In 1990 a Stanford graduate student named Elizabeth Newton asked people to do something rather silly. Tap out a well-known song with your finger, "Happy Birthday" perhaps, and guess how many listeners will name it. The tappers expected about half. About 3% got it.
You can see why. The tapper hears the whole tune, the melody, the words, the lot. The person across the table hears somebody knocking on a table. The tapper, meanwhile, thinks they're being rather musical. Chip and Dan Heath made the story famous in .
That experiment explains a lot of the conversations that went wrong with your sister, your oldest friend or the colleague you can't quite read. You said it, and it was perfectly clear, because you could hear the tune. The usual communication advice is to listen better and express yourself clearly, and it's fine as far as it goes. But it skips the odd ways your own mind gets in the way, and those are where the useful changes are.
Your feelings don't show as much as you think
Psychologists call this the illusion of transparency. In the original studies, liars thought their lies were easier to spot than they were, and people feeling disgust thought it showed more than it did. It feels as if what's going on inside must be leaking out. Mostly it isn't.
So your friend may not have noticed that you were hurt. Your brother may have no idea how tired you are. "They should know" is a sentence worth retiring, because usually they don't, and they aren't being cruel. If it matters, it needs saying out loud.
There's a kinder side to this. The irritation you were sure the whole table saw at dinner was probably far less obvious than it felt. Lonely in a Crowd: Why Connection Feels So Hard Now has a cousin of this one: after a chat, people guess they were liked less than they were.
Closer isn't clearer
You'd expect all this to fade with people who know you well. 7 Communication Tips for Your Relationship, linked below, has the married couples who understood each other's tone no better than strangers did, and the emails whose tone people were sure they'd read correctly and often hadn't. It's written for couples, and the same trap is waiting in families and friendships.
Knowing someone well makes you stop checking. So your sister's "fine" and your friend's "no worries" deserve a second look.
Say it so they can hear it
"I feel hurt when plans change at the last minute" lands differently from "You never stick to our plans." The term "I-message" was coined in the 1960s by Thomas Gordon, who wrote about it in his 1970 book on parent training, so this advice began in the family.
It has held up reasonably well. When people rated opening lines to a conflict, those using "I" and those showing the other person's view both seemed less hostile. The best did both: "I understand why you might feel that way, but I feel this way." That was a rating of imagined scenes rather than real rows, so treat it as a good opening and no more.
One caution. "I feel that you're selfish" has the right first word and the wrong everything else.
Ask, don't imagine
"Put yourself in their shoes" may be the most repeated advice in this whole subject, and it has been tested. Across 25 experiments, people tried to read emotions from faces, spot fake smiles, catch lies and predict what their own spouse would like. Beforehand, a large majority of those asked expected imagining the other person's view to help. It didn't. If anything, accuracy went down, and confidence sometimes went up.
What worked was asking. In the final experiment, people who got the other person's view directly, through conversation, became more accurate. You can't work out your mother from your armchair.
When you catch yourself deciding what somebody meant, try "Can you tell me more about what you meant by that?" or "How are you feeling about this?" Then believe the answer, at least for the length of the conversation.
Listening without the performance
Listening is harder than it sounds, and there's a reason. People spend 30 to 40% of what they say on their own experiences, and talking about yourself lights up the brain's reward system. In one series of experiments, people gave up money for the chance to do it. So when you're waiting for your turn, part of you is waiting for a treat.
Put the phone away, face them, and when they've finished, say back what you heard. That last part has the evidence behind it. In one study, 115 people talked with trained partners who responded either by paraphrasing and asking, by giving advice, or with simple acknowledgements. Those who got the paraphrasing felt more understood than the others.
"I see" isn't quite enough. "So the part that upset you was that she told everyone before she told you?" does much more, even if you've got it wrong, because then they can put you right. Few things motivate a person quite like putting you right.
