itself elicits a defensive response and enters into a direct contradiction with other more positive content regarding the self (e.g., I am a caring person; Freud, 1936 ; Kegan, 1982 ; Shedler, 2010 ; Weinstein et al., 2011 ). It has been theorized that for the integration of difficult and negative content to take place, individuals must have a willingness to take ownership, which is less likely to happen when defenses are high ( Weinstein et al., 2013 ). Self-insight is necessary for owning or integrating this new information into the self-structure ( Pennebaker et al., 1988 ; Weinstein et al., 2013 ). Because negative attitudes and experiences may evoke people's defenses, it is important to reduce defensiveness in order to process and integrate potentially negative and threatening information.

Thus, lowering defensiveness is key for fostering self-insight ( Stotland et al., 1959 ). When individuals feel defensive, they seek information to support their initial attitude ( Kunda, 1990 ), reject and ignore new information ( Frey, 1986 ; Jemmott et al., 1986 ), process information in a biased manner ( Itzchakov et al., 2020 ; Itzchakov & Van Harreveld, 2018 ) and avoid the associated unpleasant emotions ( Weinstein & Hodgins, 2009 ) in the service of self-protection. Fundamentally, the defensive process is inherently aimed at and always prepared to manage perceived threats to the self ( Sherman & Cohen, 2002 ).

Defensive processes have also been closely linked to extreme views, such as those that may characterize prejudice ( Maio et al., 2010 ). For this reason, it seems important to reduce defensiveness in order to allow people to reflect on their prejudices. Indirect evidence comes from research on mindfulness, which is conceptualized as non-judgmental awareness of the present ( Kabat-Zinn, 2015 ). Specifically, when individuals are mindfully aware of conflictual affect and self-relevant information they show more emotional differentiation ( Hill & Updegraff, 2012 ), better self-regulation ( Erbas et al., 2014 ), and respond more positively to situations of uncertainty ( Haddock et al., 2017 ). Mindful attention has also been linked to changing stereotypes and prejudice (e.g., Djikic et al., 2008 ; Lillis & Hayes, 2007 ; Lueke & Gibson, 2015 ).

Of importance to the present research is recent empirical evidence showing that lower defensiveness could account for the associations between high quality listening and (reduced) attitude extremity ( Itzchakov et al., 2017 ). However, this particular study did not examine negative attitudes such as prejudice. The SDT literature suggests that when autonomy support is low, individuals have more prejudiced attitudes towards out-groups and show less desire to be in contact with them ( Fousiani et al., 2016 ) and this can be explained by increasing feelings of defensiveness ( Weinstein et al., 2012 ). Experimental evidence also supports the notion that autonomy-supportive contexts can reduce prejudice ( Legault et al., 2011 ), though this support did not involve interpersonal interactions or listening. Here, we investigated whether high quality listening allows individuals to introspect in a non-defensive, open-minded manner and therefore change prejudiced attitudes. We expected prejudice to be affected by listening largely because high quality listening in a conversation about prejudice allows people to self-reflect on their beliefs without fear of judgment. As prejudiced attitudes counter most people's deeply-held values for equality and inclusivity ( Amiot et al., 2012 ), SDT theorizing would expect those deep-rooted core values to prevail over prejudiced attitudes that are not as well-internalized ( Assor, 2012 ; Ryan & Deci, 2017 ). Thus, when given space for self-reflection that is free of judgment and consequences, as is the case when providing high-quality listening, people will naturally be less inclined to hold onto prejudiced attitudes.

3. The present research

It has been suggested that individuals must be willing to explore, recognize, and challenge their beliefs for their attitudes to change ( Zúñiga et al., 2002 ). High quality listening may be a key to this type of self-insight ( Itzchakov et al., 2017 ; Rogers, 1951 , Rogers, 1980 ). Recent work has found that a non-judgmental exchange of narratives in interpersonal conversations was more impactful in reducing exclusionary attitudes than providing arguments ( Kalla & Broockman, 2020 ). However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no research isolating the effects of high quality listening on speakers' prejudiced attitudes, and very little work associating listening to attitude change of any kind.

It is important to distinguish the present study from research that has examined the effects of perspective-taking on prejudice because perspective-taking and high quality listening might at first glance appear similar. Perspective-taking is defined as a process where people try to adopt others' viewpoints to understand their needs, values, and preferences ( Parker & Axtell, 2001 ). Previous work has found that encouraging people to take others' perspectives reduces the perspective takers' prejudice ( Galinsky & Ku, 2004 ). By contrast, the focus of the present study is on the person who expresses prejudiced attitudes, not the perspective-taker. Said differently, perspective-taking research focuses on the effects on the listener (i.e., the perspective-taker) and is other-focused. In contrast, the present study focuses on the effects on the speaker (i.e., the perspective-giver) and the role that listening has on an inner focus through facilitating self-insight. Furthermore, previous work has found that perspective-giving reduces prejudiced attitudes for members of the group with lower power when a member of the group with the higher power listens to them ( Bruneau & Saxe, 2012 ). The present research differs that the listener, whether imagined (Study 1) or real (Studies 2 & 3) was not a member of an outgroup. For these two reasons, the present studies are fundamentally different from other studies on the effects of intergroup contact on prejudice.

Furthermore, studies have not tested whether self-insight plays an exploratory role in explicating why listening may affect attitude change. To address this gap, the present research evaluated three hypotheses to explore the associations between high quality listening, self-insight, and prejudiced attitudes (see Fig. 1 ).

As compared to poor (Study 1) and regular (all studies) listening, high quality listening will increase speakers' self-insight.

As compared to poor (Study 1) and regular (all studies) listening, high quality listening will increase speakers' openness to change their prejudiced attitudes by increasing self-insight.

As compared to regular listening (in Studies 2 and 3), high quality listening will predict increased speakers' attitude favorability (i.e., lower prejudiced attitudes) towards the outgroup by encouraging self-insight and openness to change.

A serial-mediation model of the effect of high quality listening on speakers' attitude favorability towards outgroup.

4. Overview of the studies

We conducted a pilot study (reported in the supplementary material), and three experiments to empirically test these hypotheses using experimental paradigms that would allow largely causal interpretations of the data. Building off of initial development of the paradigm in the pilot study, in Study 1 (preregistered) scenarios instructed participants to imagine having a conversation about a negative bias that they have towards a particular group of their choosing, where their conversation partner demonstrated high quality listening behavior, regular listening behavior, poor listening, depending on assignment to conditions. In Study 2 we increased the ecological validity of the experiments with a live conversation partner, contrasting high quality and regular listening. Participants wrote about the group about which they had a negative bias and conversed about it in front of a listener who exhibited either good or regular listening behavior. Finally, Study 3 was a preregistered conceptual replication and expansion of Study 2. Specifically, participants rated their attitude towards five specific groups, wrote about the group towards which they had the strongest bias, and then conversed about it with either a good or regular listener.

All manipulations and exclusions in the studies are disclosed, as well as the method of determining the final sample size. Data collection did not continue after data analysis. Studies 2 and 3 included other measures for separate work on well-being and self-determination theory (i.e., self-esteem, psychological need satisfaction).

Study 1 was a preregistered ( http://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=n8ab67 ) test of the three hypotheses summarized above. We Used a confirmatory approach to test the effects of high quality listening as compared to a regular listening condition on measures of openness to change and self-insight. Because the self-insight measure was new to this project (first tested in the pilot study), to substantiate the construct validity, we added an existing measure of reflective self-awareness ( Trapnell & Campbell, 1999 ) as an additional assessment of self-insight.

5.1. Method

5.1.1. participants.

We recruited 461 Israelis through an online platform similar to the one used in the pilot study. 2 Of the initial sample, 14 participants provided meaningless answers to the question about their bias, and 62 failed to answer the awareness question, which we added to this study (i.e. “On this question, mark number 5”), and we excluded their responses. Therefore, the final sample size was N  = 385. Power analysis using Gpower ( Faul et al., 2007 ) indicated that this sample size has a power above 0.80 to detect the effect size on openness to change which was obtained in the pilot study; namely, Cohen's f  = 0.22 (converted from Cohen's d  = 0.44). The sensitivity analysis indicated that the weakest effect size detectable with this sample size and power of 0.80 was Cohen's f  = 0.15.

5.1.2. Procedure

After completing consent forms, participants were asked to think about a negative bias (prejudice) they have towards a specific group. For this purpose, all participants received the following instruction (translated from Hebrew): “Please take a few minutes to think about any negative bias you may have or have had in the past towards a particular social group. Most people will feel some kind of bias throughout their lives. Bias is defined as negative feelings and thoughts about a group of people with a common characteristic.” Examples were provided to help orient participants to the kind of bias examined in this study (namely, prejudice towards out-groups), and to encourage participants to think concretely about what this bias might mean to them. Afterward, participants were asked to write a short description of the bias they described.

Subsequently, participants read a scenario asking them to imagine having a conversation about the group they wrote about with another person. Participants were randomly assigned to read a scenario describing their conversation partner as a high quality listener ( n  = 122), a poor quality listener ( n  = 149), or a regular listener as a comparison ( n  = 123). We asked participants to read the scenario twice. To ensure that participants did not skip the manipulation, survey software ensured they spent at least 50 s on the page before they were able to progress to the next page.

Participants in the high quality listening condition read the following scenario (translated from Hebrew), which have been used in past experiments of high quality listening ( Itzchakov et al., 2018 ) and included elements of empathic listening, unconditional positive regard, and interest-taking based on humanistic, motivational, and social psychological theorizing ( Deci & Ryan, 2011 ; Rogers, 1951 ; Van Quaquebeke & Felps, 2018 ): “Imagine that you are talking about the negative bias you mentioned on the previous page with a person who has a neutral (neither positive nor negative) attitude towards this group. During the conversation, you feel that your conversation partner is really trying to understand your views and experiences relating to your negative bias in a non-judgmental way. Moreover, his reactions, questions, and comments show you that he takes a genuine interest in you and your experiences – in what you have to say. During the conversation, your conversation partner seems empathic; he is attuned to your feelings behind the negative bias and shows an understanding of how difficult it can be to talk about this issue and the feelings and thoughts associated with it.”

Participants in the poor listening condition read the following scenario:

“Imagine that you are talking about the negative bias that you mentioned on the previous page with a person who has a neutral attitude (neither positive nor negative) towards this group. During the conversation, you feel that your conversation partner is not trying to understand your views or experiences relating to your negative bias and is judgmental about the things you are saying. His reactions, questions, and comments show you that he does not take any interest in you and your experiences - in what you have to say about the bias. During the conversation, your conversation partner does not convey any empathy; he is not attuned to your feelings behind the negative bias and does not show he understands how difficult it is to talk about this issue and the feelings and thoughts that are associated with it.”

