Speaking of Psychology - Why listening well is harder -- and more powerful -- than you think, with Guy Itzchakov, PhD
Episode Date: July 1, 2026Most people think they’re good listeners. But really listening well is harder than it seems. Guy Itzchakov, PhD, talks about what distinguishes high-quality listening from just staying quiet while s...omeone else talks; how feeling heard affects speakers’ emotions, attitudes and relationships; why high-quality listening can reduce defensiveness during disagreements; and whether AI chatbots will ever be good listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Talking is easy. Listening, not so much. When we think about conversation, we tend to focus on the speaker, his or her ideas, words, gestures, and emotions. But psychologists' research suggests that often it's the listener who sets the tone of such interactions. Quality listening can strengthen relationships and build bridges between people, while poor listening can do the opposite. So what is high quality versus low quality listening? Why is listening well,
so much harder than it sounds?
How can good listening skills help us in our relationships,
workplaces, and communities?
And what are the limits of listening as a tool
for understanding each other?
Welcome to Speaking of Psychology,
the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association
that examines the links between psychological science
and everyday life.
I'm Kim Mills.
My guest today is Dr. Guy Ichikoff,
a professor in the Department of Human Services
at the University of Haifa.
where he directs the interpersonal listening and social influence lab.
His research focuses on how high-quality listening
affects listeners and speakers' emotions, attitudes, and behaviors,
and how listening drives interactions in settings,
ranging from close relationships to workplaces.
His work has appeared in leading journals and publications,
including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
emotion, and the Harvard Business Review.
He also writes a blog for psychology,
today called The Listening Lens.
Dr. Itchikoff, thank you for joining me today.
Thank you for inviting me.
I'm really happy to be here.
Let's start with a basic question.
What is high quality listening and what distinguishes it
from just everyday listening to another person talk?
It is both a basic and complex question
because there was a study back in 1989
that tried to organize the definitions of what is good listening
between interpersonal listening, between people.
And even back then, they found more than 50 different definitions for what listening is.
But in a nutshell, what differentiate high quality listening from ordinary listening or everyday listening
is the listeners attempt to really understand the speaker and a positive, a positive
intention toward the speaker. So this is what Carl Rogers referred to back in the,
more than 60 years ago as a non-judgmental approach, meaning that I don't necessarily have
to agree with what I hear and we all, we have an inner need to evaluate what we hear. However,
listeners can convey that it is, the speaker has the, the speaker has the
freedom and the autonomy to express what they say. And when these three dimensions, which manifest
in many behaviors are executed well, people feel heard. They feel listened to and there is a
plenthora, a fountain of positive outcomes for them. One of the main themes of your work
is a good listening deeply affects not just the listener, but the speaker as well. What
happens to people psychologically when they feel truly listened to, when they feel heard?
So yeah, most of our work has focused on people being listened to. So yeah, as you mentioned,
on the speakers. And the psychological process that we see that is happening, especially in live
conversations, which is the core of the studies in my lab, is that first, specifically
speakers relax their state anxiety, state social anxiety, evaluation, apprehension reduce.
They feel more socially comfortable because of the listening that they receive.
Now, this relaxation, this social comfort, if you will, allows them to introspect,
think more deeply about what they are saying.
And of course, none of this could have been achieved
without a good listener.
Now, when they experience such listening,
so this emotional process that leads to this cognitive process
of deeper introspection and ability to look at myself from the side
and often gain clarity,
gain even complexity to see that what I initially thought
what my initial edited was,
there are other aspects, often, by the way,
contradictory to my initial attitude.
This is why we often find that experiencing good listening
reduces extremity of attitudes.
Now, this relax, so basically this comfort or relaxation
broadens the thinking.
And this broadening of the thinking,
allows for more complex, more open-minded introspection,
which then leads to many attitudinal and behavioral consequences.
So this is an after the process that one of the processes that we see,
we also see a very strong shift in positive emotions.
One of the most, the interesting findings that we have is reduction in negative emorphins.
For example, in one of the project, we had five studies where the topic was the effect of listening on speakers' state loneliness.
And the speakers shared an experience where they felt socially rejected.
Now, this was really interesting because I initially thought that, okay, but if you could,
share something that happened to you 20 years ago,
it might not be relevant,
but we were surprised to see how much the social rejection
when people talk about it,
it still affects them.
