How Men and Women Differ in the Way They Listen

Men and women differ in the way they listen. Men rely more heavily on one side but women on the other side appear to use both sides of the brain.(Indiana University,2000)

Both genders differ in terms of what they focus on when listening; men focus on the facts when women focus on “the mood of the communication”.( Canary and Hause,1993)

Men often dominate conversations in public, even when they know less about a subject compared to women, because they use conversation to establish status. Women, on the other hand, often listen more because they have been socialized to be accommodating. These patterns, which begin in childhood, mean, for instance, that men are far more likely to interrupt another speaker, and not take it personally when they are themselves interrupted, while women are more likely to finish each other’s sentences. (Tannen, 1990)

When women listen, they tend to maintain fairly steady eye contact. They often smile sporadically, nod their heads and make humming sounds. In female conversational style, this set of behaviors means only one thing - 'I'm listening.' No additional signal is being sent. Men listen in a different way. They often have only sporadic eye contact with the speaker; they rarely nod, smile or hum; they often maintain a neutral face and frequently engage in additional physical activities, such as paper-shuffling, pen-twirling or walking around, even reading. But studies have shown that they are listening while engaging in these activities.

Women tend to place a higher value on connection, cooperation and emotional messages. They connect more to the emotional tone of the conversation. Men are generally more concerned with facts or information required to successfully complete a task or solve a problem and may be uncomfortable talking about and listening to personal or emotional subjects.(Booth-Butterfield, 1984)

Women . . . often assume the man is not listening and take it as a sign of arrogance and sexism, thereby making a mistaken decision and keeping gender stereotypes alive. And if the woman decides to say something about his failure to listen, (he thinks) she sounds like an over-emotional, oversensitive, unprofessional woman who is taking things personally - because he knows that he has heard every word and can prove it with a brief verbal summary. So he has made a mistaken decision about this woman, and he has done his part to keep gender stereotypes alive.

Not only do women give more listening signals, but the signals they give have different meanings for men and women, consistent with the speaker/audience alignment. Women use ‘yeah’ to mean ‘I’m with you, I follow,’ whereas men tend to say ‘yeah’ only when they agree. The opportunity for misunderstanding is clear. When a man is confronted with a woman who has been saying ‘yeah,’ ‘yeah,’ ‘yeah,’ and then turns out not to agree, he may conclude that she has been insincere, or that she was agreeing without really listening. When a woman is confronted with a man who does not say ‘yeah’ – or much of anything else – she may conclude that he hasn’t been listening. The men’s style is more literally focused on the message level of the talk, while the women’s is focused on the relationship or metamessage level. (Tannen,1990)

Women tend to use more words to communicate their thoughts, experiences, ideas, history, and emotions than men do. Men tend to narrow their focus down to one thing at a time while women tend to be big picture communicators. 

 Men prefer to stay on task when communicating while women prefer to make sure they communicate all the various threads that connect to the point or points they want to make.

Another listening issue that arises between men and women occurs when they are simply sharing the details of each other’s day, thoughts and ideas. Again, men tend to get to the point quickly and decisively while women weave multiple threads of various stories together. Before long, both are slightly annoyed with each other because he quit listening fifteen minutes ago and she still has so much to share.

 References

Canary, D. J. & Hause, K. S. (1993). Is there any reason to research sex differences in communication? Communication Quaterly, 41, 129-144.

Karima, M. (2012) How Men and Women Differ: Gender differences in Communication Styles, Influence Tactics and Leadership styles. CMC Senior Thesis paper 513

Tannen, D. (1990) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men In Conversation. Ballentine Books: USA.

Indiana University. (2000, November 29). Men Do Hear -- But Differently Than Women, Brain Images Show. Chicago