Fascinating. A possible counterexample is that I have noticed in myself (and others) a tendency to sometimes be calmed down or reassured by even a mechanical repetition that is known to be mechanical by the recipient. This can happen in spite of consciously thinking “them saying that shouldn’t work,” and being annoyed at it, at the same time as feeling better because of it. In the instances where it has worked, I have found myself hearing back what I said and having an internal response like, “Yeah! You get me!” And my wife has done the same thing.
Granted, it doesn’t happen every time; I think it’s partly a question of what words are used. Indeed, on reflection I think it might have to do with parrot-phrasing rather than paraphrasing. At least the instances I remember of this working, were times where I used the same words as the other person, or vice versa.
This suggests to me that there exists some mechanism by which reflection is perceived as supportive, such that it can produce some effect even in the absence of curiosity.
I remember a time when someone suggested I’d try repeating people’s exact words back to them more. At first I felt like I couldn’t do it, because gah, obviously this cannot work, I’m just parroting their words back to them so why would they feel any better because of it, they’re just going to think that I think they’re dumb…
Then I voiced some of those thoughts to the person who had suggested this, and after I did that they repeated some of my words back to me, in exact same form as I had said them.
And that felt validating and like they’d heard me.
And I was like ”...huh.”
And they were like ”...see?”
(But it definitely doesn’t work with everyone, some do just get annoyed.)
It occurs to me that the reason why this (sometimes) works might be that it’s an unfakeable signal of you actually having paid attention to the other person. It’s possible to seem like you are listening to someone, nodding along and being quiet except for a few encouraging words like “uh huh” and “yeah?” every now and then—while thinking about something else at the same time and missing out on a lot of the other person’s actual words. But repeating someone’s words back to them in the exact form they said them, proves that at that moment at least, you had to be actually listening.
This would also help explain why it seems so stupid if you see such an excerpt written out in text form. If the other person’s words are written down, then you can just read them at any time, and copying them doesn’t prove that you were paying attention at the exact moment when they were written.
While that might be part of it, I wonder if there’s not something more If I’d venture a guess, I’d say that hearing one’s words repeated by a dispassionate (but compassionate) third party’s voice helps detach oneself from one’s current emotions (by empathizing with the third party view?) and move forward.
Parrot-phrasing comes across as kind of manipulative in this description:
saves you the trouble of thinking of suitable paraphrases.
prevents the distracting and time-consuming disagreements (“That’s not quite what I meant”) which often arise over slight differences in wording.
conceals your lack of knowledge or understanding about a subject. It’s quite hard to make a fool of yourself it you only use the other person’s words!
This is exactly the opposite of curiosity, it’s an attempt to gloss over your ignorance, which seems both lazy and mean to the person you’re talking to.
This is exactly the opposite of curiosity, it’s an attempt to gloss over your ignorance, which seems both lazy and mean to the person you’re talking to.
Ironically, I see this as 100% the opposite. If you’re paraphrasing, then that means you’re basically guessing what the words mean, inserting your own ideas instead of holding open the possibility that you don’t actually know what was said. It also means that you’re not necessarily listening to what exact words somebody used. (A pet peeve of mine, TBH: people rounding off what I say to the nearest familiar thing, rather than listening with precision.)
So, demonstrating the ability to parrot-phrase is a much stronger signal to me that someone is paying close attention to what I actually said, and not just jumping to a round-off.
Parrot-phrasing comes across as kind of manipulative in this description
I don’t see any problem with the first two points, as putting extra effort into something is not a measure of virtue.
For the third point, that’s a bit out of context: that person’s video describes how she used it as a new department head who didn’t yet understand all the technical details of what they were doing, but needed to get to know her staff and their concerns. Parrot-phrasing allowed her to quickly become familiar with her staff, the terms and what things were important to said staff without needing to stop conversations to learn all the terms first. (From context, I gather that she looked up the terms afterward, instead of making the staff explain everything to her up front—thereby allowing her to focus her learning on the things the staff thought most important.)
In context, that sounds like an unequivocal good for everyone involved.
From a computer programming perspective, I look at this as simply being able to use “forward references”—i.e., the ability to use a term as a placeholder that has not yet been defined. In truth, until the terms are defined, you don’t really know what somebody is using their words to mean anyway. But you can learn quite a lot about a situation or person without yet knowing their precise definitions of the words. And your value as a listener doesn’t often require complete understanding, anyway.
For example, I often help people work through problems where I don’t know an exact definition of every word they’re using, and sometimes if the subject matter is uncomfortable to discuss, I will have them use code words whose entire purpose is to ensure I don’t know part of what they’re talking about!
Similarly, computer programming professionals know that “rubber ducking” doesn’t require a deep understanding anyway, as otherwise one could not use a rubber duck to do it. The fact that people poured out their deepest secrets to good ol’ ELIZA should be an indication of how valuable simply providing a mental loopback interface to someone can be… not to mention how often it is that just providing the loopback is more valuable to the recipient than any actual interjection from another brain.
