As relationships develop (Chapter 7), communication content changes, as do listening behaviors and goals. When you are in the early stages of friendship with someone, you use informational listening to discover hobbies and things you may have in common. But in later stages, critical and empathic listening becomes more important as you seek to analyze, understand, and connect on a deeper level.
The cognitive component of listening involves the mental processes of selecting messages to focus on, giving them our attention, and then trying to understand them. In the face of competing stimuli—
Next, through attending, you elect to focus attention on the communication. If you select Brett’s voice (deciding that it’s more interesting or important than the sound of The Walking Dead), you attend actively to his words and message. Attending is not always easy, however; if your phone keeps chirping at you with new texts, attending to Brett’s message may be more difficult.
Suppose that while talking about his midterm, Brett mentions a disagreement he had with his professor over the wording of an essay question. He throws around phrases like “aggregate supply” and “reciprocal demand.” You’ve never studied economics, so you barely understand a word he’s saying. Understanding—making sense of messages—