Now, when we compared,
and we're doing live conversations,
when we compared speakers who conversed
with a listener who provided high-quality listening,
we found that they reported significantly
and very strong effect on reduced, on reduction in state loneliness relative to participants
who conversed with a moderate listener, listener who provided average or moderate quality
listening.
And this effect, by the way, was explained in this project through increased in how related
relatedness they felt towards their listener, basically how socially connected.
they felt towards their listener and the extent to it they felt autonomy.
So the extent to it, they felt that they have the right to express,
to genuinely express their thoughts.
A lot of people have heard the term active listening, right,
a technique of reflecting back what someone says,
you paraphrase and ask questions.
But you've written about the limitations of active listening as it's often taught and practice.
So what is the difference between active listening and high quality listening?
Listening has so many adjectives.
I don't think that there is another social behavior that has as many adjectives as listening,
active, empathic, supportive.
Now, if you think about it, one of the interesting thing that we infer,
when we say active listening is actually a misperception, that listening is passive.
because we would never say active speaking.
Of course speaking is active, of course.
But for listening, in order for listening to feel special,
we need to say it's active.
Now, I know this is the most frequently used adjective.
And so, yeah, I wrote about it in one of my blogs.
I thought, like, what would Carl Rogers,
who coined the term, think about how active listening,
and it's a very powerful technique.
It's one of many listening techniques.
The issue is, as I mentioned, that the name incorporates the misperception that listening is passive.
And it is really, it really depends how it is practiced.
Because if we want to achieve deep conversations, help or have social connection with the other person,
we need a genuine intention or a positive intention or something.
sometimes even call like a listening attitude, my assumption that by listening alone, I will help the other person.
Now, when this becomes too technical, so like every time I give an interview, they ask me, okay, now give me the tips, how to be a good listener.
So this is, there are tips, but it's basically saying, give me the tips on how to be a good swimmer.
You have to practice it.
Right.
Now, so the behaviors are very powerful, very powerful,
question asking, paraphrasing, validation, the back channel behavior.
The issue is, are they really genuine and authentic?
And here, I think that what I wrote about is Rogers didn't even often disagree to give talks about the active listening because every conversation was different.
for him.
So he refused to give a checklist.
And there is a paper from 2011,
not my paper,
but a really interesting paper on how organizations,
some organizations use active listening techniques
to manipulate customers because it's very powerful.
So what I wrote was like,
what would Carl Rogers think about active listening today?
So I'm all in favor and we're doing all of these behavior.
in my lab and when I give workshops, very powerful.
The issue is, is the intention of the listener really to help the speaker or to get the speaker
to somewhere that I wanted to get them before?
Now, this is a key difference in my experience.
That brings to mind what you run into a lot today, which is, you know, you call customer
service and about the second or third question is, what's your name?
and then they want to call you by your name over and over again,
as if that indicates that they're somehow more empathetic.
I mean, is there anything to that?
Is repeating the speaker's name something that is going to make them feel they're listened to?
We tried it in some of our experiment where we mentioned the name again.
It helps, but like most of the things, it helps if you do it to the right extent.
For example, it's like nodding.
So when someone nuts when I speak,
at the beginning I'm going to probably think,
okay, they're paying attention.
But if I see them going like this with their head,
the entire dog, you know there is this doll of a dog.
You put in the dashboard of your car that goes with the head when you drive.
So it, or when someone says, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
So all of this behavior, they're good if they're in the right time and space
during the conversation.
If I do them artificially or overdo them,
I will often interrupt my speaker
because if I say their name too much,
it sounds a bit weird or it sounds like they're,
because this doesn't happen in everyday conversations.
Or even if I say, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm,
or nod my head, the entire conversation,
we're coming again to the authentic nature,
of the listeners.
So like every psychologist,
the answer is yes and no.
Yes, it helps, but not to overdo it.
What role does listening play
in maintaining close relationships
with our partners, families, and friends?
This is what my research has focused on
for the past 15 years.
I think that listening is the spark
for social connection,
the spark
in the sense that
we all want to feel socially connected to others.
The question is,
how do we do it?
I cannot just tell people, okay, now you connect.
I need to give people, you know, a technique, a tool,
and what I consistently find in my lab
that when people feel listened to,
they feel socially connected to the other person.
And we found it using so many different constructs
of social connection.
And one of the reasons that this happens,
I often ask them to say, like, why?
Why does listening, because we know it increases
social connection between the speaker and the listener?
One of the interesting thing about listening
is that it sends meta messages.
A meta message is a message that is not conveyed through words.
