Abstract
While there are many consistent results regarding the altruism – empathy relationship, starting with the empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson, 2008) and its confirmations or criticism, there is one specific aspect of empathy that has not often been associated with generosity: active listening. Our research hypothesizes that sharing one’s attention in an empathic way (active-empathic listening) might be a skill linked to a person’s generosity. A linear regression established that self-reported altruism (SRA) could statistically significantly predict someone’s active-empathic listening skill (AELS), F(1, 96) = 28,965, p = .0001 and that SRA accounted for 22,4% of the explained variability in AELS. The results confirmed the initial claim and may have an impact in counseling practice, in career decision-making or in other studies on prosocial behavior.
Highlights
Active listening is defined by the International Listening Association (ILA; 2012) as “the process of receiving, constructing meaning from and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages”
To test whether our active-empathic listening - altruism hypothesis confirms, we conducted a correlational study in which we compared the scores at active-empathic listening skill (AELS) (Active-Empathic Listening Scale) with those from SRAS-DR (Self-Report Altruism Scale Distinguished by the Recipient)
Like some big-five traits were identified as predictors for AEL (Sims, 2017), we pointed out selfreported altruism as another possible predictor for this interpersonal skill
Summary
Active listening is defined by the International Listening Association (ILA; 2012) as “the process of receiving, constructing meaning from and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages”. Rogers formulated empathic listening as a psycho-therapeutic technique, manifested by unconditional acceptance and unbiased reflection of a client’s experience. Researchers in interpersonal communication point out active-empathic listening (AEL) as the “active and emotional involvement of a listener that can take place in at least three key stages of the listening process” (Bodie, 2011; Drollinger, Comer, & Warrington, 2006). AEL’s sensing stage is measured concearning the sensitivity to the emotional needs of a speaker and manifests in the listener attending to both the implicit and explicit aspects of others’ messages. The Responding stage would be recognized by the use of verbal and nonverbal back-channeling and more extended responding, like question asking active attention. (Bodie, Gearhart, Denham, & Vickery, 2013)
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