FaithlessThinker
New Member
Another topic that warrants a Psychology subforum...
I've been thinking about how different people listen to a speaker in different ways. I've been wanting to call it "subjective listening" and "objective listening" but apparently these terms mean something related to music according to Google. I'm not talking about music here.
For brevity, I'll call these two types as Type A (objective) and Type B (subjective). Forgive me if you find me beating around the bush in the following passages, but I want to make it clear.
Type A: This would be my preferred form of listening. When a speaker is delivering the message, what is most important is the content of the message itself, and not the accent of the speaker or the tone in which the message is delivered. Basically, who delivers the message doesn't really matter as much as what is in the message. He could be the guy next to you in the office, or the President. It doesn't really matter who he is, as much as it matters what he says. A Type A listener would understand this importance and would not be affected by the qualities of the speaker, but would be able to focus his listening on what the speaker says.
I wouldn't say a Type A listener would totally disregard the subjective part of listening such as accents and tone, but these would be placed on a lower importance compared to the objective part. Even if the speaker speaks in a different accent than the listener, or if he speaks in an accent that would normally be found as "funny" by the listener, he (the listener) is able to put these reactions aside and instead focus on what the speaker speaks about.
Type B: This is unfavorable to me, as it expects the speaker to be perfect and tends to reduce or ignore the importance of the qualities of the message itself. A Type B listener would tend to have a subjective view of the speaker, placing more importance upon him, his accent and tone than on the content itself. These kind of people can't help but laugh when that funny accent guy comes in the middle of an informative show (like on Discovery channel) and says something knowledgeable in an interview. They would also be affected by how their friends or family members communicate with them. It would make a lot more difference to a Type B person if a family member delivers a message in a angry tone rather than in a happy tone than it would for a Type A person.
When I think about it, this is in a way related to how religions work, because religious people tend to be Type B listeners, giving importance to who is delivering the message (messenger of god, priest, etc.) and not what the message itself is (thou shalt do some absurd thing).
What do you think of my hypothesis? Has any scientific studies been done about this or something similar? Contributions welcome.
I've been thinking about how different people listen to a speaker in different ways. I've been wanting to call it "subjective listening" and "objective listening" but apparently these terms mean something related to music according to Google. I'm not talking about music here.
For brevity, I'll call these two types as Type A (objective) and Type B (subjective). Forgive me if you find me beating around the bush in the following passages, but I want to make it clear.
Type A: This would be my preferred form of listening. When a speaker is delivering the message, what is most important is the content of the message itself, and not the accent of the speaker or the tone in which the message is delivered. Basically, who delivers the message doesn't really matter as much as what is in the message. He could be the guy next to you in the office, or the President. It doesn't really matter who he is, as much as it matters what he says. A Type A listener would understand this importance and would not be affected by the qualities of the speaker, but would be able to focus his listening on what the speaker says.
I wouldn't say a Type A listener would totally disregard the subjective part of listening such as accents and tone, but these would be placed on a lower importance compared to the objective part. Even if the speaker speaks in a different accent than the listener, or if he speaks in an accent that would normally be found as "funny" by the listener, he (the listener) is able to put these reactions aside and instead focus on what the speaker speaks about.
Type B: This is unfavorable to me, as it expects the speaker to be perfect and tends to reduce or ignore the importance of the qualities of the message itself. A Type B listener would tend to have a subjective view of the speaker, placing more importance upon him, his accent and tone than on the content itself. These kind of people can't help but laugh when that funny accent guy comes in the middle of an informative show (like on Discovery channel) and says something knowledgeable in an interview. They would also be affected by how their friends or family members communicate with them. It would make a lot more difference to a Type B person if a family member delivers a message in a angry tone rather than in a happy tone than it would for a Type A person.
When I think about it, this is in a way related to how religions work, because religious people tend to be Type B listeners, giving importance to who is delivering the message (messenger of god, priest, etc.) and not what the message itself is (thou shalt do some absurd thing).
What do you think of my hypothesis? Has any scientific studies been done about this or something similar? Contributions welcome.
