Quimby Memorial Library: Active Listening and Responsiveness: Home

ACTIVE LISTENING

Many communicate with the implicit goal of getting others to see things form their perspective. Active Listening, however, requires that the listener see things from the speaker’s perspective. This method of deliberate, attentive, and often empathic openness allows the listener to address not only the meanings of the words they hear but also the feelings behind them. It’s a powerful practice, which is considered foundational to effective counseling. It also carries risk for the counselor, who might feel a sense of self lightening, as they sense deeply the feelings of the client. As pioneer of the practice Carl Rogers explained, "It takes a great deal of inner security and courage to be able to risk one's self in understanding another."

This guide features QML's resources on the skills of Active Listening, both in clinical and wider contexts. Click a tab above to view ebooks, articles, and books on this approach. While the resources provide a well-rounded survey of our holdings on the topic, they are not comprehensive. Please contact us, if you are not seeing represented here any topics, authors, or specific foci, on which you are seeking information.

You will find links to the information you need to access and effectively use the databases housing this material, at the top of each page in this guide.

EBOOKS

Featured here are some of QML's contemporary ebooks on Active Listening. In addition to these featured items, QML holds additional material on this topic and can access much more, via our interlibrary loan network. If you are not finding what you need here, please email us at askthelibrary@swc.edu.

You can retrieve credentials for accessing ebooks from EBSCOhost, by clicking here.

QML'S EBOOKS DATABASE

Looking for additional information and tips for effectively using QML's ebooks database? Start here.

Essential Interviewing and Counseling Skills by Tracy A. Prout
ISBN: 9780826199157
Publication Date: 2014-04-01
Chapter 6 of this text (entitled Interviewing and counseling skills: Modes of listening and linked directly here) discusses the application of active listening skills to counseling practice. The chapter includes methods for evaluating and augmenting active listening skills.
Active Listening Techniques by Nixaly Leonardo
ISBN: 9781647390648
Publication Date: 2020-07-21
This general self help guide offers tools to: Learn the basics―Discover the importance of paraphrasing, nonverbal cues, emotional labeling, mirroring, validation, and other fundamental techniques.Put your skills to use―Each communication tool includes an illustrative anecdote, as well as digestible strategies to help you apply the concept to your everyday life.Manage conflict―Learn how invaluable being an active listener is when it comes to navigating difficult or emotionally charged situations.Learn how to develop stronger connections through these simple and effective listening exercises.
Skills for Helping Professionals by Anne M. Geroski
ISBN: 9781483365107
Publication Date: 2016-02-03
Chapter 7 of this text, entitled LISTENING AND BASIC RESPONDING SKILLS IN HELPING CONVERSATIONS (linked directly here) outlines the importance of listening skills, in the context of the helping professions. It focuses on such topics as attentive listening, empathy, paraphrasing, and reflecting.

ARTICLES

This bibliography features peer reviewed, searchable journals and academic articles, reporting on contemporary research, analysis, and theory related to Active Listening (usually in a therapeutic setting). In addition to what is featured here, QML holds further material on this topic and can access much more, via our interlibrary loan network. If you are not finding what you need here, please email us at askthelibrary@swc.edu.

You can retrieve credentials for accessing articles from Taylor & Francis Online, by clicking here.

QML'S ACADEMIC ARTICLES DATABASE

Looking for information on how to access and effectively use QML's academic articles database? Start here.

