People reading is not a new science. Researchers in areas such as micro expressions, body language and others have made great strides for decades. The ways in which we sit, stand, cross or uncross legs, lean forward, smile, scowl, squint, etc all convey things we do not openly say. These are visual signals and ones that we have evolved to read very well.
What about auditory signals? It makes sense that tone of voice can convey a lot of information. Thanks for Dr. Hassan of Princeton Univeristy, we know that voice also carries the state of mind of the speaker. Dr. Hassan found that in a “good” listener (someone who feels that they understood what they just heard), the listener’s brain activity will mimic that of the speaker they are listening to. In these experiments, subjects are listening to a recording – the speaker is nowhere to be seen. And still the listener, with nothing but the recorded sound of the speaker’s voice, will mimic the speaker’s brain patterns.
The listener in essence (and these are my conclusions here), is effectively putting themselves in the shoes of the speaker and in doing so triggers not just empathy for the speaker’s situation but actually mimics the brain patters of that speaker. Now this is not automatic. Something playing in the background, or right in front of you, will not necessarily cause your brain to mimic the patterns of the speaker. You have to choose to listen. You have to choose to tune in.
Keep in mind that, because the speaker was not there (in person or on video), the information that the listener gathers cannot come from pheromones, or body language, or looks/attraction, etc. It all has to come from the voice. Therefore, encoded in our voices is enough information for the listener to mimic our brain patters and truly put themselves in our state of mind.
I suspect that we transmit more than just state of mind. I suspect that we also transmit intention and the truth of our current selves. The reason that I suspect this is my well tuned gut instinct for what people are really dealing with.
It’s not magic – I believe it is just signals that we send over visual, auditory and other channels, which are then processed through the brain. I sent Dr. Hassan an email to ask if he though he would see the same effect with written communication (instead of spoken). He says that they already tried it and had similar results! That is, the reader mimicked the brain patterns of the writer. To what degree the reader can infer the state of mind of the writer (emotion, intention, what they are not saying, subconscious truth, etc) is debatable but the results blew me away.
We often say that you should not infer tone from writing as you may get it wrong. This study suggests otherwise. These studies taken together suggest to me that if you choose to listen for understanding (i.e. tune in), you can mimic and therefore infer more about the state of mind of the speaker/writer than you might expect.
I take the following conclusions:
1 – What you read, watch and listen to alters your brain waves and neural structure (fact – read Dr. Hassan’s papers for more). So be careful what you give that kind of power to.
2 – You must choose to tune into others for understanding. Passive listening will not work.
3 – Trust your gut instinct about the state of mind of the speaker/writer because you are probably right.
4 – Choose your words carefully… you are not just conveying your idea, you are conveying your state of mind.
