Starting a habit, listening to another person, turning experience into better judgment. Explore 67 academic publications in eight fields through questions from everyday work.
What the research found → Connections to your work
Each entry includes the study’s participants, methods and conditions. “Connection to this page” is our editorial interpretation informed by the research.
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Dialogue & shared understanding
12 studies
Research on not only what is said, but also the back-and-forth of checking understanding, ways of listening and relationships that allow people to speak.
Original research (experiments)1972
Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall
Receiving appropriate context beforehand produced higher comprehension ratings and more recall than receiving it afterward or other conditions. Even with the same words and sentences, having a context that connected the content made a difference.
Connection to this page
Provides background for sharing which task or situation is being discussed, beyond the meanings of individual words, and for checking the assumptions behind the other person's interpretation.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
Four experiments with participants including high school students presented contextual pictures or topics before or after hearing hard-to-understand passages, comparing self-rated comprehension and recall.
Scope and limitations
The experiments used short passages constructed to be difficult to interpret, with self-ratings as one measure of comprehension. They did not directly measure actual job experience, occupational differences or workplace judgment accuracy.
John D. Bransford; Marcia K. Johnson (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 717–726
DOI: 10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80006-9
Original research (experiments)1978
Recall of previously unrecallable information following a shift in perspective
After changing perspective, participants recalled additional information important to the new perspective and less information important only to the old one. Perspective affected retrieval as well as the initial reading.
Connection to this page
Provides background for considering how people may retrieve different information as important from the same event. Ask what the other person is attending to when judging, rather than assuming it from their job title.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
In two experiments, university students read a story from a burglar's or prospective homebuyer's perspective, recalled it once, then changed perspective and recalled it again.
Scope and limitations
The study concerns temporarily assigned perspectives and story memory, not comparisons of actual sales, planning and management roles or effects of everyday work experience. It does not justify fixed classifications of how each role perceives things.
Richard C. Anderson; James W. Pichert (1978). Recall of previously unrecallable information following a shift in perspective
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17(1), 1–12
DOI: 10.1016/S0022-5371(78)90485-1
Foundational theory (book chapter)1991
Grounding in communication
Described conversation as joint work: beyond sending an utterance, people use each other's responses to establish whether understanding is shared sufficiently for their purpose.
Connection to this page
View checking as a back-and-forth in which each person's responses help adjust communication and understanding, rather than a one-way effort to extract all the conditions.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
Organized examples of face-to-face conversation and prior research into an account of how the purpose and medium of communication change the methods and costs of checking understanding.
Scope and limitations
This is not an experiment measuring a new intervention. Nor does the theory require perfect agreement on everything; the necessary level of understanding depends on purpose and medium.
Herbert H. Clark; Susan E. Brennan (1991). Grounding in communication
Perspectives on socially shared cognition, pp. 127–149 (APA; book chapter)
DOI: 10.1037/10096-006
Original research (experiments)2018
Perspective mistaking: Accurately understanding the mind of another requires getting perspective, not taking perspective
Instructions to imagine another person's perspective did not consistently improve prediction accuracy and sometimes increased confidence alone. Accuracy improved when direct conversation supplied new information.
Connection to this page
Offer a tentative understanding and ask about it, then update it from the answer, rather than deciding someone else's background or criteria for them.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
25 experiments tested whether instructions to imagine another person's perspective improved predictions of emotions, preferences and other states. The final experiment also compared direct conversation.
Scope and limitations
The outcome was accuracy in predicting particular mental states. The research did not directly measure consideration for others in general, long-term collaboration or workplace results.
Tal Eyal; Mary Steffel; Nicholas Epley (2018). Perspective mistaking: Accurately understanding the mind of another requires getting perspective, not taking perspective
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(4), 547–571
DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000115
Original research (individual-difference measures and experiments)2008
Why It Pays to Get Inside the Head of Your Opponent: The Differential Effects of Perspective Taking and Empathy in Negotiations
Cognitively considering the other person's position helped reveal hidden opportunities for agreement and mutually beneficial trade-offs. Results differed from those for emotional empathy.
Connection to this page
Consider the other person's circumstances and priorities alongside your own, and explore options while checking assumptions through actual dialogue.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
Three studies compared perspective taking and empathy using individual-difference measures and experimental manipulations, examining agreements and trade-offs across negotiation issues.
Scope and limitations
The findings concern specific negotiation tasks. They do not mean empathy is unnecessary in everyday collaboration or demonstrate an ability to accurately infer another person's feelings.
Adam D. Galinsky; William W. Maddux; Debra Gilin; Judith B. White (2008). Why It Pays to Get Inside the Head of Your Opponent: The Differential Effects of Perspective Taking and Empathy in Negotiations
Psychological Science, 19(4), 378–384
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02096.x
Original research (experiment)2014
The Relative Effectiveness of Active Listening in Initial Interactions
People receiving active-listening responses felt more understood than those receiving advice or brief acknowledgments. However, satisfaction with the conversation and liking for the partner did not differ from the advice condition.
Connection to this page
Before offering advice, consider reflecting what you heard in your own words so that the other person can add to or correct it.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
115 participants conversed with 10 confederates trained to respond with active listening, advice or brief acknowledgments. Their reactions after the conversations were compared.
Scope and limitations
The study mainly concerns short first encounters and self-reports. Feeling understood must be distinguished from accurately sharing the content of a message.
