![]() ![]() It may explain why people in close relationships sometimes withhold information or keep secrets from one another. The closeness-communication bias not only keeps us from listening to those we love, it can also keep us from allowing our loved ones to listen to us. “We all develop stereotypes of the people we know well, and those stereotypes lead us to make mistakes.” Now he said he asks his wife for a list of gifts she wants. “I didn’t stop to think, ’Is this the right gift given where my wife is now in her life?’ I hadn’t really been listening well enough to know where she was,”ĭr. Just the thought of touching a dead fish made her want to vomit. She was annoyed because she was pregnant at the time and suffering from morning sickness. He thought she’d love it because she’d once expressed interest in swimming with dolphins. “We just don’t do that as much with those we are close to because we assume we know what they are saying and that they know what we are saying.”Ī prime example, he said, was when he gave his wife what he thought was the perfect gift: a behind-the-scenes tour of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, during which she would get to feed the dolphins, beluga whales and penguins. ![]() “Accurately understanding another person often requires a second thought, to think, ‘Wait a minute, is this really what this person meant?’ and to check it,” said Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who studies the closeness-communication bias. While the subjects predicted they would more accurately understand, and be understood by, those with whom they had close relationships, they often understood them no better than strangers, and often worse. In each scenario, the researchers asked subjects to interpret what their partners were saying. Social science researchers have repeatedly demonstrated the closeness-communication bias in experimental setups where they paired subjects first with friends or spouses and then with strangers. “We weren’t really listening to each other, which made it harder for us to really know each other.” “When my sister moved, we were forced to recognize we had all these preconceived notions about who the other was,” Ms. They had spent most of their lives sleeping in the same room, going to the same schools, attending the same parties, competing in the same sports, and playing in the same band. Kaleena, now the owner of a company that makes cocktail bitters in Chattanooga, Tenn., said she and her twin had previously been inseparable. ![]() Kaleena Goldsworthy, 33, told me it was a shock when her identical twin, Kayleigh, decided to move to New York City 10 years ago to pursue a career in music. It can occur even when two people spend all their time together and have many of the same experiences. The closeness-communication bias is at work when romantic partners feel they don’t know each other anymore or when parents discover their children are up to things they never imagined. ![]() The sum of daily interactions and activities continually shapes us, so none of us are the same as we were last month, last week or even yesterday. It’s kind of like when you’ve traveled a certain route several times and no longer notice signposts and scenery.īut people are always changing. Once you know people well enough to feel close, there’s an unconscious tendency to tune them out because you think you already know what they are going to say. It’s called the closeness-communication bias and, over time, it can strain, and even end, relationships. During my two years researching a book on listening, I learned something incredibly ironic about interpersonal communication: The closer we feel toward someone, the less likely we are to listen carefully to them. “You’re not listening!” “Let me finish!” “That’s not what I said!” After “I love you,” these are among the most common refrains in close relationships. ![]()
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