In the regular listening condition, participants read the following scenario: “Imagine that you are talking about the negative bias that you mentioned on the previous page with a person who has a neutral (neither positive nor negative) attitude towards this group. During the conversation, you talk about several different features of your bias. You did not feel it was an eventful conversation one way or another. Overall you felt it was an ordinary conversation.”

Finally, participants responded to measures of perceived listening as a manipulation check, self-insight, and perceived attitude change were debriefed and compensated.

5.1.3. Measures

All measures were anchored on a 7-point Likert type scale (1 = ‘ not at all ’; 4 = ‘ moderately ’; 7 = ‘ very much ’) as described in the pilot study materials (see supplementary materials).

Listening perception ( manipulation check ). Speakers' listening perception was assessed on the 10-item Layperson-Based Listening Scale (α = 0.98; Lipetz et al., 2018 ). An example item is: “To which extent did you feel that your conversation partner showed interest in what you had to say?”

Self-insight . A five-item scale that included the following items: “how much do you feel this conversation: “Helped to understand yourself better?”, “Made you think more deeply about the topic?” “Helped you to discover new or different insights about yourself?” “Helped you to reflect about your attitudes?” and “Helped you think about things in a different way?” (α = 0.92).

Openness to change . Openness to change with regard to the prejudiced attitude was adapted from previous research ( Omoto & Snyder, 1995 ). Specifically, it read: “To which extent do you feel that the conversation changed your attitude about the bias?”

Reflective self-awareness was used as an additional assessment for self-insight. Six items from Trapnell and Campbell (1999) were adapted to the present setting (α = 0.80). Example items were (translated from Hebrew): “during the conversation, I explored my inner-self”, “during the conversation I analyzed my bias”, and “I don't feel that this conversation prompted me to introspect about my bias” ( reverse coded ).

5.2. Results and discussion

Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics and the correlations between variables.

Study 1: Descriptive statistics and correlations between the variables.

Notes. Experimental condition was coded: −1 = poor listening, 0 = regular listening, 1 = high quality listening; ⁎⁎ p  < .01.

5.2.1. Main effects

Listening perception ( manipulation check ). An analysis of variance ( ANOVA ) indicated a main effect of the listening manipulation on perception of high quality listening, F (2,382) = 442.37, p  < .001, ŋ 2 p  = 0.70, Cohen's f  = 1.52. Post-hoc LSD tests indicated that these effects differed across all the experimental conditions. Specifically, in line with the nature of the manipulations, participants in the high quality listening condition ( M  = 5.82, SD  = 0.98) perceived higher quality listening than participants in the neutral ( M  = 4.51, SD  = 1.15), M difference  = 1.32 SE  = 0.14, p  < .001, 95% CI [1.05, 1.58], and poor listening conditions ( M  = 1.99, SD  = 1.06), M difference  = 3.84, SE  = 0.13, p  < .001, 95% CI [3.58, 4.10]. In addition, participants in the regular listening condition perceived higher quality listening more than participants in the poor listening condition, M difference  = 2.52 SE  = 0.13, p  < .001, 95% CI [2.26, 2.78].

Self-insight . An ANOVA indicated a main effect of the listening manipulation on self-insight, F (2,382) = 120.63, p  < .001, ŋ 2 p  = 0.39, Cohen's f  = 0.80. Post-hoc LSD tests indicated a significant difference where participants in the high quality listening condition ( M  = 4.93, SD  = 1.19) reported higher self-insight than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 4.24, SD  = 1.35), M difference  = 0.69 SE  = 0.17, p  < .001, 95% CI [0.36, 1.02], and participants in the poor listening condition ( M  = 2.52, SD  = 1.35), M difference  = 2.41, SE  = 0.16, p  < .001, 95% CI [2.09, 2.73]. Participants in the regular listening condition reported greater self-insight than participants in the poor listening condition, M difference  = 1.72, SE  = 0.16, p  < .001, 95% CI [1.40, 2.04]. Thus, Hypothesis 1 , that listening would affect self-insight, was supported in Study 1.

Reflective self-awareness . Complementing findings for the measure of self-insight, a significant main effect of the listening manipulation on reflective self-awareness was found, F (2,382) = 33.17, p  < .001, ŋ 2 p  = 0.15, Cohen's f  = 0.42. Specifically, participants in the high quality listening condition ( M  = 4.73, SD  = 1.23) reported higher self-awareness than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 4.29, SD  = 1.29), M difference  = 0.44, SE  = 0.16, p  = .007, 95% CI [0.12, 0.76], and participants in the poor listening condition ( M  = 3.47, SD  = 1.29), M difference  = 1.26, SE  = 0.16, p  < .001, 95% CI [0.95, 1.57]. Participants in the regular listening condition reported higher reflective self-awareness than participants in the poor listening condition, M difference  = 0.81, SE  = 0.16, p  < .001, 95% CI [0.51, 1.124].

Openness to change . An ANOVA indicated a main effect of the listening manipulation on openness to change with regard to their bias, F (2,382) = 15.46, p  < .001, ŋ 2 p  = 0.08, Cohen's f  = 0.29, supporting Hypothesis 2 that listening quality would affect openness to change. LSD tests indicated a significant difference between all the listening conditions. Specifically, participants in the high quality listening condition reported the greatest attitude change ( M  = 3.35, SD  = 1.76) relative to participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 2.86, SD  = 1.60), M difference  = 0.49 SE  = 0.21, p  = .019, 95% CI [0.08, 0.90] and participants in the poor listening condition ( M  = 2.24, SD  = 1.54), M difference  = 1.12, SE  = 0.20, p  < .001, 95% CI [0.72, 1.51]. In addition, participants in the regular listening condition reported a more positive attitude change in comparison to participants in the poor listening condition, M difference  = 0.63, SE  = 0.20, p  = .002, 95% CI [0.23, 1.02].

5.2.2. Mediation analysis

We conducted a mediation analysis using Model 4 in PROCESS ( Hayes, 2017 ) using 5000 bootstrapped samples ( Preacher & Hayes, 2008 ) to test Hypothesis 3 , that self-insight would relate to openness to change and mediate the effect of the listening manipulation. We did not assume linearity between the listening conditions; therefore, we created two dummy variables. The variable dummy 1 compared the high quality listening condition (coded as “1”) to the neutral and poor listening conditions (coded as “0”). The variable dummy 2 compared the poor listening condition (coded as “1”) to the supportive and regular listening condition (coded as “0”). We tested mediation for each of the two variables that represented self-insight, controlling for the other dummy code. 3

First, we tested the mediation model with high quality vs. regular and poor quality listening (dummy 1) controlling for dummy 2 (poor listening vs. high and regular quality listening). The indirect effect through self-insight was significant, b  = 0.46, SE  = 0.12, 95% CI [0.24, 0.69], meaning that the high versus regular quality listening condition predicted self-insight, and self-insight, in turn, related to openness to change as hypothesized. The direct effect was not significant, b  = 0.03, SE  = 0.18, t  = 0.15, p  = .88, 95% CI [−0.33, 0.38], indicating that relative to regular listening, good listening did not have an effect on openness to change when controlling for its effects through self-insight (see Fig. 2 a). Similar results were obtained with reflective self-awareness as a mediator; namely, the indirect effect was significant, b  = 0.18, SE  = 0.07, 95% CI [0.05, 0.33], and the direct effect was not significant, b  = 0.31, SE  = 0.20, t  = 1.56, p  = .12, 95% CI [−0.08, 070] (see Fig. 2 a and c). In sum, regardless of which measure was used to test self-insight, this construct appeared to be an underlying factor in explaining the effects of high quality listening on openness to change.

a. Study 1: Mediation analysis for the effect of dummy 1 controlling for dummy 2 to openness to change via self-insight; standard errors in parentheses; ⁎ p  < .05, ⁎⁎ p  < .01.

b. Study 1: Mediation analysis of the effect of dummy 2 Controlling for dummy 1 on attitude change via self-insight; standard errors in parentheses; ⁎ p  < .05, ⁎⁎ p  < .01.

c . Study 1: A mediation analysis of dummy 1 controlling for dummy 2 on attitude change via reflective self-awareness; standard errors in parentheses; ⁎ p  < .05, ⁎⁎ p  < .01.

d. Study 1: A mediation analysis of dummy 2 controlling for dummy 1 on openness to change via reflective self-awareness; standard errors in parentheses; ⁎ p  < .05, ⁎⁎ p  < .01.

The mediation analysis with poor quality listening versus regular and high quality listening (dummy 2) as the independent variable provided additional support for the hypothesized model. The indirect effect from dummy 2 to openness to change through self-insight, when controlling for dummy 1, was significant, b  = −1.16, SE  = 0.14, 95% CI [−1.46, −0.89]. The direct effect was significant as well, b  = 0.53, SE  = 0.19, t  = 2.75, p  = .01, 95% CI [0.15, 0.92]. The mediation pattern was similar when submitting reflective self-awareness as a mediator. The indirect effect was significant, b  = −0.33, SE  = 0.09, 95% CI [−0.51, −0.18]. The direct effect was not significant, b  = −0.30, SE  = 0.20, t  = −1.49, p  = .14, 95% CI [−0.68, 0.09] (see Fig. 2 b and d), suggesting that self-insight provides a good account of the effects of listening on attitudes. In conclusion, these additional mediation analyses further support the hypothesized model. Thus poor listening showed effects in line with those of high quality listening: its impact on openness to change is better understood through its more immediate effects on self-insight.

These findings provided confirmatory evidence for Hypotheses 1 and 2 regarding the main effects of listening on self-insight and openness to change. The results of Study 1 indicated that both high quality listening and independently, poor listening, contribute to self-insight and attitudes as compared to regular listening. This experiment also validated our measure of self-insight and showed that effects were robust for both measures across all main and meditational effects. Specifically, the results indicated that self-insight mediated the effect of high quality listening conditions on openness to change in relation to one's prejudiced attitudes.

However, this study had two important shortcomings. First, although scenario experiments are often used to measure interpersonal listening (e.g., Itzchakov et al., 2018 ), and are a recommended approach to experimental manipulations ( Aguinis & Bradley, 2014 ), they only provided a proxy for an actual interaction. In addition, the way that people imagine they would feel and behave in uncomfortable situations such as when witnessing discrimination may differ from how they actually behave in these situations ( Kawakami et al., 2009 ). Thus, this experiment was limited with regard to its ecological validity, and it remains unclear whether the effects would be replicated in an actual interpersonal encounter. In addition, Hypothesis 3 , regarding the effect of high quality listening on prejudice, was not tested in the present experiment.

The first goal of Study 2 was to increase ecological validity by using an actual conversation partner. Second, we tested whether the listening-induced self-reported attitude change would correspond to lower prejudice. While attitude exploration and change is a crucial aspect of many prejudice reduction efforts ( Paluck & Green, 2009 ), it is possible, though unlikely, and that change can shift towards greater prejudice. To rule out this possibility, we added a widely validated measure of prejudice ( Correll et al., 2010 ), the feeling thermometer, to complement the measure of attitude change.