Harry Weger Jr.; Gina Castle Bell; Elizabeth M. Minei; Melissa C. Robinson (2014). The Relative Effectiveness of Active Listening in Initial Interactions
International Journal of Listening, 28(1), 13–31
DOI: 10.1080/10904018.2013.813234
Original research (workplace quasi-experiments)2017
Can holding a stick improve listening at work? The effect of Listening Circles on employees’ emotions and cognitions
Experiencing good listening was linked to reduced social anxiety, reflection on one's own thinking and greater acknowledgment of the complexity of opinions.
Connection to this page
Consider relationships that let people examine their views while speaking and express doubts or contradictions, without rushing to evaluate their ideas.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
Three quasi-experiments with 31, 66 and 83 employees compared Listening Circles, where one person speaks at a time, with other workshops or no training.
Scope and limitations
These were not randomized experiments, and the effects include the group intervention as a whole. The study did not directly test a brief listening phrase or effects on business performance.
Guy Itzchakov; Avraham N. Kluger (2017). 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, 26(5), 663–676
DOI: 10.1080/1359432X.2017.1351429
Meta-analysis2010
The cognitive underpinnings of effective teamwork: A meta-analysis
The nature of shared understanding and knowledge in teams was positively associated with behavioral teamwork processes and performance. Relationships varied with the content and form of cognition and factors such as task interdependence.
Connection to this page
Consider which purposes, roles and circumstances need to be shared and where members' different expertise can complement one another. This relates to the difficulty of proceeding while differences in understanding remain unresolved.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
Combined 231 correlations from 65 independent studies of team cognition, examining relationships with teamwork processes, motivation and performance, and differences between tasks and teams.
Scope and limitations
The review mainly integrates correlations, not a simple causal demonstration that aligning understanding raises performance. It does not recommend that everyone hold the same opinion.
Leslie A. DeChurch; Jessica R. Mesmer-Magnus (2010). The cognitive underpinnings of effective teamwork: A meta-analysis
Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 32–53
DOI: 10.1037/a0017328
Original research (experiments)2022
Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation
Participants tended to underestimate others' interest and overestimate how awkward the conversation would be. Better-calibrated expectations made deeper topics more likely to be chosen.
Connection to this page
Rather than assuming the other person is uninterested, ask within appropriate boundaries and update your view from their actual response.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
Across experiments, people including strangers conversed using questions about shallow or deeper topics. Expectations were compared with actual awkwardness, connection and the other person's interest.
Scope and limitations
The research includes intimate self-disclosure and does not directly measure workplace problem solving or checking accuracy. It does not justify asking every person to disclose deeply.
Michael Kardas; Amit Kumar; Nicholas Epley (2022). Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3), 367–398
DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000281
Research review and theoretical discussion (book chapter)1973
Considerations of some problems of comprehension
Argued that understanding language draws on knowledge of the world and visual context as well as linguistic knowledge. The same linguistic information can have different meanings depending on the knowledge or situation to which it is related.
Connection to this page
Provides background for recognizing that the word 'check' alone may not establish a shared purpose or endpoint for the work, and for asking which situation the other person has in mind.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
Presented and examined experiments relating context and prior knowledge to comprehension and memory, discussing the role of knowledge structures in understanding.
Scope and limitations
This is a theoretical synthesis of experiments, not a single original experiment, systematic review or meta-analysis. It did not directly measure occupational differences or the effects of a particular checking method.
John D. Bransford; Marcia K. Johnson (1973). Considerations of some problems of comprehension
W. G. Chase (Ed.), Visual Information Processing, pp. 383–438 (Academic Press; book chapter)
DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-170150-5.50014-7
Original research (experiments)1977
Taking different perspectives on a story
Information important from a given perspective was related to whether it was learned and recalled one week later. The findings supported the account that reading perspective helps organize and retrieve information.
Connection to this page
The same material may draw attention to different information depending on why someone reads it. Check the person's purpose and focus rather than assigning a fixed perspective by occupation.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
Two experiments with 176 university students examined stories read from an assigned perspective or with no assigned perspective, relating importance ratings to immediate and one-week recall.
Scope and limitations
The research used temporarily assigned perspectives and story memory, not actual occupational differences. An erratum in the same year corrected a table heading and statistical notation in the results; this summary does not quote those statistics.
James W. Pichert; Richard C. Anderson (1977). Taking different perspectives on a story
Journal of Educational Psychology, 69(4), 309–315
DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.69.4.309
Original research (experiments)2000
Taking perspective in conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in comprehension
Listeners also looked at objects the speaker could not see. Their search for referents was not restricted to mutually visible objects, suggesting a process of correcting interpretations using mutual knowledge.
Connection to this page
Check what each person can see and knows, rather than assuming that materials or circumstances obvious to you are also known to the other person.
Participants, methods, scope and bibliography
Participants and methods
Two experiments tracked eye movements while people followed instructions to move objects, examining whether objects visible to both parties and objects hidden from the speaker became candidate referents.
Scope and limitations
The experiments used constrained object arrangements and instructions, with eye movements indicating candidate interpretations. They do not mean people cannot use others' perspectives or that every conversation follows the same sequence of misunderstanding.
Boaz Keysar; Dale J. Barr; Jennifer A. Balin; Jason S. Brauner (2000). Taking perspective in conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in comprehension
