Knowing is not the same as listening

Contestants in Netflix dating series Love is Blind are initially only allowed to speak to each other through a partition — the test is whether they can fall in love without seeing (or touching) each other.

This would be an interesting test for long-term couples, too.

In her new book, You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why it Matters, journalist Kate Murphy claims the closer we feel to someone, the less likely we are to listen carefully to them.

Writing in The New York Times, she puts this “closeness-communication bias” down to an unconscious tendency to tune out your significant other “because you think you already know what they are going to say”. Science backs her up.

Kenneth Savitsky, at Williams College, and colleagues at the University of Chicago and MIT paired adult participants with a stranger, then their partner or close friend.

They asked one individual to follow simple instructions delivered by the other, and communicate an ambiguous phrase.

Participants predicted greater understanding when paired with their partner/friend than with a stranger, but understood their partner/friend no better — often less well — than they did strangers.

The researchers suggest we listen carefully to people we do not know, but tune out from our partner because we think we know what they will say.

The amount of time we’ve been together makes us more confident but no more accurate about our partner, as William Swann and Michael Gill at the University of Texas showed when they interviewed couples who had been together for varying lengths of time.

Those together longer were no more accurate describing their partner’s likes, dislikes and personal story than those who had met recently — even despite the longer-established couples being more confident they knew each other intimately.

We are also overconfident about our ability to communicate clearly.

Boaz Keysar and Anne Henly, at the University of Chicago, asked participants to say an ambiguous sentence (“Angela shot the man with the gun”) while attempting to convey a particular meaning.

Although speakers predicted 72% of their utterances would be understood, they were understood accurately in only 61% of cases.

Short of building a wall between you, what can you and your partner do to increase mutual understanding?

● Talk regularly: That way things are unlikely to become so overwhelming you might feel the need to hide them.

● Reduce distractions: Establish a regular “date night”. Book a favourite venue where you can focus fully on one another.

● Suspend judgment: This prevents either feeling the need to hide true feelings.

● Make no assumptions: You’re probably not as clear or perspicacious as you think. Ask often if you’re understood, and if what you think your partner means is accurate.