6.1. Method

6.1.1. participants.

Undergraduates from a British University ( N  = 140 4 ) participated in the study in exchange for course credit. Of these participants, 13 were excluded from analyses because they did not report a bias towards a group as instructed (e.g., “I have never experienced any intense bias in my life and have been very fortunate, and I try extremely hard not to feel bias towards any groups of people”). Hence, the final sample size was 127 individuals ( M age  = 19.30, SD  = 1.33, 89.8% female). Power analysis using Gpower indicated that this sample size has a power of above 0.80 to detect the average effect size on attitude change that was obtained in the pilot study and Study 1 (Cohen's d  = 0.51). Sensitivity analysis showed that the weakest effect size that such a sample could detect with a power of 0.80 was d  = 0.44.

6.1.2. Procedure

Participants entered the laboratory and were seated at a cubicle, which provided privacy from the researcher. The researcher explained that the study consisted of three parts: responding to an online questionnaire, a brief conversation, and responding to another questionnaire afterward. The first questionnaire contained a consent form, demographics, and the following instructions to write about an incident that evoked prejudice:

“ I would like you to take a couple of minutes to think about a specific bias that you may feel or may have felt. Most people will have felt some sort of bias during their lives. This bias can be towards any group of people, for example, older people, people of color, the Opposite gender, or people from different socioeconomic status. In the box below, please write about this bias, how you were feeling, and what your overall experience was .”

Afterward, participants turned their chairs around to face the researcher. The researcher started the conversation with the following preface: “ I would now like you to describe the bias you just wrote about to me . Everything we talk about here is confidential and will not be recorded . When you are ready , please begin ”. The RA allowed the participants to talk for as long as they wanted. Once it was clear that the participant had finished talking, she said: “ Thank you for sharing this with me today , when you are ready , there are a few questionnaires for you to fill out on the computer .” In the regular listening condition ( n  = 64), the researcher merely listened without responding; however, researcher responses included head nodding and minor communications of acknowledgment ( hmmm , I see ) to maintain naturalness and avoid actively alienating the participants.

Participants in the high quality listening condition ( n  = 63) were given the same instructions as participants in the regular listening condition. In the conversation, the researcher responded by nodding and saying specific phrases when prompted. These phrases included questions about the bias and the participant's experience and empathic responses such as “I realize this can be difficult to talk about.” Although the researcher minimized the number of responses to allow sufficient time for listening to occur, responses were directly designed to communicate interest in what the speaker was saying, along with empathy and non-judgment (unconditional regard). Once it was clear that the participant had finished talking, the researcher instructed them to complete the second part of the questionnaire. At the end of the experiment, the participants were debriefed, thanked, and given credit for their participation.

6.1.3. Measures

Listening perception ( manipulation check ). We used the same measure as in Study 1. The items were anchored on a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = ‘ not at all ’; 7 = ‘ very much ’; α = 0.97).

Self-insight . The measure was the same as the one used in Study 1. Items were anchored on a Likert-type scale (1 = ‘ not at all ’; 5 = ‘ very much ’; α = 0.88).

Openness to change . We used the same item as in Study 1, which was anchored on a Likert-type scale (1 = ‘ not at all ’; 5 = ‘ very much ’).

Attitude favorability towards the prejudiced group . Prejudiced attitudes were measured with a feeling thermometer, which ranged from 0° ( very cold or unfavorable feelings ) to 100° ( very warm or extremely favorable feelings ) with regard to the group they talked about during the conversation. This thermometer is frequently used to examine a variety of prejudiced attitudes (e.g., Correll et al., 2010 ; Haddock and Zanna, 1997 , Haddock and Zanna, 1998 ; Haddock et al., 1993 ). Higher scores indicate less prejudice.

6.2. Results & discussion

Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics and the correlations between variables.

Study 2 : Descriptive statistics and correlations between the variables .

Notes. Experimental condition was coded: 1 = regular listening, 2 = high quality listening; ⁎ p  < .05 ⁎⁎ p  < .01; Higher scores on attitude favorability correspond to lower prejudice.

6.2.1. Main effects

Listening perception . Participants in the high quality listening condition reported better listening ( M  = 5.45, SD  = 1.08) than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 3.30, SD  = 1.26), t (125) = 10.27, p  < .001, 95% CI [1.72, 2.56], d  = 1.82; the listening manipulation was therefore successful.

Self-insight . Participants in the high quality listening condition had higher levels of self-insight ( M  = 3.03, SD  = 0.90) than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 2.36, SD  = 0.90), t (125) = 4.10, p  < .001, 95% CI [0.34, 0.97], d  = 0.73, supporting Hypothesis 1 regarding the main effects of condition on self-insight and consistent with the findings in Study 1.

Openness to change . As was the case in the pilot study and Study 1, participants in the high quality listening condition ( M  = 2.15, SD  = 1.06) reported higher openness to change with regard to their prejudiced attitude than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 1.89, SD  = 0.99). However, unlike the pilot and Study 1, the difference was not significant, t (125) = 1.38, p  = .169, 95% CI [−0.11, 0.61], d  = 0.25.

Attitude favorability towards outgroup . Participants in the high quality listening condition demonstrated more favorable attitudes towards the outgroup ( M  = 56.21, SD  = 23.85) than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 46.69, SD  = 21.01), t (125) = 2.39, p  = .018, 95% CI [1.63, 17.41], d  = 0.42, with a significant effect of condition on lower prejudice.

6.2.2. Mediation analysis

To examine how listening shapes attitudes through the facilitation of introspection, we conducted a serial-mediation analysis using Model 6 in PROCESS ( Hayes, 2017 ). Specifically, we tested the effect of the listening manipulation on attitude favorability towards the prejudiced group via increasing self-insight openness to change. We anticipated that as individuals perceived more change in their prejudicial attitudes, they would also report more favorable (less prejudiced) attitudes towards the outgroup they described. Note that although the main effect of the high quality listening manipulation on self-reported attitude change was not significant, mediation can still occur ( Rucker et al., 2011 ).

As can be seen from Fig. 3 , the indirect effect from the listening manipulation to attitude favorability through self-insight and openness to change was significant, b  = 3.38, SE  = 1.43, 95% CI [0.88, 6.46]. Thus, the mediation analysis provided support for Hypothesis 3 , namely, that high quality listening will reduce speakers' prejudiced attitudes towards the outgroup by increasing self-insight and openness to change. However, the direct effect was significant, b  = 11.03, SE  = 4.18, t  = 2.64, p  = .009, 95% CI [2.76, 19.30], suggesting additional variance is still to be explained by other mediating factors. Indirect effects conceptually replicated Study 1, but results for direct effects did not. The final analysis also supported the downstream consequences of openness to change. It meaningfully related to more favorable attitudes towards the outgroup, reinforcing the view that perceptions of change reflected actual attitudes and demonstrated that perceived change was not in the counterproductive direction (i.e., increased negative attitudes).

Study 2: Serial-mediation analysis of the effect of listening on attitude favorability towards prejudiced groups via self-insight and openness to change; standard errors in parentheses;

⁎ p  < .05, ⁎⁎ p  < .01.

Study 2 largely provided support for H3 and increased the ecological validity of the study by using a live interaction. Specifically, the listening manipulation was effective with regard to reducing speakers' prejudiced attitudes. In addition, speakers who experienced high quality listening were able to delve deeper into their biases (i.e., increased self-insight), which in turn resulted in less prejudice or more favorable attitudes towards the group. In addition, the results of the pilot study and Study 1, which recruited participants from Israel, were replicated with participants from Great Britain. The generalization of findings across two cultures speaks to the robustness of the models across samples, which most likely came from different demographic backgrounds and held different biases ( Bond & Gudykunst, 1997 ).

However, despite its merits, the approach used in Study 2, which let participants select any group they wished to discuss as a target of their prejudice, may have resulted in participants selecting socially acceptable groups to discuss. As a result, we cannot be certain that any of the beneficial effects of listening translated into lower prejudice towards any specific outgroups. This is a problem when attempting to generalize effects to real-life conversations, where typically there are specific groups under discussion. In addition, from an attitude strength perspective ( Krosnick & Petty, 1995 ), the participants might have chosen relatively weak attitudes (i.e., ambivalent; DeMarree et al., 2011 ) so that the conversation would be more comfortable or less threatening. Previous work had found that people's attitudes are more likely to respond to change inductions when their initial attitude was weak (i.e., ambivalent; DeMarree et al., 2011 ). We conducted Study 3 to address these issues.

The primary objective of Study 3 was to provide a conceptual preregistered replication of Study 2, once again using an in-person interaction that manipulated listening quality ( https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=ej27v9 ). Second, we tested the effect of high quality listening on stronger prejudiced attitudes relative to the previous studies and used a more robust measure of prejudiced attitudes, namely, change in attitude favorability from before to after the conversation.

We also modified the procedure in two ways to account for the possibility that participants would select to discuss weak or socially acceptable attitudes. First, rather than permitting participants to select any group of their choosing, we asked participants to discuss one of five groups that experience the most prejudice in Israel: those who are Black, homeless, immigrants to Israel, gay, and transgender. Of these, they were asked to discuss the group towards which they reported the least favorable attitudes at the start.

In addition, we measured participants' perceived social acceptance of the outgroup attitude directly and tested whether it would moderate the listening manipulation on attitude favorability towards the outgroup. Social acceptance is a basic and motivating need in interpersonal interactions, including those that concern prejudice ( Kunstman et al., 2013 ). In the context of the present research, the desire for social acceptance may influence the content of the discussion such that speakers only describe attitudes they perceive is normative and thus acceptable to express in front of the listener. To explore this, we examined this possible boundary condition to the effects of high quality listening: namely, that the effects of high quality listening on speakers' prejudice depends on the extent that the speaker feels that the expressed attitude is socially acceptable.

7.1. Method

7.1.1. participants.

Undergraduate students from Israel ( N  = 245) 5 participated in this study in exchange for course credit. As specified in the preregistration form, we excluded nine participants who did not report their bias towards a group as instructed. Examples are: “I am gay, out of the closet. I have friends in the community who are transgender, and I see the discrimination towards them, they are treated disrespectfully and are perceived as unusual from the community,”; and “in the past I used to be afraid of homeless people. However, today as I have matured, I now offer them a hot meal and something to drink.” The final sample size was N  = 236 ( M age  = 26.55, SD  = 6.77, 68.2% female). This sample size had a power of above 0.80 to detect the average effect size on attitude favorability that was obtained in Study 2 (Cohen's d  = 0.42). Sensitivity analysis using Gpower ( Faul et al., 2007 ) showed that the weakest effect size that this sample could detect with a power of 0.80 was d  = 0.37.