For example, one of the mistakes that listeners do is telling their speakers,
I know what you mean.
Now, every time I say it, it sounds really weird.
Why?
But I know what you mean.
So the mistake here is that often when I say, I know what you mean,
one of two things happens or both.
I become the speaker instead of the speaker instead of the language.
listener. Yes, Kim, I know what you mean. Something similar happened to me a while ago and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I become the speaker. Now, a more subtle, but very
powerful mistake. And this is, I'm saying a mistake, but it's human and it's, it's natural. The thing is, this is this is why listening requires
training, is when I think I know what you mean, I stop listening to you. And I, if I'm patient and I'm polite, I'm waiting until you finish, but I, I close my ears,
metaphorically.
And when I do listening training,
I often, when we challenge this assumption,
really, because you and I can share a similar experience,
but the subjective experience would be completely different for us,
even if we use the same emotion.
The extent to which I say, I felt excited,
and you'll say I felt excited,
is completely different for both of us.
In order to really step into the person's shoes,
the speaker's shoes,
I need to challenge this basic assumption
and Rogers call it the need to evaluate.
What we, oh, I understand what Kim said.
I'm patient.
I will, I will, I will, I till until she finishes,
and then I will tell her what I think.
This is where miscommunication happens.
Because when we challenge this assumption,
we often realize that what we initially thought we understood
is not what the speaker meant.
Now, the reason I went to this misperception,
this is only one misperception.
I know saying, I know what you mean,
is basically like saying, trust me.
No one will trust me if I actually say trust me.
This is a direct message.
A meta message is a message that is conveyed through behaviors.
So during a conversation,
when the listener exhibits high quality listening,
using many behaviors,
but they signal to their speakers,
you belong, you are important.
when I paraphrase what you're saying and I ask you at the end,
Kim, did I understand you correctly?
Did they miss anything?
I don't need to tell you, I understand you.
You will feel that I understand you.
And this is that these meta messages, you belong, you are competent,
you are worthy of my time, builds a sense that we call togetherness.
So just to shift a little bit,
I think some people are just innately really good listeners and some people, they're not.
And I'm just wondering, what are the personality characteristics of a good listener?
And if you're, say, a narcissist, can you be a good listener?
So the short answer is actually, yes.
Research to date has not found a personality characteristic that differentiates between good and poor listeners.
And many studies try because they're often the assumption that makes sense that, you know, if a person is extroverted, maybe they will be poor listeners because they want to speak more.
And maybe if someone is introverted, they will be better listeners.
There was some study that found that people who are high on agreeableness are better or perceived as better listeners.
But overall, personality traits are not so associated with being perceived and as a better listener.
as a good listening. What actually matters here is it's a skill. It's a skill. It's a muscle
that requires training. And when you train this muscle, whether you're a narcissist or you're
an introvert or an extrovert or whatever, you will become better at listening. One of the more
the interesting findings from a paper led by my colleague and supervisor, Avi Kluger, was that
we found in a study that listening is actually diadic.
So meaning that being perceived as a good listener depends on the person that I'm talking to.
So for example, I can be a great listener to my neighbor perceived as a great listener
to my neighbor, but the horrible listener perceived as a horrible listener to you.
So the perception of listening quality depends on the listener speaker diet.
This is what we often find that it's, we tested this question like, okay,
is there something in the person that makes them being perceived as good listeners or the speaker?
Or maybe there's something in the speaker that some people are just easier to listen to.
So so far we didn't find so much effect on the, it's mostly diadic.
Now, if I may, another interesting finding that we recently wrote about it in a paper in
about, we call it the puzzles of listening,
the contradictions and paradoxes in listening research.
What is interesting is in conversations between strangers,
the association between how the listener perceives their listening quality,
how a speaker perceives how well they were listened to,
and how an observer perceives the conversation,
the associations are small to moderate,
and we found it in several works that we conducted,
which really, you know,
raises an interesting question,
like, do people live in different worlds?
Like, are we in the same?
Listeners tend to overestimate how well they listen.
I read this paper that had people rate their ability in everyday behaviors
and listening was the behavior that they rated that they are at the top.
So 71% rated themselves above the midpoint of scale between zero to 100.
I looked at this paper and they said, wow, this is really strong.
But I wonder, what, is it that strong?
I replicated this effect and found 92.3% of the people that reported more than the midpoint of the scale.
Now, this is interesting because there are other papers showing that people at work, especially women and people who do not hold the managerial role, perceived that they're not satisfied by the listening effort that they receive.
