Cardiovascular Changes During Dialogue

Abstract

This study was designed to explore the experience of listening, noting how listening was distinct from talking and from silence. There was interest in the potential for listening to engender lowered physiological arousal. Listening was defined within an interpersonal context, as one person listened to another tell a story. Clinical experience has demonstrated that persons who are listening to a clinician share a story often relax. Psychophysiological measures were used to assess the experience of listening.

Cardiovascular parameters (mean arterial pressure, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, skin temperature) and eye contact (videotaped data) were measured during listening. Individual tendency to become engrossed with environmental stimuli was measured prior to listening, using the Tellegen absorption measure. Following listening, personal descriptions of listening were recorded using an interview format.

Physiological monitoring occurred during silence, talking and listening. Measurements were made every minute for eighteen minutes during silence prior to dialogue (listening or talking), during dialogue and during silence following dialogue. Dialogue tasks (listening and talking) were randomly assigned.

Data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA with cardiovascular indicators serving as dependent measures. The two dialogue tasks had differing cardiovascular effects. Both talking and listening resulted in heightened physiological arousal, but talking was significantly more arousing than listening. The calming effects of listening to another person speak altered blood pressure after listening. Absorption levels, eye contact during listening and personal descriptions of listening had no main effects on cardiovascular changes during listening.

Women were generally more relaxed than men, listening to a female researcher tell a story. Persons who talked before they listened to a story were more relaxed throughout the research procedure. The heartfelt quality of stories shared in the clinical setting was not captured in the research setting. Stories told to engender the listening task in the research protocol assumed meaning unique to that setting and experience. The power of human interaction to effect bodily change was highlighted in this study.