7.1.2. Procedure

Four research assistants (RAs; three females, one male; M age  = 24.25, SD  = 7.89) participated in the study as listeners. They received listening training and followed a protocol that was written for the present study. Every RA performed both the good and regular listening conditions in a randomized order. The experiment included two stages. First, participants signed a consent form and completed a questionnaire where they indicated, using the thermometer, their attitude towards five social groups, namely those who are Black, homeless, immigrants, gay, and transgender. Of the five groups, 28.4% selected homeless individuals, 27.5% selected immigrants to Israel, 19.1% chose transgender individuals, 12.7% selected Black people, and 12.3% selected gay individuals as the group they held the least favorable attitudes. Afterward, the participants indicated to what extent they thought that it is socially acceptable to have a negative attitude towards each specific group. Subsequently, participants were asked to select the group towards which they had the most negative attitude and write a short description or give an example of their bias. In the second stage, participants were informed that they would talk about the attitude towards the group they wrote about with the person in the lab (i.e., the RA). As in Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to the high quality ( n  = 115) or the regular listening condition ( n  = 121). The behavior of the listeners in both conditions was the same as described in Study 2. Only a single listener-speaker dyad was present in each experimental session to eliminate potential artifacts related to social influence and distraction. After the conversation, participants answered questionnaires that included the outcome variables and were debriefed by the RAs. None of the participants guessed the goals or nature of the study. The most frequent answers regarding the objective of the study were that it was meant to characterize students' attitudes towards minority groups, build knowledge about prejudice in the Israeli society, and examine conversations between people who do not know each other.

7.1.3. Measures

The Likert-type scales ranged from 1 (‘ not at all ’) to 9 (‘ very much ’). We followed best practice recommendations and used a scale with a wider range of anchors to increase validity and capture more variability ( Aguinis et al., 2009 ).

Listening perception 1 . In order to increase the construct validity of the manipulation check, we used the constructive behavior sub-scale from the Facilitating Listening scale ( Kluger & Bouskila-Yam, 2018 ). Previous work has found that this scale has strong correlations with other validated listening measures ( Itzchakov et al., 2014 ). This measure is composed of 10 items, α = 0.95. Example items were: “When my conversation partner listened to me, he or she (a) Tried hard to understand what I was saying, (b) Listened to me attentively, and (c) Asked questions that showed his/her understanding of my opinions.”

Listening perception 2 . As another measure of the listening manipulation, participants responded to the following item: “to what extent would you like to experience the kind of listening you experienced in the conversation again?”. Participants dragged the slider from 0° ( not at all ) to 100° ( very much ).

Self-insight . The measure was the same as the one used in Studies 1 and 2, α = 0.87.

Openness to change . We used the same item as in the previous studies.

Cognitive reappraisal . A new measure of cognitive reappraisal was used here ( Jones & Wirtz, 2006 ). This measure served as an additional indicator of openness to change and was composed of four items: namely: (a) “My conversational partner made me think about the attitude I described during the conversation”, (b) “I feel that I ought to re-evaluate the event now, after the conversation”, (c) “I don't really see the conversation in a different light after the conversation” (reverse-coded), and (d) “I understand the situation better now that I talked about it with my conversation partner”, α = 0.70.

Attitude favorability change towards the outgroup . Attitude favorability towards the prejudiced group was measured twice: before and after the listening manipulation. Hence, the dependent variable was the change in attitude favorability. As in Study 2, prejudiced attitudes were measured with a feeling thermometer that asked about participants' attitudes towards the group they talked about during the conversation. The measure ranged from 0° ( very cold or unfavorable feelings ) to 100° ( very warm or extremely favorable feelings ) with regard to the group they talked about during the conversation. Attitude favorability change (or prejudice reduction) was computed as attitude favorability (post-conversation) – attitude favorability (pre-conversation). The correlation between the participants' pre-listening attitude favorability and post-listening attitude favorability with regard to the group they chose was r  = 0.74, p  < .001.

Perceived social acceptance of prejudice . Participants indicated the extent they perceived that it was socially acceptable to express a negative attitude towards each of the five groups using a feeling thermometer measure. The slider ranged from 0 (‘ not at all acceptable ’) to 100 (‘ completely acceptable ’), M homeless  = 38.74, SD  = 29.90; M Black  = 41.41, SD  = 30.30; M immigrants  = 44.17, SD  = 30.54; M gay  = 40.07, SD  = 31.78; M transgender  = 39.77, SD  = 31.40. This measure was administered in the initial survey before the listening manipulation ( Table 3 ).

Study 3: Descriptive statistics and correlations between the variables.

Notes. Experimental condition was coded: 1 = regular listening, 2 = high quality listening; ⁎ p  < .05 ⁎⁎ p  < .01. Higher scores on attitude favorability change correspond to higher prejudice reduction; Reliabilities in parentheses; a- refers to the outgroup that the participant selected.

7.2. Results & discussion

Table 3 presents the descriptive statistics and the correlations between the variables.

7.2.1. Main effects

Listening perception 1 . Participants in the high quality listening condition reported experiencing better listening ( M  = 8.38, SD  = 0.91) than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 6.31, SD  = 2.19), t (234) = 9.38, p  < .001, 95% CI [1.63, 2.50], d  = 1.22.

Listening perception 2 . Participants reported a greater desire to re-experience the type of listening in the high listening condition ( M  = 89.38, SD  = 13.64) than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 62.03, SD  = 36.27), t (234) = 7.72, p  < .001, 95% CI [20.82, 34.78], d  = 1.01. Thus, overall, the manipulation was successful.

Self-insight . Participants in the high quality listening condition had higher levels of self-insight ( M  = 5.97, SD  = 1.69) than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 4.30, SD  = 2.27), t (234) = 6.40, p  < .001, 95% CI [1.16, 2.18], d  = 0.83.

Openness to change . Participants in the high quality listening condition ( M  = 3.36, SD  = 2.50) reported higher openness to change than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 2.72, SD  = 2.30), t (234) = 2.01, p  = .045, 95% CI [0.01, 1.25], d  = 0.26. Note that this effect size is consistent with the effect size that was observed in the live interaction used in Study 2 ( d  = 0.25), suggesting that greater power was needed to detect this smaller effect.

Cognitive reappraisal . Participants in the high quality listening condition ( M  = 5.35, SD  = 2.37) reported higher cognitive reappraisal than participants in the regular listening condition ( M  = 4.11, SD  = 1.90), t (234) = 5.30, p  < .001, 95% CI [0.78, 1.70], d  = 0.69.

Attitude favorability change towards outgroup . We conducted analyses of covariance ( ANCOVA ) with the experimental condition as a predictor of the post-listening prejudice score while controlling for the pre-listening scores on prejudice. Consistent with our prediction, the ANCOVA indicated a significant main effect of condition, F (1,233) = 4.92, p  = .028, η 2 p  = 0.02. Specifically, participants in the high quality listening condition ( M adjusted  = 45.95, SE  = 1.65) reported a more favorable attitude towards the outgroup than participants in the regular listening condition, ( M adjusted  = 40.84, SE  = 1.61). 6 However, the confidence interval for prejudice change within the high quality listening condition crossed 0: 95% CI [−1.06, 5.70] (regular listening condition was: 95% CI [−6.80, 0.78]). Therefore, the high quality listening condition only led to increased attitude favorability towards the outgroup relative to a similar conversation taking place in the context of regular listening.

7.2.2. Mediation analysis

We conducted two serial-mediation analyses using Model 6 in PROCESS ( Hayes, 2017 ). As indicated in the preregistration, we tested two mediation models, specifically, (a) a mediation of the listening manipulation on attitude favorability change via self-insight and openness to change, and (b) a mediation of the listening manipulation on attitude favorability change via self-insight and reappraisal.

As can be seen from Fig. 4 a, the indirect effect from the listening manipulation to attitude favorability change through self-insight and openness to change was significant, b  = 1.41, SE  = 0.67, 95% CI [0.07, 2.71], suggesting high-quality listening promoted openness to change through its effects on self-insight. The direct effect was not significant, b  = 4.45, SE  = 2.77, t  = 1.60, p  = .111, 95% CI [−1.00, 9.90], suggesting self-insight explained substantial variance in the condition - openness to change effect. The reverse indirect effect from the listening manipulation to attitude favorability change via openness to change and introspection was not significant, b  = −0.002, SE  = 0.22, 95% CI [−0.46, 0.47].

a. Study 3: Serial-Mediation analysis of the effect of listening on attitude favorability change towards prejudiced groups via self-insight and openness to change; standard errors in parentheses;

b. Study 3: Serial-Mediation analysis of the effect of listening on attitude favorability change towards prejudiced groups via self-insight and cognitive reappraisal; standard errors in parentheses; ⁎ p  < .05, ⁎⁎ p  < .01.

A similar pattern was observed with reappraisal as the second mediator. As can be seen in Fig. 4 b, the indirect effect from the listening manipulation to attitude favorability change via self-insight and cognitive reappraisal was significant, b  = 2.00, SE  = 0.95, 95% CI [0.20, 3.92]. The direct effect was not significant, b  = 3.05, SE  = 2.77, t  = 1.10, p  = .271, 95% CI [−1.00, 9.90]. The reverse indirect effect from the listening manipulation to attitude favorability change via cognitive reappraisal and introspection was not significant, b  = −0.29, SE  = 0.70, 95% CI [−1.63, 1.15].

7.2.3. Moderation analysis

We examined whether the perception of social acceptance of the prejudiced attitude moderated the effect of the listening manipulation on the change in attitude favorability. The results of Model 1 in PROCESS ( Hayes, 2017 ) indicated that the perceived social acceptance was not a significant moderator, b  = −0.10, SE  = 0.09, t  = −1.20, p  = .231, 95% CI [−0.27, 0.07]. R 2 change  = 0.006, F (1,232) = 1.45, p  = .231. This result hints that perceived social acceptance does not serve as an alternative explanation for the effect of high quality listening on reducing speakers' prejudiced attitudes.

In sum, the results of Study 3 generally supported the research hypotheses. The present study conceptually replicated Study 2 and addressed several of its limitations with four methodological and analytic advances. First, the effect of high quality listening on the dependent variables was replicated using a more conservative procedure, namely, following discussions of attitudes towards one of a small number of pre-specified outgroups. Second, the main effect of the listening manipulation on cognitive reappraisal alongside the significant indirect effect identifying cognitive appraisal as a mediator increased the validity of the model. Third, the use of a change score for attitude favorability provided a more precise measure of prejudice reduction that was directly due to the listening manipulation. Finally, though somewhat underpowered, the lack of moderation effect between the listening quality manipulation and perceived social acceptance predicting attitude favorability change increases the confidence that the benefits of high quality listening found in Studies 2 and 3 were unrelated to perceived social acceptance.