It does something for the person talking, too. Across five experiments, people who spoke to an attentive, non-judgmental listener felt less socially anxious and became clearer about what they thought. Sometimes they've only worked out what they think by the time they've finished telling you.
You can also stop worrying about your eyes. Asked how long they liked a filmed face to hold their gaze, people settled on about 3.3 seconds on average. Look, look away and come back. Staring isn't listening. Kate Murphy's takes a longer, friendlier look at all of this.
Two kinds of talker
Talking over someone isn't always rudeness. The linguist Deborah Tannen recorded a two-and-a-half-hour Thanksgiving dinner among six friends and found two styles at one table. The New Yorkers talked fast, overlapped and fired off quick questions, which she called high-involvement. The others waited for a gap, and when the overlapping caught them off guard, they went quieter and slower still. She called that high-considerateness.
One dinner is a small sample, but you may recognise your own family in it. The talkers may think they're being warm, and the waiters may never get a word in. If you're a talker, leave a real gap, or ask the quiet one directly.
"That sounds hard"
"That sounds really challenging." "I can see why that upset you." They're small sentences, and you don't have to agree with someone to say them. When students were given a stressful maths task, those who met with validating responses saw their heart rate settle, while those who met with invalidating ones had higher heart rates and worse feelings.
What tends to come out instead is advice, usually with love. In three experiments, 257 women waiting to give a stressful speech received support from another person. When it was obvious, it did nothing or made them more reactive. When it was subtle, it helped. It seemed to work when it didn't suggest that they couldn't cope.
That's worth remembering when a friend tells you their troubles and you already have the solution. "Do you want ideas, or would you rather I just listened?" takes four seconds.
Telling people the awkward thing
Keeping quiet is the opposite mistake. When a survey administrator had food or lipstick on their face, only 2.6% of people mentioned it. Across five further experiments with 1,984 people, including friends giving feedback in real time, people underestimated how much the other person wanted to be told. They particularly underrated how useful it would be.
So tell the colleague about the slide with the wrong figures, and tell your friend about the spinach. They'd rather hear it from you than from the photo. Do it privately, kindly and about something they can fix. , by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, is the fuller guide for when it's more than spinach.
Family
Some of the hardest silences are in families, and they aren't as rare as they can feel. In a US national survey, 6% of adults had been through a period of estrangement from their mother, and 26% from their father, on average starting in their twenties. If you're in one, you have plenty of company.
If you owe the apology, Powerful Strategies to Let Go of Grudges and Find Inner Peace has the six things an apology that works tends to contain. It also has people describing hurts from both sides: from the injured party, lasting harm, and from the one responsible, a small and closed incident. Neither version was a lie, so you and they may honestly remember two different rows.
You don't have to settle anything in your first message to a sibling you've lost touch with. A photo of that awful old sofa will do nicely. 10 Powerful Tips for Choosing the Right People to Surround Yourself With has why it's worth doing: a short check-in meant more than its sender guessed, above all when it arrived unexpectedly.
When it's something that matters, use your voice. Breaking Free from Low Moods: Powerful Strategies to Reset Your Mind and Energy has the girls whose mothers comforted them after a stressful test, and what the voice did that instant messages couldn't.
How you talk to older parents matters too. Elderspeak is the name for the slow, over-simple voice, the "we" and the "sweetie". In a small hospital study of 16 people with dementia, it turned up in 96.6% of 88 recorded care encounters, and less of it went with far fewer refusals of care. That's a very particular setting, a long way from your kitchen table. Still, your mother isn't a toddler, and she can hear you.
Unless she can't. About one in three Americans aged 65 to 74 has hearing loss, and nearly half of those over 75 have trouble hearing, which can easily look like not listening. Face them so that they can see your lips, speak up without shouting, slow down and turn off the TV. Dementia Risk: What It's Linked To, and What You Can Change has why it's worth getting seen to.
