In various parts of the United States and abroad, you will encounter listening behaviors different from your own. As you travel or do business across the country or the world, you’ll likely find it necessary to understand and adapt to listening differences.

When you think about traits and habits that make someone a “good” listener or a “bad” listener, you’re often thinking about how your culture judges listening ability. For example, indirect styles of communication, common in Eastern cultures like China and Japan, require listener-responsible communication that saves face for the speaker. So a listener would be expected not to question the speaker directly, to construct meaning and understanding from the context of the situation, and to accommodate the speaker’s needs more than the listener’s (Lustig & Koester, 2006). Speaker-responsible listening, common in Western cultures like the United States and Canada, is more direct; the speaker usually tells the listener what he or she wants the listener to know. The listener can ask direct questions without offending the speaker, and both speaker and listener may be assertive without threatening the relationship or making the situation uncomfortable.

In addition to actual listening behaviors themselves, perceptions of appropriate listening vary among cultures. One study of competence and listening found that U.S. Caucasians are perceived as expressive listeners who exhibit nonverbal facilitators (like nodding, saying “mmm-hmmm,” and the like). Caucasians are also seen as using more questioning techniques to clarify and comprehend the speaker’s message. Latinos and Asian Americans are perceived as somewhat less expressive than whites, and African Americans are perceived as the least expressive listeners among these groups (Dillon & McKenzie, 1998). If you are comfortable or aware of only the preferred listening style of your own culture, miscommunication can occur. So Jennifer, a Colombian American, speaking with Jonathan, an African American colleague, might judge Jonathan as an ineffective listener if he is less expressive than she would hope as she complains about a difficult client. She needs to remember that culture—including gender—is at play in this situation.

In traveling around the globe, you will also find that expressiveness is viewed very differently in different cultures. Whereas many Westerners consider deep feelings private (or to be shared only with intimate relational partners), other cultures, including Hindus in Fiji and the Ommura in New Guinea, do not regard private feelings as sacrosanct; they communicate a variety of emotions to others to build shared experiences (Brenneis, 1990). Table 6.3 shows suggestions for communicating with people of different cultures.

A discussion of culture would not be complete without thinking about how your concepts of masculinity and femininity affect your perceptions of listening competence (Burleson et al., 2011). For example, men in the United States are usually discouraged from expressing intense emotions in public (Brody, 2000). This reluctance to react emotionally to information may give the appearance that men are not listening. Expectations about appropriate feminine behavior encourage women to exhibit more verbal and nonverbal feedback when listening, such as nodding and smiling more, and using more encouraging filler words (“Really?” “Oh, wow,” “Right”). Most research indicates that an individual’s role (being a parent, for example) accounts for more listening differences than the sex of the listener does (Duncan & Fiske, 1977; Johnston, Weaver, Watson, & Barker, 2000). Nonetheless, listening stereotypes are still powerful and make their way into entertainment and advertising at every level. In the episode “I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar,” Family Guy’s Peter decides to get in touch with his feminine side and calls his buddy Quagmire “just to talk.” He wants to listen to what’s going on with his friend and have his friend listen to him in turn. Quagmire is so uncomfortable with this situation that he slams down the phone!