8. Mini meta-analysis

We conducted a random-effects meta-analysis on the pilot study and studies 1–3 ( N =  952, including the pilot study). In Study 3, we included the two listening manipulation checks. In Study 2, we converted the Cohen's f score to a Cohen's d and used the measure of reflective self-awareness as an additional indicator of self-exploration. In Study 3, we used the measure of cognitive reappraisal as an additional indicator of openness to change.

As can be seen in Table 4 , the average effect size of the listening manipulation check across the three experiments was very strong, d  = 2.11, as was the average effect on self-insight, d  = 1.17, p s < .001. Neither of these effects showed evidence of heterogeneity (although the τ for the manipulation check was large, and may not be significant due to low power). The average effect size of openness to change was d  = 0.46, p  < .001, with no evidence of heterogeneity across the experiments. Despite the non-significant main effect of listening on attitude change in Study 2 ( d  = 0.25, p  = .169), this mini meta-analysis suggests that high quality listening, as compared to regular and poor listening, increased openness to change meaningfully across the three experiments and the pilot study. Finally, the average effect size of the listening manipulation on attitude favorability was d  = 0.32, p  = .002, with no evidence of heterogeneity.

A meta-analysis of the variables (including the pilot study; N =  952).

9. General discussion

Experimental studies showed that as compared to poor listening (Study 1) and regular listening (all studies), high quality listening when discussing prejudiced attitudes facilitated speakers' self-insight, and through doing so promoted more positive attitudes. To the best of our knowledge, these studies constitute the first empirical attempt to test how listening shapes discussions of prejudice and explores a promising explanation of why attitudes shifted, namely, higher self-insight. In the present studies, complementary experimental designs allowed for a largely causal interpretation of the downstream consequences of high quality as compared to regular and poor quality listening.

These findings inform theoretical claims related to the self-integrative process by suggesting that when conversations occur in the presence of a supportive listener, the climate facilitates reflection and self-insight about one's experiences ( Rogers, 1951 , Rogers, 1980 ). Often, during the process of reflection, people can reconcile contradictory or ambivalent attitudes. Acknowledging this ambivalence and the complexity of attitudes is what Rogers predicted would result from experiencing high quality listening, and is consistent with the empirically supported therapeutic approach of motivational interviewing that his work inspired. Specifically, high quality listening elicits different and sometimes contradictory views within the speaker, that they must reconcile. This process often leads to behavioral or attitudinal changes in the speaker ( Miller & Rose, 2009 ). Previous work outside of the therapeutic context has shown that high quality listening by a layperson (not a trained clinician) can also have an impact on speakers' attitudes (e.g., Itzchakov et al., 2017 ; Itzchakov & Kluger, 2017 ; Itzchakov et al., 2018 ), though these studies focused on ambivalent attitudes, more generally. The present results provided mixed support for the view that listening can affect attitudes: we did not find compelling evidence that the experience of being listened to reduced prejudice from baseline (tested in Study 3); however, we did find, consistently, that high quality listening led to lower prejudice than regular or poor listening did when speakers talked about their attitudes.

These findings highlight that high quality listening is beneficial when individuals are asked to discuss their prejudiced attitudes. In other words, conversations about such attitudes are best had in the context of listening that conveys empathy, understanding, and support. However, these findings should be understood in the context of their boundary conditions. First, it is plausible that speakers in our studies selected to discuss moderate, rather than extreme, prejudiced attitudes. We cannot be certain that conversations about extreme attitudes would be benefited by the quality of listening similarly to our observed effects. Second, since we elicited self-reflection for the purposes of the study, it is possible that participants had not previously reflected on the attitudes they discussed. In cases where people have previously reflected on their beliefs but continue to express prejudice, high-quality listening might not show the robust benefits over regular listening identified here, as there is little or no ambivalence in beliefs to resolve.

More generally, it is important to understand boundary conditions before applying any prejudice reduction strategy. As another example, we did not find evidence that a conversation about prejudice with someone who provides high quality listening is the solution to long-standing, pervasive problems of prejudice in societies, but we did observe that it benefited an individual's attitudes in the short-term and when compared to a similar conversation with a regular quality listener. Further work examining the long-term impacts of high-quality listening on both self-insight and attitudes is critical to understand how interventions with listening can be formalized.

It is important to contextualize the present findings within the larger literature on prejudice reduction strategies. While high quality listening constitutes a new strategy in the context of prejudiced attitude change, it aligns with and complements prior work. For example, value consistency is a complementary approach to the one we used here, where participants consider the extent to which their prejudice is inconsistent with other values they hold (e.g., equality). Value consistency has been shown to be effective (e.g., Eisenstadt et al., 2003 ), and may help explain our finding that self-insight predicted lower prejudice; namely, self-insight may allow participants to realize and accept that prejudiced attitudes are inconsistent with other values they hold. Further, the effect of high quality listening studied here was not driven by intergroup contact, which is arguably the most effective of all prejudice-reduction strategies ( Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006 ), because participants did not interact with a member of the outgroup in any of the studies. It seems plausible, however, that experiencing high quality listening when it is provided by an outgroup member could produce even stronger effects on prejudice reduction. Finally, some research has indicated that perspective-taking is an effective prejudice reduction strategy ( Broockman & Kalla, 2016 ; Shih et al., 2009 ), where participants take the perspective of the outgroup. By contrast, the studies here involved participants' experience of feeling heard when they expressed their perspective. It seems plausible that conversations that facilitate the perspective-taking of both parties could be even more effective in reducing prejudice. Future research should test the effectiveness of combining high quality listening with these other documented strategies in the prejudice-reduction literature (e.g., mutual perspective sharing and taking, high quality listening provided by an outgroup member).

These findings further inform the literature on therapeutic interventions and conversations aimed towards attitude change beyond the context of prejudice reduction. Although we focused on prejudiced attitude change in this study, the processes hypothesized here are relevant to difficult conversations dealing with sensitive or potentially defense-inducing topics more broadly, including but not limited to attitude change (e.g., conflicts in romantic relationships). Though there is a substantial emphasis on incorporating high quality listening into therapeutic interventions with couples at present ( Chessick, 1989 ; Graybar & Leonard, 2005 ), it is helpful for researchers and practitioners alike to understand the mechanisms that are involved in linking high quality listening to its beneficial effects, as well as the limits of these effects across domains, subjects, relationships, and clients. Although the present studies merely scratch the surface of these research questions, they provide a launchpad for further explorations on the extent to which high quality listening facilitates the kinds of behavior and attitude change that therapists and other conversation partners hope to see.

The present research has further implications for other healthcare contexts where self-insight is important. A good example is medical and hospital visits. Doctors interrupt their patients, on average, 12 s after their patients start talking ( Rhodes et al., 2001 ). Hence, not surprisingly, one of the patients' main complaints is that their doctors do not listen to them ( Boudreau et al., 2008 ). Interestingly, the lack of self-insight might explain why patients who report that their doctors do not listen to them are less likely to adhere to their recommendations ( Magnus et al., 2013 ).

It is further worth noting that in Study 1, poor listening actively undermined self-insight. Arguably, poor listening reduces the willingness to change attitudes because it elicits defensiveness, which then discourages any positive integration tendencies like self-insight or openness to change. This finding sheds further light on the listening literature, which shows that speakers also suffer from poor listening. These include reducing the quality of speakers' narration and speech fluency ( Bavelas et al., 2000 ), as well as impairing speakers' memory ( Pasupathi et al., 1998 ), psychological safety ( Castro et al., 2016 ), and their creativity ( Castro et al., 2018 ). It is possible that poor listening reduces available cognitive resources, in part, because it puts speakers in a defensive stance, and that poor listening may backfire and increase prejudice among speakers. This backfiring effect has indeed been demonstrated in contexts low in autonomy support, where people are told that they must change without being able to express themselves or have their perspective understood ( Legault et al., 2011 ). Studies 2 and 3 did not employ poor listening because our primary interests were the beneficial effects of listening on attitudes, but future research could examine the detrimental effects of poor listening, particularly on prejudice.

9.1. Limitations and future directions

These findings should be viewed in light of several limitations. First, attitudes were measured through self-reports. Future research should complement them with measures of implicit bias and behavioral indicators of prejudice. As such, the present findings may have been vulnerable to social desirability effects (e.g., Janus, 2010 ). Implicit measures and behavioral observations of prejudice would help to validate measures of self-reported attitudinal change. In a similar vein, we focused our mediational analyses on explanations focused on fairly complex internal processes resulting from being listened to (e.g., self-insight), but the effects of listening on attitudes may be better, and more simply, explained by other proximal of listening, such as interpersonal comfort ( Williams & Irurita, 2004 ), psychological safety ( Carmeli & Gittell, 2009 ; Castro et al., 2016 ; Itzchakov et al., 2016 ), or even the valence of mood. Indeed, it is reasonable to assume that being listened to improves mood, which has downstream effects on attitudes ( Haddock et al., 1994 ).

Although good listening perception increased openness to change relative to regular listening and poor listening, the average rating on this measure was below the midpoint of the scale, even following the listening intervention, indicating the difficulty of nurturing openness. Future work should contrast listening with other interpersonal constructs, including those that have been found to increase open-mindedness in the context of attitude change ( Itzchakov & Reis, 2020 ).

Third, we manipulated several aspects of high quality listening simultaneously, but future work should consider manipulating specific qualities (e.g., careful attention, demonstrations of empathy, unconditional regard) in isolation to examine each of their separate contributions to listening effects on attitudes. At present, we can only assume that each of these contributed to the self-insight and non-prejudiced attitudes reported by our participants, but future work is needed to examine this assumption.

Finally, future research should complement this work with observed and coded data from naturalistic conversations such as those that take place between therapists and clients. Future work could also manipulate high quality listening in the context of a prejudice reduction program such as unconscious bias training, which focuses on information dissemination to reduce prejudice ( Noon, 2018 ). This form of training could be enhanced by having trainers use high quality listening strategies with attendees in helping them to explore their biases. Testing this possibility is important because most research on unconscious bias training programs have reported weak effects at best ( Lai et al., 2016 ), and many workplaces are highly invested in the goal of reducing prejudice in their organization.

10. Conclusion

The present research used experimental paradigms to manipulate listening and examined its consequences on speakers' self-insight and prejudiced attitude change. The findings highlight the importance of high quality listening for productive conversations and the potential detriments of poor listening. They suggest that in therapeutic practice, and presumably in other, informal, daily conversations, listening partners can help facilitate self-insight to promote speakers' awareness and integration of their existing views with implications for witprejudiced attitudes.

Open science statement

This work received an open science badge because the hypotheses, measures, sample size, analytic plan, and exclusion criteria for Study 1 and Study 3 were preregistered. The links for the preregistration forms can be found in the manuscript or the following links:

Study 1- http://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=n8ab67

Study 3- http://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=ej27v9

☆ This research was funded by a grant Number 460/18 from the Israeli Science Foundation to Dr. Guy Itzchakov.

