The Psychology of Selective Hearing: Understanding What You Really Hear
You’re probably familiar with the phrase “selective hearing” in reference to people only hearing what they want to hear. While it’s often used in a joking sense, selective hearing is an experience that researchers are only just starting to understand.
Accusing somebody of selective hearing is implying they weren’t listening to you. You’ve probably had at least one or more situations in your life where somebody has accused you of not listening, even if no one specifically used the term “selective hearing”.
What is Selective Hearing?
Selective hearing is the ability to listen to a single speaker while in a crowded or loud environment. You might also hear it referred to as “selective auditory attention” or the “cocktail party effect.” When you miss all the things you don’t want to hear but hear everything else, that’s selective hearing. You hear the part about the chocolate cake, but you don’t hear the part about the calories. As a behavior, selective hearing is incredibly common.
Selective hearing involves many factors, including your goals, vision, and brain activity patterns.
How Selective Hearing Works
Selective hearing involves many factors, including your goals, vision, and brain activity patterns.
Goals
Your brain chooses what to listen to based on what you’re trying to do. For example, imagine that someone started talking to you while you were trying to finish watching an episode of a TV show. Chances are good that you didn’t hear much of what they said to you. Your brain prioritized the sound of the TV over that person’s voice because your goal was to finish watching the show.
A 2008 study put this concept to the test by asking participants to pay attention to sounds in one ear but not in the other. The investigators then played different pitches in each ear at the same time and asked the participants to note any changes in pitch in the ear they were asked to focus on.
MRI scans of the participants’ brains showed that they heard the sounds in each ear. However, when they were detecting changes in the specified ear, they ignored the sound in the other ear.
Vision
Visual cues are also an important part of selective hearing. For example, a 2013 study involved playing audio of a man and woman talking at the same time. Participants were asked to pay attention to either the female or the male speaker. They had a much easier time focusing on only the male or the female voice when watching a video of the speakers along with the audio. Based on these results, being able to see someone while they’re talking might help you listen more effectively.
Brain Activity
A 2012 study found that the presentation of sounds within your brain doesn’t reflect all of the sounds in your environment but, rather, what you want or need to hear. These results are similar to those of the 2008 study discussed above.
However, the investigators also found that they could use the patterns of brain activity they observed to predict which speaker or words someone was listening to. Investigators used about 90 electrodes per person to monitor the brain activity of people undergoing surgery for epilepsy. Participants were asked to listen to two different samples of speech at the same time. Each sample contained a different speaker and phrase. They were then asked to pick out which words were said by one of the two speakers.
Using information about brain activity patterns from the electrodes as well as a decoding process, the investigators reconstructed what the participants heard. The brain activity patterns suggested that the participants only paid attention to the speaker they were asked to focus on.
In addition, the investigators were able to use these brain activity patterns to predict which speaker the participant listened to and determine whether they paid attention to the wrong speaker at any point.
Real-World Applications
While the recent research surrounding selective hearing is interesting, it also has several real-world applications.
The predictive and decoding technology from the 2012 study discussed above may help researchers better understand the effects of aging and certain conditions on hearing function. In addition, people with hearing loss, ADHD, auditory processing deficits, and autism seem to have trouble with selective hearing. The decoding technology could help researchers understand what people with these conditions are actually hearing and processing. Knowing this information could be crucial for developing new treatments.
If your selective hearing has become worse over time, it might be worth keeping an eye out for some of these other early indications of hearing loss.
How to Improve Listening Skills
Some people seek out treatment for selective hearing. However, it’s a phenomenon that affects nearly everyone. There are a few things you can do to improve your listening skills:
- Pay attention. When you’re talking to someone, try to pay attention to more than just their words. Try to take in visual cues from their facial expressions or body language while they’re talking.
- Summarize. At the end of a conversation, try briefly summarizing the main points to make sure you clearly understood everything.
- Ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask the other person a question about something they’ve said that’s unclear. Taking a few seconds to ask them to elaborate is usually less bothersome than a potential misunderstanding down the line.
- Mind your own biases. While it’s easier said than done, try to be aware of your own biases and judgments about people when you’re talking to them.
Hearing Loss and Selective Hearing
However, most studies point to men failing to hear their partners more frequently than women. It may be tempting to draw some social conclusions from that (and the way that individuals are socialized certainly does play into how this behavior is contextualized). But hearing health is most likely another major component.
Communication will undoubtedly be more difficult with undiagnosed hearing loss. When hearing loss is in those really early stages, there aren’t going to be very many apparent symptoms. Your tv might get a little louder. You can’t quite hear what your friend is saying when you stop for a drink at your local bar. It’s most likely because the music is so loud, right? And so, other than that, you could go through most of your day-to-day life without even noticing the volume of the world around you. Your hearing can slowly decline because of this.
Safeguarding your hearing is so critical to preventing hearing loss. If you can’t stay away from overly loud noise, make sure you wear hearing protection, like muffs or plugs.
Yes, selective hearing is a relatively common annoyance (even more frustrating when you already feel like nobody listens to you). And your partner may want you to find out what’s going on by having you schedule a hearing test. Your partner’s concern is relevant and it’s important for you to acknowledge that.