To put it another way, when people want a listener, the listener’s actual understanding is far less important than it appears. Even if the listener is a professional helper of some kind, their value is usually more in the area of guiding the speaker through a reflective process of some kind… in which the speaker’s understanding of their own thoughts is the actually important part.
Fascinating. A possible counterexample is that I have noticed in myself (and others) a tendency to sometimes be calmed down or reassured by even a mechanical repetition that is known to be mechanical by the recipient. This can happen in spite of consciously thinking “them saying that shouldn’t work,” and being annoyed at it, at the same time as feeling better because of it. In the instances where it has worked, I have found myself hearing back what I said and having an internal response like, “Yeah! You get me!” And my wife has done the same thing.
Granted, it doesn’t happen every time; I think it’s partly a question of what words are used. Indeed, on reflection I think it might have to do with parrot-phrasing rather than paraphrasing. At least the instances I remember of this working, were times where I used the same words as the other person, or vice versa.
This suggests to me that there exists some mechanism by which reflection is perceived as supportive, such that it can produce some effect even in the absence of curiosity.
I remember a time when someone suggested I’d try repeating people’s exact words back to them more. At first I felt like I couldn’t do it, because gah, obviously this cannot work, I’m just parroting their words back to them so why would they feel any better because of it, they’re just going to think that I think they’re dumb…
Then I voiced some of those thoughts to the person who had suggested this, and after I did that they repeated some of my words back to me, in exact same form as I had said them.
And that felt validating and like they’d heard me.
And I was like ”...huh.”
And they were like ”...see?”
(But it definitely doesn’t work with everyone, some do just get annoyed.)
It occurs to me that the reason why this (sometimes) works might be that it’s an unfakeable signal of you actually having paid attention to the other person. It’s possible to seem like you are listening to someone, nodding along and being quiet except for a few encouraging words like “uh huh” and “yeah?” every now and then—while thinking about something else at the same time and missing out on a lot of the other person’s actual words. But repeating someone’s words back to them in the exact form they said them, proves that at that moment at least, you had to be actually listening.
This would also help explain why it seems so stupid if you see such an excerpt written out in text form. If the other person’s words are written down, then you can just read them at any time, and copying them doesn’t prove that you were paying attention at the exact moment when they were written.
While that might be part of it, I wonder if there’s not something more If I’d venture a guess, I’d say that hearing one’s words repeated by a dispassionate (but compassionate) third party’s voice helps detach oneself from one’s current emotions (by empathizing with the third party view?) and move forward.
Parrot-phrasing comes across as kind of manipulative in this description:
This is exactly the opposite of curiosity, it’s an attempt to gloss over your ignorance, which seems both lazy and mean to the person you’re talking to.
Ironically, I see this as 100% the opposite. If you’re paraphrasing, then that means you’re basically guessing what the words mean, inserting your own ideas instead of holding open the possibility that you don’t actually know what was said. It also means that you’re not necessarily listening to what exact words somebody used. (A pet peeve of mine, TBH: people rounding off what I say to the nearest familiar thing, rather than listening with precision.)
So, demonstrating the ability to parrot-phrase is a much stronger signal to me that someone is paying close attention to what I actually said, and not just jumping to a round-off.
I don’t see any problem with the first two points, as putting extra effort into something is not a measure of virtue.
For the third point, that’s a bit out of context: that person’s video describes how she used it as a new department head who didn’t yet understand all the technical details of what they were doing, but needed to get to know her staff and their concerns. Parrot-phrasing allowed her to quickly become familiar with her staff, the terms and what things were important to said staff without needing to stop conversations to learn all the terms first. (From context, I gather that she looked up the terms afterward, instead of making the staff explain everything to her up front—thereby allowing her to focus her learning on the things the staff thought most important.)
In context, that sounds like an unequivocal good for everyone involved.
From a computer programming perspective, I look at this as simply being able to use “forward references”—i.e., the ability to use a term as a placeholder that has not yet been defined. In truth, until the terms are defined, you don’t really know what somebody is using their words to mean anyway. But you can learn quite a lot about a situation or person without yet knowing their precise definitions of the words. And your value as a listener doesn’t often require complete understanding, anyway.
For example, I often help people work through problems where I don’t know an exact definition of every word they’re using, and sometimes if the subject matter is uncomfortable to discuss, I will have them use code words whose entire purpose is to ensure I don’t know part of what they’re talking about!
Similarly, computer programming professionals know that “rubber ducking” doesn’t require a deep understanding anyway, as otherwise one could not use a rubber duck to do it. The fact that people poured out their deepest secrets to good ol’ ELIZA should be an indication of how valuable simply providing a mental loopback interface to someone can be… not to mention how often it is that just providing the loopback is more valuable to the recipient than any actual interjection from another brain.
To put it another way, when people want a listener, the listener’s actual understanding is far less important than it appears. Even if the listener is a professional helper of some kind, their value is usually more in the area of guiding the speaker through a reflective process of some kind… in which the speaker’s understanding of their own thoughts is the actually important part.