So, wait, we have all these terrific listeners, and at the same time, we have speakers who do not feel heard.
But these are the same people.
So, like, you know, this is a puzzle that is really, for me, is really interesting to further explore.
We're going to take a short break.
When we return, I'll talk with Dr. Itchikov about what happens when two people disagree but still feel listened to and about how high quality listening can defuse extremism.
So I want to talk about disagreements, which is an area where you've done a lot of research.
and you've found that high quality listening
can make people feel less defensive
and less extreme in their views.
What are the reasons for that?
So the reasons are twofold.
The first reason is the one that we talked about before
and experience of social connection with the speaker.
You know, when you come to a conversation,
when you know or you realize that the person disagrees,
one of the fears that comes
is psychological reactants.
I feel that my freedom to hold my attitude
might be threatened.
I feel that I might not be perceived
as competent or self-war or my self-esteem.
How will I represent myself?
Because this is a situation.
This is a disagreement is a stress-evoking situation.
Now, what we found
is when speakers conversed with listeners
who exhibited high quality listeners,
they reported increased positivity resonance.
Positiveity resonance is a really interesting construct
that depicts social connection in a conversation.
So to what extent did they feel the flow
between myself and the listener?
To what extended, they feel that mutual emotions and thoughts,
even though we disagree.
So the first step was the connection that reduces the threat.
So I don't feel threatened anymore.
I feel accepted.
I feel connected to the person even though we disagree.
Then this led to an increase in self-insight.
Self-insight is to what extent did I manage to think of my attitude from different
perspectives?
To what extent did I, was I able to explore my attitude?
in a deeper sense.
To what extent did they learn new things
about my attitude?
So this is the cognitive process
that maybe like the more open-minded.
Increased self-insight was the more open-minded thinking.
And this led to a reduction in attitude extremity.
So participants rated their attitude more,
less extreme.
We measured it before,
their attitude before the conversation
and also afterwards.
And interestingly,
they also measured, like we measured self-reported attitude change.
To what extent did you feel that your attitude towards the issue changed?
And we found that they reported that their attitude has changed.
And also that it became more similar to their listeners attitude.
Now, this was really interesting because the listener did not convey any persuasive attempt.
If you think about it, this is exactly the opposite of arguments or of destructive conversations.
because, and this is how the core idea I had for this study.
We live in a world of destructive conversations,
which leads to a lot of polarization.
Now, the psychological process that works, that operates
in destructive conversation or in arguments,
is the opposite of listening.
When someone is arguing with me
and is telling me that I'm wrong,
I'm not able to listen to them.
I initially defend psychologically,
like if someone would come into my house,
they would physically defend.
When someone threatens my right and freedom
and autonomy to hold a position,
I defend psychologically.
Now, when they speak,
I'm not really listening to them.
I'm thinking of counter arguments,
how I'm going to,
act back, how I'm going to win, right?
I'm going to need to win this conversation.
There is no prize, but I need to win this conversation.
And this evokes defensiveness.
Now, we often see that arguments lead people to actually,
this is called the boomerang effect.
When we argue, we can argue constructively,
when we argue destructively,
telling each other why we are wrong,
why we are immoral,
why our attitude should not be expressed in this manner.
We become defensive.
And when we become defensive, we cannot change.
We actually bolster our initial attitude
because we drove into parallel lanes.
We didn't listen to one another.
We thought about how we're going to counteract.
And this is what we see.
We see bolstering of the initial attitudes.
With listening, we see the opposite.
Because when you give the person the psychological safety,
the social connection,
say, I don't need to agree with you, but I validate,
I acknowledge what you're saying.
I validate your emotions.
Then people can see the person behind the attitude.
Now, by the way, in a paper that is forthcoming
in the same journal, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
we found that during disagreements,
when speakers receive high quality listening,
they report increased subjective well-being
during this disagreement relative to lower quality of listening.
And this was explained by satisfaction of basic psychological needs,
autonomy, relatedness, and competence.
And another interesting finding there was that we found
that listening was more important than agreement
to people's subjective well-being.
So maybe winning an argument isn't whether I spoke
louder than the other person is whether I felt really listened to and learned new things
about my attitude.
Perhaps this is the real win that we want to achieve, but the finding that listening,
and it was conversation between strangers, so I don't want to make, you know, extrapolate
as a scientist and really careful in what I'm making of my studies, but there is some
preliminary evidence that listening, if we, I'll say it cautiously,
at least as important as having someone agree with us.