2 Those who participated in the pilot study were not eligible to take part in Study 1.

3 Analyses presented above were conducted following recommendations during peer review. Findings based on preregistered models not controlling for the second dummy code produced comparable results, Dummy 1: indirect effect via self-insight, b  = 0.97, SE  = 0.12, 95% CI [0.95, 1.82]; direct effect, b  = −0.14, SE  = 0.17, t  = −0.84, p  = .401, 95% CI [−0.48, 0.18]. Self-awareness as a mediator indirect effect, b  = 0.38, SE  = 0.08, 95% CI [0.23, 0.58]; direct effect: b  = 0.45, SE  = 0.18, t  = 2.52, p  = .012, 95% CI [0.10, 0.80]. Dummy 2: indirect effect via self-insight, b  = −1.39, SE  = 0.15, 95% CI [−1.69, −1.12]; direct effect, b  = 0.52, SE  = 0.18, t  = 2.88, p  = .004, 95% CI [0.17, 0.88]. Self-awareness indirect effect, b  = −0.43, SE  = 0.09, 95% CI [−0.63, −0.27]; direct effect, b  = −0.44, SE  = 0.18, t  = −2.47, p  = .014, 95% CI [−0.78, −0.09]. The figures are reported in the supplementary materials (Figures b–e)

4 Due to a coding error, we did not have the condition assignment of one additional participant. However, additional analyses placing this individual in each of the two conditions produced comparable effects.

5 As stated in preregistration form, we aimed for N  = 328 to have a power of 95% to detect the hypothesized effect. However, because of the outbreak of COVID-19, in-lab experiments were no longer permitted as of March 2020. Therefore we had to stop data collection.

6 Similar results were obtained when using an independent t -test with the measure of attitude favorability change. Participants in the high quality listening ( M pre  = 43.37, SD  = 28.29; M post  = 45.69, SD  = 27.13) condition evidenced more change in their attitude favorability towards the outgroup, M difference  = 2.32, SD  = 18.32, than participants in the regular listening condition ( M pre  = 44.11, SD  = 29.15; M post  = 41.09, SD  = 25.97), M difference  = −3.02, SD  = 21.05, t (234) = 2.07, p  = .039, 95% CI [0.27, 10.41], d  = 0.27. d  = 0.29.

Appendix A Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104022 .