And if your father tells you the same story for the fourth time, that's normal too. In memory tests, people were worse at remembering who they'd told something to than who had told them, and the experiments pointed to self-focus: we're busy with ourselves while we're telling it. It goes for you as well, so "I told you that" isn't always as solid as it feels.
Good news
Bad news looks like the real test of a relationship. How to Build Trust in a Relationship has the couples whose responses to good news told researchers more about their future than their responses to bad news. Friends are no different.
When someone tells you they got the job, the worst replies are a change of subject and a story about your own job. Ask for the whole thing. Who told them? What did they say? Your own story will keep.
Saying thank you
"Thank you for being there for me" is hardly an original sentence, and it doesn't need to be. 7 Simple Changes to Improve Your Health, Starting Today has the people who sent thank-you letters and badly misjudged how they'd be received: more pleasure and far less awkwardness than they predicted. Being specific helps, because it proves you noticed. "Thank you for driving Mum to the hospital" beats "you're a star". Though you're welcome to add the star.
Compliments go the same way. Across five studies, people underestimated how good a compliment would make someone feel and overestimated how bothered they'd be, even looking back. Their own worry about saying it well was what got in the way.
When it gets heated
Stick to this issue, and leave last Christmas out of it. If it's getting too hot, take a break and say when you'll come back to it. Why Conflict Escalates in Relationships Even When Both People Want It to Stop, linked below, has what's happening in your body by then, and why good advice stops working at that point.
Time on the calendar
Most of this needs an actual conversation to happen in, and those get squeezed out first. A regular call with your brother or a standing walk with a friend does more than a heroic reunion once every few years. Lonely in a Crowd has how many hours a friendship really takes.
When to stop
This one may surprise you. In two studies of 932 conversations, some with people close to each other and some with strangers, chats almost never ended when both people wanted them to, and rarely when even one of them did. On average, the gap between the length people wanted and the length they got was about half the conversation. They also had little idea when the other person wanted to stop, because it's what we keep to ourselves.
So you may be leaving your friend just as they were warming up, or keeping your brother on the phone while he stares at the oven. You can simply ask. "I should let you go, or do you want to keep talking?" solves a problem the two of you couldn't have solved by guessing.
Not every gap needs filling, either. Among people who don't know each other, a brief silence or delay can feel like a threat. In two experiments, though, the same pause made people in secure relationships feel more understood, as if no words were needed. If you can sit in a car with your sister and say nothing, that's a good sign.
"Sorry, what?"
A misunderstanding isn't a sign that something has gone wrong. When researchers compared conversations in 12 languages from 8 language families, they found people stopping to sort out a problem about once every 1.4 minutes, and doing it in much the same way: the listener signals trouble and the speaker tries again. So "Sorry, what do you mean?" is how conversation has always worked, everywhere. You've probably just stopped doing it with the people you love.
What to do, in order
Retire "they should know". Pick one thing you've been assuming somebody has noticed, and say it.
Swap one guess for a question. The next time you're sure what someone meant, ask.
Say it back. Before you reply, tell them what you heard.
Ask before advising. Ideas, or an ear?
Use your voice for anything that matters. Text the warm things and call for the rest.
Send the message you've been putting off. It doesn't have to fix anything.
Start with one or two of these. You'll still get things wrong, because we're all tapping our own songs, and that's all right. Getting it wrong is how the other person gets the chance to put you right.
The people you love can't hear the tune in your head, and you can't hear theirs. So hum it for them. You'll spend fewer evenings replaying what you meant to say. Today, pick the person you've been assuming knows how you feel, and tell them.
Is it your partner you can't get through to? 7 Communication Tips for Your Relationship — the small daily habits that keep couples understanding each other, from tone to texts.
Already past talking and into shouting? Why Conflict Escalates in Relationships Even When Both People Want It to Stop — what your body does in a row, and how to stay below the point where advice stops working.
Know someone who's sure you know what they mean? Send them this, and tap out a song while they read it.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional.
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