In our studies, we found that it's actually more important.
I want to talk about how we learn to listen.
I mean, for parents and caregivers who might be listening to us,
I hope they're listening, how can they teach their children to be better listeners?
At what age do we begin to internalize the concepts necessary to become good listeners?
You know, one of my dreams is that listening will be taught in schools, from elementary school to high school to universities.
Like we teach reading, we teach writing.
We need to teach listening.
By the way, as parents, before we try to train our kids, we need to train ourselves.
The kids we learn from the example.
And interestingly, by the way, when in the workplace, managers report that listening is one of the top three skills that they,
look for in an employee.
However, most of their study
showing focused on business schools
who train future leaders,
the vast majority of them do not teach listening.
A dean in a very prestigious business school told me once,
everyone knows how to listen.
We need to teach our students how to speak.
Then we did together some listening exercises
and they learned that it's not so easy.
But per your question,
my dream is from,
from first grade to teach it and also to adults.
It doesn't mean that the more we grow doesn't mean we become better at listening.
If we don't train this muscle, age will not guarantee that we become good at it.
Now, when we talk about parents and kids, the issue become more complex.
Because a question that I often receive is like, okay, how do I listen to my child?
and they don't want to talk to me
because as parents,
we are very,
because we want to help our kids
and we want to cover them,
hug them and protect them,
we are very quick to give advice.
Now, often, the kids do not want an advice.
There is a big difference
between seeking advice and giving advice.
Now, when our kids receive an advice,
like every person,
by the way, that they did not ask for, they become irritated.
Now, it's true for every conversation,
but it's especially true with parental listening.
So I will address this with a story.
I gave a listening workshop for tour guides,
and one of the managers came to me, and she's a mother.
She told me I have an adolescence at home,
and I can converse with her.
Like, she gets upset with me and everything,
and what can I do?
So I told her, let's try one thing.
Next time she comes to talk to you,
refrain from giving her advice.
Just listen to her.
And tell me how it went.
And actually she called me after and said,
no, she opened up to me and then she wanted to speak with me again.
Now, it's easier said than done.
This is what we call, by the way, a listening attitude.
And it can be developed, but it's not easy.
A listening attitude is the extent you,
you believe that you will help the other person by listening alone.
Now, the stronger, the listening attitude you have,
the more you will prevent yourself from giving an unsolicited advice
or feedback when no one asked for.
So this is with kids and parents, like the advice is a big issue.
For people who are bad, but there are enemies, by the way, to listening.
I'm presenting it like it's all.
And it's relative to other interventions, listening is very safe, by the way.
But there are enemies in, you know, metaphorically.
One of the enemies of listening, one of the misperceptions about listening is that listening is free.
Our listening is basically being silent and waiting until the other person finishes speaking.
Listening is not free.
It is costly.
It requires volition.
It requires motivation, energy, time, and effort.
Now, we have limited resources of these resources.
When you talked about caregivers or people, for example, social workers or nurses, people, occupational therapist, I'm now doing, by the way, listening, training to autistic youngsters.
People are, I'm learning so many interesting things using this workshop.
Now, in these settings, listeners, so nurses, social workers often experience what is called compassion fatigue.
Because, you know, when we hear, when we are engaged in conversations that are difficult conversations, negative content, traumatic content, secondary trauma, we catch this negative emotions or we catch these difficulties.
and this often leads people in this profession
to experience compassion fatigue.
I cannot be empathic anymore.
I cannot be compassionate anymore
because it's a limited resource.
What I think should be done
is they need people to listen to them
in order to do it.
But it's important to realize that listening has costs.
And like every resource,
it needs to be allocated in a smart way
because we don't have an endless amount of it.
You know, you wrote about another challenge that some listeners may face,
which is how do you react when someone keeps repeating the same story or complaint?
So how can you listen effectively in those kinds of situations?
That's a tough one.
Usually, and you know we're talking about human behavior,
so there is no one size fits all the solution.
But from my experience, usually when someone repeats the same,
it's like a broken CD.
I don't know if young people today will know what the CD is,
but I don't have a better equivalent.
So like a broken CD,
when someone repeats the same content over and over,
there is usually something stuck there.
Now, in this situation,
What I found to be beneficial is to try to identify and reflect the emotion that is manifest this repetition.
So for example, let's say that I'm telling you a story about how unfair my manager was towards me.
And I keep repeating, repeating.