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary material 1

Supplementary material 2

• Abbass A.A., Town J.M. Key clinical processes in intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy. Psychotherapy. 2013; 50 (3):433–437. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Aguinis H., Bradley K.J. Best practice recommendations for designing and implementing experimental vignette methodology studies. Organizational Research Methods. 2014; 17 (4):351–371. [ Google Scholar ]
• Aguinis H., Pierce C.A., Culpepper S.A. Scale coarseness as a methodological artifact: Correcting correlation coefficients attenuated from using coarse scales. Organizational Research Methods. 2009; 12 (4):623–652. [ Google Scholar ]
• Amiot C.E., Sansfaçon S., Louis W.R., Yelle M. Can intergroup behaviors be emitted out of self-determined reasons? Testing the role of group norms and behavioral congruence in the internalization of discrimination and parity behaviors. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2012; 38 (1):63–76. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Assor A. Autonomous moral motivation: Consequences, socializing antecedents, and the unique role of integrated moral principles. In: Mikulincer M., Shaver P.R., editors. Herzliya series on personality and social psychology. The social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil (p. 239–255) American Psychological Association; 2012. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bachelor A. Clients’ perception of the therapeutic alliance: A qualitative analysis. Journal of Counseling Psychology. 1995; 42 (3):323–337. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bavelas J.B., Coates L., Johnson T. Listeners as co-narrators. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2000; 79 (6):941–952. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bedi R.P. Concept mapping the client’s perspective on counseling alliance formation. Journal of Counseling Psychology. 2006; 53 (1):26–35. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bennett-Levy J., Thwaites R. The therapeutic relationship in the cognitive behavioral psychotherapies. 2007. Self and self-reflection in the therapeutic relationship; pp. 255–281. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bond M.H., Gudykunst B.W. Intergroup relations across cultures. In: Berry J.W., editor. Handbook of cross-cultural psychology: Social behavior and applications. Allyn and Bacon; Boston, MA: 1997. pp. 119–161. [ Google Scholar ]
• Boudreau J.D., Jagosh J., Slee R., Macdonald M.E., Steinert Y. Patients’ perspectives on physicians’ roles: Implications for curricular reform. Academic Medicine. 2008; 83 (8):744–753. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brehm J.W. General Learning Press; Morristown, NJ: 1972. Responses to loss of freedom: A theory of psychological reactance. [ Google Scholar ]
• Broockman D., Kalla J. Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing. Science. 2016; 352 (6282):220–224. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bruneau E.G., Saxe R. The power of being heard: The benefits of “perspective-giving” in the context of intergroup conflict. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2012; 48 (4):855–866. [ Google Scholar ]
• Campbell J.D., Trapnell P.D., Heine S.J., Katz I.M., Lavallee L.F., Lehman D.R. Self-concept clarity: Measurement, personality correlates, and cultural boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1996; 70 (1):141. [ Google Scholar ]
• Caprariello P.A., Reis H.T. Perceived partner responsiveness minimizes defensive reactions to failure. Social Psychological and Personality Science. 2011; 2 (4):365–372. [ Google Scholar ]
• Carmeli A., Gittell J.H. High-quality relationships, psychological safety, and learning from failures in work organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior. 2009; 30 (6):709–729. [ Google Scholar ]
• Castonguay L.G., Hill C.E. American Psychological Association; 2007. Insight in psychotherapy (pp. xvi-481) [ Google Scholar ]
• Castro D.R., Anseel F., Kluger A.N., Lloyd K.J., Turjeman-Levi Y. Mere listening effect on creativity and the mediating role of psychological safety. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2018; 12 (4):489–502. [ Google Scholar ]
• Castro D.R., Kluger A.N., Itzchakov G. Does avoidance-attachment style attenuate the benefits of being listened to? European Journal of Social Psychology. 2016; 46 :762–775. [ Google Scholar ]
• Chessick R.D. Rowman & Littlefield; 1989. The technique and practice of listening in intensive psychotherapy. [ Google Scholar ]
• Connolly Gibbons M.B., Crits-Christoph P., Barber J.P., Schamberger M. 2007. Insight in psychotherapy: A review of empirical literature. [ Google Scholar ]
• Correll J., Judd C.M., Park B., Wittenbrink B. Measuring prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination. In: Dovidio J.F., Hewstone M., Glick P., Esses V.M., editors. The sage handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. Sage; London: 2010. pp. 45–62. [ Google Scholar ]
• Deci E.L., Ryan R.M. Self-determination theory. In: Van Lange P., Kruglanski A.W., Higgins T., editors. Handbook of theories of social psychology, 2. Sage; London: 2011. pp. 416–433. [ Google Scholar ]
• DeMarree K.G., Morrison K.R., Wheeler S.C., Petty R.E. Self-ambivalence and resistance to subtle self-change attempts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2011; 37 (5):674–686. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Djikic M., Langer E.J., Stapleton S.F. Reducing stereotyping through mindfulness: Effects on automatic stereotype-activated behaviors. Journal of Adult Development. 2008; 15 (2):106–111. [ Google Scholar ]
• Dunning D. Psychology Press; 2012. Self-insight: Roadblocks and detours on the path to knowing thyself. [ Google Scholar ]
• Edmondson A. Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly. 1999; 44 (2):350–383. [ Google Scholar ]
• Eisenstadt D., Leippe M.R., Rivers J.A., Stambush M.A. Counterattitudinal advocacy on a matter of prejudice: Effects of distraction, commitment, and personal importance 1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 2003; 33 (10):2123–2152. [ Google Scholar ]
• Erbas Y., Ceulemans E., Lee Pe M., Koval P., Kuppens P. Negative emotion differentiation: Its personality and well-being correlates and a comparison of different assessment methods. Cognition and Emotion. 2014; 28 (7):1196–1213. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Faul F., Erdfelder E., Lang A.-G., Buchner A. G* power 3: Flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods. 2007; 39 (2):175–191. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fousiani K., Dimitropoulou P., Michaelides M. Controlled motivational orientation and prejudice. Swiss Journal of Psychology. 2016; 75 :1–11. [ Google Scholar ]
• Freud A. Int. Psychoanal. Verlag; Oxford, England: 1936. Das Ich und die Abwehrmechanismen [The ego and the defense mechanisms] [ Google Scholar ]
• Frey D. Advances in experimental social psychology. Vol. 19. Academic Press; 1986. Recent research on selective exposure to information; pp. 41–80. [ Google Scholar ]
• Friedman N. Experiential listening. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. 2005; 45 (2):217–238. [ Google Scholar ]
• Galinsky A.D., Ku G. The effects of perspective-taking on prejudice: The moderating role of self-evaluation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2004; 30 (5):594–604. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gilbert P. Routledge; 2010. Compassion focused therapy: Distinctive features. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gordon T. New American Library; New York, NY: 1975. P E.T.: Parent effectiveness training. [ Google Scholar ]
• Grant A.M., Franklin J., Langford P. The self-reflection and insight scale: A new measure of private self-consciousness. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal. 2002; 30 (8):821–835. [ Google Scholar ]
• Graybar S.R., Leonard L.M. In defense of listening. American Journal of Psychotherapy. 2005; 59 (1):1–18. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Haddock G., Foad C., Windsor-Shellard B., Dummel S., Adarves-Yorno I. On the attitudinal consequences of being mindful: Links between mindfulness and attitudinal ambivalence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2017; 43 (4):439–452. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Haddock G., Zanna M.P. Impact of negative advertising on evaluations of political candidates: The 1993 Canadian federal election. Basic and Applied Social Psychology. 1997; 19 (2):205–223. [ Google Scholar ]
• Haddock G., Zanna M.P. Evaluation thermometer measure for assessing attitudes toward gay men. In: Davis C.M., editor. Handbook of sexuality-related measures. Sage; London: 1998. pp. 381–382. [ Google Scholar ]
• Haddock G., Zanna M.P., Esses V.M. Assessing the structure of prejudicial attitudes: The case of attitudes toward homosexuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1993; 65 (6):1105. [ Google Scholar ]
• Haddock G., Zanna M.P., Esses V.M. Mood and the expression of intergroup attitudes: The moderating role of affect intensity. European Journal of Social Psychology. 1994; 24 (1):189–205. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hayes A.F. Guilford Publications; 2017. Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. [ Google Scholar ]
• Heller J.F., Pallak M.S., Picek J.M. The interactive effects of intent and threat on boomerang attitude change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1973; 26 (2):273–279. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hill C.L., Updegraff J.A. Mindfulness and its relationship to emotional regulation. Emotion. 2012; 12 (1):81–90. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hodgins H.S., Knee C.R. The integrating self and conscious experience. In: Deci E.L., Ryan R.M., editors. Handbook of self-determination research. University of Rochester Press; Rochester, NY: 2002. pp. 87–100. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hodgins H.S., Yacko H.A., Gottlieb E. Autonomy and non-defensiveness. Motivation and Emotion. 2006; 30 (4):283–293. [ Google Scholar ]
• Itzchakov G., Amar M., Van Harreveld F. Don't let the facts ruin a good story: The effect of vivid reviews on attitude ambivalence and its coping mechanisms. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2020; 88 :103938. [ Google Scholar ]
• Itzchakov G., Castro D.R., Kluger A.N. If you want people to listen to you, tell a story. International Journal of Listening. 2016; 30 (3):120–133. [ Google Scholar ]
• Itzchakov G., DeMarree K.G., Kluger A.N., Turjeman-Levi Y. The listener sets the tone: High-quality listening increases attitude clarity and behavior-intention consequences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2018; 44 (5):762–778. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Itzchakov G., Kluger A.N. Can holding a stick improve listening at work? The effect of listening circles on employees’ emotions and cognitions. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. 2017; 26 (5):663–676. [ Google Scholar ]
• Itzchakov G., Kluger A.N. The power of listening in helping people change. Harvard Business Review. 2018 https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-power-of-listening-in-helping-people-change Retrieved from. [ Google Scholar ]
• Itzchakov G., Kluger A.N., Castro D.R. I am aware of my inconsistencies but can tolerate them: The effect of high quality listening on speakers’ attitude ambivalence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2017; 43 (1):105–120. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Itzchakov G., Kluger A.N., Emanuel-Tor M., Gizbar H.K. How do you like me to listen to you? International Journal of Listening. 2014; 28 (3):177–185. [ Google Scholar ]
• Itzchakov G., Reis H.T. Perceived responsiveness increases tolerance of attitude ambivalence and enhances intentions to behave in an open-minded manner. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2020 doi: 10.1177/0146167220929218. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Itzchakov G., Van Harreveld F. Feeling torn and fearing rue: Attitude ambivalence and anticipated regret as antecedents of biased information seeking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2018; 75 :19–26. [ Google Scholar ]
• Janus A.L. The influence of social desirability pressures on expressed immigration attitudes. Social Science Quarterly. 2010; 91 (4):928–946. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jemmott J.B., Ditto P.H., Croyle R.T. Judging health status: Effects of perceived prevalence and personal relevance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1986; 50 (5):899–905. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jones S.M., Wirtz J.G. How does the comforting process work? An empirical test of an appraisal-based model of comforting. Human Communication Research. 2006; 32 (3):217–243. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kabat-Zinn J. Mindfulness. Mindfulness. 2015; 6 (6):1481–1483. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kalla J.L., Broockman D.E. Reducing exclusionary attitudes through interpersonal conversation: Evidence from three field experiments. American Political Science Review. 2020:1–16. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kawakami K., Dunn E., Karmali F., Dovidio J.F. Mispredicting affective and behavioral responses to racism. Science. 2009; 323 (5911):276–278. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kegan R. Harvard University Press; 1982. The evolving self. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kemper B.J. Therapeutic listening: Developing the concept. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services. 1992; 30 (7):21–23. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kluger A.N., Bouskila-Yam O. Facilitating listening scale. In: Worthington D.L., Bodie G.D., editors. The sourcebook of listening research: methodology and measures. John Wiley & Sons; 2018. pp. 272–280. [ Google Scholar ]
• Krosnick J.A., Petty R.E. Attitude strength: An overview. Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences. 1995; 1 :1–24. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kunda Z. The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin. 1990; 108 :480–498. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kunstman J.W., Plant E.A., Zielaskowski K. Feeling in with the outgroup: Outgroup acceptance and the internalization of the motivation to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2013; 105 :443–457. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lacewing M. Psychodynamic psychotherapy, insight, and therapeutic action. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice. 2014; 21 (2):154–171. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lai C.K., Skinner A.L., Cooley E., Murrar S., Brauer M., Devos T.…Simo Reducing implicit racial preferences: II. Intervention effectiveness across time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 2016; 145 (8):1001–1016. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lambert M.J., Barley D.E. Research summary on the therapeutic relationship and psychotherapy outcome. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training. 2001; 38 (4):357–361. [ Google Scholar ]
• Legault L., Gutsell J.N., Inzlicht M. Ironic effects of antiprejudice messages: How motivational interventions can reduce (but also increase) prejudice. Psychological Science. 2011; 22 (12):1472–1477. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Levitt D.H. Active listening and counselor self-efficacy: Emphasis on one micro-skill in beginning counselor training. The Clinical Supervisor. 2001; 20 :101–115. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lillis J., Hayes S.C. Applying acceptance, mindfulness, and values to the reduction of prejudice: A pilot study. Behavior Modification. 2007; 31 (4):389–411. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lipetz L., Kluger A.N., Bodie G.D. Listening is listening is listening: Employees’ perception of listening as a holistic phenomenon. International Journal of Listening. 2018:1–26. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lueke A., Gibson B. Mindfulness meditation reduces implicit age and race bias: The role of reduced automaticity of responding. Social Psychological and Personality Science. 2015; 6 (3):284–291. [ Google Scholar ]
• Magnus M., Herwehe J., Murtaza-Rossini M., Reine P., Cuffie D., Gruber D., Kaiser M. Linking and retaining HIV patients in care: The importance of provider attitudes and behaviors. AIDS Patient Care and STDs. 2013; 27 (5):297–303. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Maio G.R., Haddock G., Manstead A.S., Spears R. Attitudes and intergroup relations. In: Dovidio J.F., Hewstone M., Glick P., Esses V.M., editors. The Sage handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. 2010. pp. 261–275. [ Google Scholar ]
• Miller W.R., Rose G.S. Toward a theory of motivational interviewing. American Psychologist. 2009; 64 (6):527–537. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Morrison K.R., Wheeler S.C. Nonconformity defines the self: The role of minority opinion status in self-concept clarity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2010; 36 (3):297–308. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Noon M. Pointless diversity training: Unconscious bias, new racism and agency. Work, Employment and Society. 2018; 32 (1):198–209. [ Google Scholar ]
• Omoto A.M., Snyder M. Sustained helping without obligation: Motivation, longevity of service, and openness to change among AIDS volunteers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1995; 68 (4):671–686. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Paluck E.L., Green D.P. Prejudice reduction: What works? A review and assessment of research and practice. Annual Review of Psychology. 2009; 60 :339–367. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Parker S.K., Axtell C.M. Seeing another viewpoint: Antecedents and outcomes of employee perspective-taking. Academy of Management Journal. 2001; 44 (6):1085–1100. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pasupathi M., Stallworth L.M., Murdoch K. How what we tell becomes what we know: Listener effects on speakers’ long-term memory for events. Discourse Processes. 1998; 26 (1):1–25. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pavey L.J., Sparks P. Threats to autonomy: Motivational responses to risk information. European Journal of Social Psychology. 2008; 38 (5):852–865. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pavey L.J., Sparks P. Autonomy and defensiveness: Experimentally increasing adaptive responses to health-risk information via priming and self-affirmation. Psychology & Health. 2012; 27 (3):259–276. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pennebaker J.W., Kiecolt-Glaser J.K., Glaser R. Disclosure of traumas and immune function: Health implications for psychotherapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 1988; 56 (2):239–245. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Perls F., Hefferline G., Goodman P. 1951. Gestalt therapy. New York. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pettigrew T.F., Tropp L.R. A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2006; 90 (5):751–783. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Preacher K.J., Hayes A.F. Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods. 2008; 40 (3):879–891. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Reis H.T., Lee K.Y., O’Keefe S.D., Clark M.S. Perceived partner responsiveness promotes intellectual humility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2018; 79 :21–33. [ Google Scholar ]
• Reis H.T., Lemay E.P., Jr., Finkenauer C. Toward understanding understanding: The importance of feeling understood in relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. 2017; 11 :1–22. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rhodes D., McFarland K.F., Finch W.H., Johnson A.O. Speaking and interruptions during primary care office visits. Family Medicine. 2001; 33 (7):528–532. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rogers C. Houghton Mifflin; Boston, MA: 1951. Client-centered therapy: Its current practice, implications, and theory. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rogers C. Houghton Mifflin; Boston, MA: 1980. A way of being. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rucker D.D., Preacher K.J., Tormala Z.L., Petty R.E. Mediation analysis in social psychology: Current practices and new recommendations. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. 2011; 5 (6):359–371. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ryan R.M., Deci E.L. Guilford Publications; 2017. Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. [ Google Scholar ]
• Shedler J. The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist. 2010; 65 (2):98–109. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sherman D.K., Cohen G.L. Accepting threatening information: Self–affirmation and the reduction of defensive biases. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2002; 11 (4):119–123. [ Google Scholar ]
• Shih M., Wang E., Trahan Bucher A., Stotzer R. Perspective-taking: Reducing prejudice towards general outgroups and specific individuals. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. 2009; 12 (5):565–577. [ Google Scholar ]
• Stotland E., Katz D., Patcshen M. The reduction of prejudice through the arousal of self-insight 1. Journal of Personality. 1959; 27 (4):507–531. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Trapnell P.D., Campbell J.D. Private self-consciousness and the five-factor model of personality: Distinguishing rumination from reflection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1999; 76 (2):284–304. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tyler T.R., Blader S.L. The group engagement model: Procedural justice, social identity, and cooperative behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2003; 7 (4):349–361. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Quaquebeke N., Felps W. Respectful inquiry: A motivational account of leading through asking questions and listening. Academy of Management Review. 2018; 43 (1):5–27. [ Google Scholar ]
• Vargas M.J. Changes in self-awareness during client-centered therapy. In: Rogers C.R., Dymond R.F., editors. Psychotherapy and personality change. University of Chicago Press; Chicago, IL, US: 1954. pp. 145–166. [ Google Scholar ]
• Verplanken B., Friborg O., Wang C.E., Trafimow D., Woolf K. Mental habits: Metacognitive reflection on negative self-thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2007; 92 (3):526. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Weinstein N., Deci E.L., Ryan R.M. Motivational determinants of integrating positive and negative past identities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2011; 100 (3):527–544. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Weinstein N., Hodgins H.S. The moderating role of autonomy and control on the benefits of written emotion expression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2009; 35 (3):351–364. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Weinstein N., Przybylski A.K., Ryan R.M. The integrative process: New research and future directions. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2013; 22 (1):69–74. [ Google Scholar ]
• Weinstein N., Ryan W.S., DeHaan C.R., Przybylski A.K., Legate N., Ryan R.M. Parental autonomy support and discrepancies between implicit and explicit sexual identities: Dynamics of self-acceptance and defense. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2012; 102 (4):815–832. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Williams A.M., Irurita V.F. Therapeutic and non-therapeutic interpersonal interactions: The patient’s perspective. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 2004; 13 (7):806–815. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zúñiga X., Naagda B.R.A., Sevig T.D. Intergroup dialogues: An educational model for cultivating engagement across differences. Equity & Excellence in Education. 2002; 35 (1):7–17. [ Google Scholar ]

Questions 1-5  Listen from here

You will hear a woman called Phoebe, who is training to be a teacher, talking to her tutor, called Tony, about research she has done in a school.

