When you zero in only on bits of information that interest you, disregarding other messages or parts of messages, you are engaging in selective listening. At times this may be beneficial, as when you decide to ignore your sister’s comment that you are the “preferred” child in the family and instead just focus on her ideas for planning a happy upcoming holiday gathering.

But selective listening is also common in situations where you are feeling defensive or insecure and can have negative implications. For example, if you really hate working on a group project with your classmate Lara, you may only pay attention to the disagreeable or negative things that she says. If she says, “I can’t make it to the meeting on Thursday at eight,” you shut off, placing another check in the “Lara is lazy” column of proof. However, you might miss the rest of Lara’s message—perhaps she has a good reason for missing the meeting, or maybe she’s suggesting that you reschedule.

Selective listening can also be unethical in evaluating impressions of people. Imagine that you’re a manager at a small company. Four of your five employees were in place when you took your job, but you were the one who hired Micah. Since hiring well makes you look good as a manager, you might tend to focus on Micah’s accomplishments and the positive feedback from others in the organization on Micah’s performance. That’s great for Micah, but you must be sure to also listen to compliments about other employees, particularly when making decisions about promotions.

A specific type of selective listening is insensitive listening, which occurs when we listen only to the words someone says, failing to pay attention to the emotional content. Your friend Adam calls to tell you that he got rejected from Duke Law School. Adam had mentioned to you that his LSAT scores made Duke a long shot, so you accept his message for what it appears to be: a factual statement about a situation. But you fail to hear the disappointment in his voice—even if Duke was a long shot, it was his top choice as well as a chance to be geographically closer to his partner, who lives in North Carolina. Had you paid attention to Adam’s nonverbal cues, you might have known that he needed some comforting words.

To improve your communication, particularly when you’re feeling apprehensive or defensive, you must take care to acknowledge your selective listening and pay attention to both the verbal and nonverbal aspects of a message. You must not close your ears to competing information just because it makes you uncomfortable.