The Relative Effectiveness of Active Listening in Initial Interactions by Harry Weger Jr., Gina Castle Bell, Elizabeth M. Minei, & Melissa C. Robinson
Publication Date: 2014
Although active listening is considered an important communication skill in a variety of occupational and therapeutic fields, few experiments compare dyadic partners' perceptions of active listening with other types of listening responses. This study involves 115 participants engaged in interactions with 10 confederates trained to respond with active listening messages, advice, or simple acknowledgements. Results indicate that participants who received active listening responses felt more understood than participants who received either advice or simple acknowledgements. Further, participants who received either active listening responses or advice were more satisfied with their conversation and perceived the confederate to be more socially attractive than participants who received simple acknowledgements, although the effect sizes for these differences were small. Conversational satisfaction and social attractiveness did not differ between participants receiving active listening responses and participants receiving advice, however.
”SO YOU’RE TELLING ME . . . ”: PARAPHRASING (FORMULATING), AFFECTIVE STANCE, AND ACTIVE LISTENING by Phillip Glenn
Publication Date: 2022
Paraphrasing is one of the core practices associated with active listening. While its use is widely advocated, research on its efficacy shows limited results. Paraphrasing-like actions have been studied extensively in conversation analytic research under the term formulations. Building on that tradition, this article features a conversation analysis of the affective stance that paraphrasing turns display toward their referents. Primary data drawn from a podcast series, Conversations with People Who Hate Me, are supplemented with instances drawn from mediation and a medical interview.
The Role of “Active Listening” in Informal Helping Conversations: Impact on Perceptions of Listener Helpfulness, Sensitivity, and Supportiveness and Discloser Emotional Improvement by Graham D. Bodie, Andrea J. Vickery, Kaitlin Cannava, & Susanne M. Jones
Publication Date: 2015
Undergraduate students were randomly assigned to disclose a recent upsetting problem to either a trained active listener (n = 41) or an untrained listener (n = 130). Active listeners were trained to ask open questions, paraphrase content, reflect feelings, and use assumption checking as well as be nonverbally immediate. Verbal and nonverbal active listening behaviors were rated as signaling more emotional awareness and promoting a greater degree of emotional improvement but did not affect perceptions of relational assurance or problem-solving utility. On average, the set of verbal behaviors were more important in the prediction of outcomes compared to the nonverbal behaviors. Results contribute to the larger literature on enacted support, suggesting particular roles for active listening techniques within troubles talk.
The Constitutive Relationship of Listening to Hope, Emotional Intelligence, Stress, and Life Satisfaction by Laura R. Umphrey & John C. Sherblom
Publication Date: 2017
Communication scholars conceptualize communication as constitutive of meaning, arguing that we must place communication first as a primary, fundamental explanation, not as a secondary phenomenon to be explained by psychological antecedents (Cooren, 2012; Craig, 1999; Hecht, 1993; Luhmann, 1992; Manning, 2014). The present study uses a constitutive communication approach to model the relationship of listening to the cognitive states of hope, emotional intelligence, stress, and life satisfaction. A path analysis model lends support to the constitutive communication perspective, indicating that listening styles are predictive of hope, emotional intelligence, stress, and life satisfaction.

BOOKS

Collected here are books on Active Listening from QML's physical collection. Click a link to be taken to the book's page in the library's catalog. From there you can view additional details, check the book's availability, and place a hold. While a wealth of material on Active Listening is featured here, the list is not comprehensive. Please email us, to inquire about additional resources.

Remote students: keep in mind that items in QML's physical collection are accessible to you as well. Contact library staff to have an item sent via mail, request scans of needed chapters/sections, or inquire about alternative methods of accessing these books or any other resources in our library.

Active Listening by Carl Rogers; Richard Farson
Call Number: BF323.L5R6 1957/2015
ISBN: 9781953450258
Publication Date: 2015
In this foundational text, Carl Rogers, the founder of the person-centered approach to therapy, describes the use of active listening in counselling and conflict resolution. Rather than serving as a passive participant in a conversation, active listeners take a functional role in helping the speaker to work out their issues. As the speaker shares, the listener repeats back what they've heard in their own words. This both confirms that they've heard the speaker and verifies that they understand.
I'm Just Saying by Milan Kordestani
Call Number: HM1166 .K673 2023
ISBN: 9780757324505
Publication Date: 2023
This text discusses active listening, among other concepts, as fundamental to effective communication, learning, and helping, in a broad sociocultural context and framed by the idealogical polarization characterizing contemporary culture.
Active Communication by Matthew Westra
Call Number: PN4121 .W353 1996
ISBN: 0534340075
Publication Date: 1995-09-11
Another foundational text on the concept of active listening, Westra's conversational and class-tested book, demonstrates methods for taking an active role in the communication process. Appropriate for helpers-in-training from a variety of disciplines, including counseling, human services, psychology, speech communication, teacher education, business, and health, this book helps students learn to observe, reflect upon, and practice active listening in a helping environment. Interdisciplinary applications of listening and speaking are presented to help facilitate development of the specialized concepts that helping professionals employ.

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