Now, if you'll reflect on the content, I will just repeat what I say, what I said again and again and again.
What will behave for how to move from this point on and to advance the conversation is often try to reflect on the emotion.
So, for example, so if I understand, if what the emotion I hear from you is that you feel very angry, you feel hurt, you feel even betrayed by this manager.
Is that correct?
And usually when the emotion is accurately, accurately perceived by the listener, then the speaker can move to a more deep level of the conversation.
Why do you feel this way?
So there are ways, but it's not easy.
It's not easy in this context.
Let's talk about AI, which seems to be everywhere these days.
It's a huge part of our life and getting bigger.
And people are turning to chatbots for emotional support.
and advice.
Is AI a good listener or is there something that's fundamentally missing in those interactions
that you might have with AI or a chatbot?
So I think that AI to date, you know, it's advancing exponentially.
So, you know, we talk about it today.
It will probably be in a completely different phase even in one month or so.
I don't think that what we're actually doing with AI is listening.
per se.
Often people,
let's be,
okay,
so especially for
young people,
when you tell to them listening,
they think about texting
through WhatsApp to one another.
So with texting,
what is missing is all the,
you know,
non-verbal components of listening.
But, you know,
nowadays you can even do it
with video or audio.
So let's say that we can do it
with,
we're doing it with video and audio.
So the AI can be a terrific listener,
but there is a problem.
with the way that AI is doing the listener
because AI is currently built
to be very agreeable,
to validate us, to...
It's almost actively listening, right?
I mean, it's using those techniques.
Exactly, exactly.
It doesn't challenge us.
Now, we talked about high quality listening,
but there are different types of listening.
There is challenging,
listening, there is, and not always supportive listening, like the AI does in a very perfect way,
but it's very supportive.
It is not always the listening that the person needs.
And often, by the way, it can have very harmful consequences.
So just for as an example, there is a study back from 2020 where employees vented about their
managers and the researchers ask them,
which type of listening do you want to receive?
Supportive listening, like the AI does.
There was no AI back then, but supportive listening,
which is basically very similar to what AI does,
or challenging listening, which is listening that
a listening that tries to reframe the situation.
So the vast majority of participants chose the supportive listener.
Yeah, I'm inventing.
I want a supportive listener.
However, the listening style that was more beneficial for this angry employees was actually challenging listening because it helped them reframe the situation and feel less angry.
Now, the reason I'm saying it in response to the AI question is sometimes we need a listener that challenges us.
For example, if I am depressed and the AI validates me, I might become.
more depressed or more anxious.
There are stories about how an AI helped a person,
I think a young, I don't know if it was a boy or a girl,
write their suicide letter.
I think it was in the US and I think there was more than one case.
Now, this is the thing that scares me because the AI is too validating.
And we wrote about it in a recent paper in the puzzles of listening and the paradoxes of listening
that everyone thinks that, okay, so the person-centered, supportive listening is the best type of listening always.
No, it depends on the situation.
Now, here you have to have, so the AI is perfect, is perfect in imitating human behavior.
Perfect, better than us, better than human.
But it cannot understand human behavior because it's not human.
So it imitates it perfectly, but it doesn't understand.
And we still need this understanding when the situations are difficult.
So, so, so, so, and this is, this is a big question with, with, with the, the,
one of the, again, I'm not, of course, I'm not against you, you know,
AI is the, it's like, you know, the transition from the font, like to my daughters do not know what's,
like before the smartphone, like before the smartphone was the dinosaur era, right?
So, you know, like, like the transition to smartphone that it's, it's here to stay.
It's a different level of evolution.
However, one of the things that I'm interested
to see how it will work is what it will do
to the social connection to the amount of conversation
that people convey.
There is a new study, a very interesting study,
that found that people speak more than on average
and the study was until 2019.
330 words less on average per day.
So people speak less.
And if people speak less with one another,
it means that they also listen less.
Now, this was before the AI era.
So now with the AI, if we turn only to AI,
because it's validating, we're always correct.
If I will lead an argument, if I tell the AI
that they had an argument, you know, I'm always correct.
I'm never correct, you know, I'm, you know,
when a man arguing with his wife,
is never correct. Now for DA, I can tell me I'm correct. It's great. It's a great avenue to,
but it's not realistic. And this is something that will be interesting to see how it develops.
Well, Dr. Hitchikoff, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been a very interesting conversation.
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
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Thank you for listening for the American Psychological Association.
I'm Kim Mills.