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C .

Research project on attitudes towards study

1     Phoebe’s main reason for choosing her topic was that

A her classmates had been very interested in it.

B it would help prepare her for her first teaching post.

C she had been inspired by a particular book.

2     Phoebe’s main research question related to

A the effect of teacher discipline.

B the variety of learning activities.

C levels of pupil confidence.

3     Phoebe was most surprised by her finding that

A gender did not influence behaviour significantly.

B girls were more negative about school than boys.

C boys were more talkative than girls in class.

4    Regarding teaching, Phoebe says she has learned that

A teachers should be flexible in their lesson planning.

B brighter children learn from supporting weaker ones.

C children vary from each other in unpredictable ways.

5    Tony is particularly impressed by Phoebe’s ability to

A recognise the limitations of such small-scale research.

B reflect on her own research experience in an interesting way.

C design her research in such a way as to minimise difficulties.

Questions 6-10  Listen from here

What did Phoebe find difficult about the different research techniques she used?

Choose FIVE answers from the box and write the correct letter A-G , next to questions 6-10 .

Difficulties

A Obtaining permission

B Deciding on a suitable focus

C Concentrating while gathering data

D Working collaboratively

E Processing data she had gathered

F Finding a suitable time to conduct the research

G Getting hold of suitable equipment

Research techniques

6 A B C D E F G    Observing lessons

7 A B C D E F G    Interviewing teachers

8 A B C D E F G    Interviewing pupils

9 A B C D E F G    Using questionnaires

10 A B C D E F G    Taking photographs

---End of the Test---

Please Submit to view your score, solution and explanations.

 Submit

 Found a mistake? Let us know!

Review your answers

* This window is to review your answers only, you cannot change the answers in here

Are you sure want to exit?

• Retake the test

Are you sure want to submit?

• Submit and view Answers

Found a mistake? Let us know!

Please descibe the mistake as details as possible along with your expected correction, leave your email so we can contact with you when needed.

Describe what is wrong with the practice test:

Please enter description

Enter your name:

Enter your email address:

Please enter a valid email

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Language Attitudes in Sociolinguistic Research: A methodological perspective

2018, Bouhout

This paper seeks to offer a methodological insight into the basic procedures that need to be followed in the investigation of language attitudes. This research endeavour, which is primarily meant to be a guide for beginning researchers in the area of sociolinguistics, focuses on various approaches that target observation 2 , such as the mentalist and behaviourist ones. The paper also addresses issues related to the most common methods of collecting data, namely questionnaires and interviews and the way they can be statistically analysed. Résumé Cet article vise à montrer un aperçu méthodologique des procédures de base qui doivent

Related Papers

Barbara Soukup

Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis

Krzysztof Przygoński

The present article constitutes the second part of a brief critical analysis of the research on attitude and attitude-(speech) behaviour relations. Its major aim is to show that the contribution from the socio-psychological paradigm can prove relevant and valuable when applied to sociolinguistic research on attitude and attitude-behaviour relations. The author argues that attitudinal investigations in sociolinguistics, despite their popularity and rich history, frequently suffer from a number of methodological and theoretical flaws. The author advances an argument that a reconceptualization of the construct of attitude and some additional methodological principles can help refine the whole paradigm of language attitude research. Specifically, it is pointed out that a cognitive/information-processing approach to attitude formation, the theory of planned behaviour and other theoretical and methodological insights discussed in this paper can prove immensely rewarding and can give a new...

The present article constitutes the first part of a brief critical analysis of the research on attitude and attitude-(speech) behaviour relations. Its major aim is to show that the contribution from the socio-psychological paradigm can prove relevant and valuable when applied to sociolinguistic research on attitude and attitude-behaviour relations. The author argues that attitudinal investigations in sociolinguistics, despite their popu­larity and rich history, frequently suffer from a number of methodological and theoretical flaws. The author advances an argument that a reconceptualization of the construct of attitude and certain methodological principles can help refine the whole language at­titudes paradigm. Specifically, it is pointed out that a cognitive/information-processing approach to attitude formation, the theory of planned behaviour and other theoretical and methodological insights discussed in this paper can prove immensely rewarding and can give a new impetus for furth...

Elena Rodgers

This paper reviews discourse-based approaches to language attitudes in terms of their contributions to understanding the creation of socio-indexical meaning in metalinguistic discourse. It proposes a five-level typology of approaches which includes topic-oriented, linguistic, cognitive, interactional, and rhetorical analyses. The article discusses the ways in which different types of analyses expose various aspects of social-semiotic and meta-semiotic processes involved in constructions of sociolinguistic indexical relations in the local interactional and larger contextual frames. The paper argues in favor of integrated discourse-based approaches and illustrates the potential of a rhetorical approach to serve as a unifying framework for blending analytical levels.

Language & Communication

Richard Clément

Walter Sistrunk

Amin Alshangiti

This research aims to present and review the quantitative sociolinguistic framework (Labovian Method) adopted in many sociolinguistic studies (including Arabic Language studies). In addition, it describes, in detail, the methods and means that commonly used to collect, organise and analyse sociolinguistic data. The research also emphasises the fact that sociolinguistic data mainly elicited by using a common method in sociolinguistics, i.e. tape recording. Two common settings related to tape recording method were chosen to be reviewed: personal interviews and group discussions. Moreover, for sampling sociolinguistic research participants, two methods of sampling were reviewed and discussed, i.e. random sampling and judgment sampling. This study argues that the latter method seems to be the only appropriate sampling method to use in the Arab world, due to the difficulty to approach Arab speakers without pre-arrangement. More importantly, the study reviewed two fundamental components o...

Stephane Cloutier

Language and Linguistics Compass

Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain

Language attitudes research has had a history spanning several decades largely influenced by quantitative approaches. More recently, interactional perspectives have added new impetus to the field. This article provides an overview of interactional approaches to language attitudes, which are divided into three main groups: (a) discursive psychology, (b) approaches that draw on conversational analysis and interactional sociolinguistics, and (c) approaches based in the theory of motivated information management. The authors argue that these approaches can instigate new questions and yield new insights into our understanding of language attitudes. In positioning qualitative, largely interactional, approaches with respect to one another (and, briefly, to language attitude study more broadly), this article also re‐evaluates some terminological inconsistencies across the field and touches on areas that ought to be considered in future research addressing language attitudes.

Christina Korb

Language attitudes, whether positive or negative, influence the language choices and practices of individual speakers. They furthermore reflect certain beliefs and dominant discourses about language varieties and language per se. In the case of minority languages, positive language attitudes may promote language maintenance, whereas negative language attitudes can lead to language shift. In this article multilingual adolescents’ language attitudes towards their home languages will be addressed. By conducting narrative interviews, not only insights into the speakers’experiences and attitudes were obtained, but also factors that contribute to the formation of language attitudes were exposed. Hence, the focus of this paper lies on the factor of linguistic competence, or rather, individual perception and evaluation of linguistic competence. This paper discusses the issue by providing examples, which illustrate that the perception of one’s own linguistic competence significantly influences language attitudes and consequently alters language practices.

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Andrew C. Billings

Zoubir Dendane

Erin Carrie

Journal of Sociolinguistics

Laura Potter

Dialectologia

Seyyed Hatam Tamimi Sad

zeinab kafi

Annals of the International Communication Association

Aaron Cargile

The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Ed. Carol A. Chapelle

Gabrielle Hogan-Brun

English World-Wide

Josef Schmied

Implicit and Explicit Language Attitudes: Mapping Linguistic Prejudice and Attitude Change in England

Robert M. McKenzie

EXAMINING THE COMPLEMENTARY ROLE OF SPEAKERS’ PERSPECTIVE IN LANGUAGE ATTITUDES RESEARCH: A CASE STUDY OF SAUDI ARABIAN DIALECTS

Laila Alhazmi

Miriam Meyerhoff

Acta Linguistica Hafniensia

Anne Fabricius

abderrahim HADADJ

alireza dabbaghi

ALELIGN A S C H A L E WUDIE

JIDE ALEBIOSU

Mohammed Fawzy

Robert Lawson

Argentinian Journal of Applied Linguistics

Ali Alsaawi, PhD

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Corpus ID: 56130198

Radio Listening Habits among University Students and Their Attitude towards Programmes (A Study of Redeemers University Students)

• O. Ajaegbu , Babafemi J. Akintayo , Melody M. Akinjiyan
• Published 2015
• Education, Sociology
• Research on humanities and social sciences

Tables from this paper

7 Citations

University students listening behaviour of fm radio programmes in nigeria: an exploratory approach, assessment of radio listening habits of undergraduate students of imo state university, nigeria, the role of student radio stations in the higher education system, factors influencing the choice and satisfaction with campus radio in the central region of ghana, an evaluation of radio audience satisfaction with programming on inspiration 92.3 fm, lagos, an evaluation of radio audience satisfaction with programming on inspiration 92 . 3 fm, listenership of farmers' digest radio program on joy fm (96.5), otukpo, benue state, nigeria, 16 references, youth radio listening habits and station preferences in nigeria, radio – the forgotten medium or user’s creative mental interaction and co-production, introduction to mass communication, media performance: mass communication and the public interest, cultural images of the media.

• Highly Influential

The effects of mass communication on political behavior

Related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

• Higher Education
• Graduate Education

Students’ Attitudes towards Research: A Study of Graduate Education Students at a Chinese Normal University

• Educational Process International Journal 8(2):97-110
• 8(2):97-110

• University of Zambia
• This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.

Abstract and Figures

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations

• Nataliia Martovytska
• Olena Kolomiiets
• Tetyana Demydenko

• Heny Narendrany Hidayati
• Ruma Banerjee
• Hicham Laabidi

• Leo Ulises Michaell Tirado Rebaza
• Efren Eugenio Chaparro Montoya
• Williams Sergio Almanza Quispe
• Fabiola Mena Choque
• Gerson Jeremy Antonio
• Cristine D. Alipio
• Leonilo A. Reginaldo

• John W Creswell

• Freddie Avant
• Stephen F. Austin

• EDUC PSYCHOL MEAS

• Teresa Morris
• Robert G. Green
• Antoinette Bretzin
• Christine Leininger
• Rose Stauffer
• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up