What is active listening?
Active listening is listening fully, understanding the feelings and meaning behind what someone says, and reflecting that understanding back ("So what I’m hearing is…"). Unlike passive listening, the listener actively checks and expresses understanding. Carl Rogers, founder of person-centered therapy, and Richard Farson popularized the term in a 1957 paper with the same title.
- Meaning
- Understanding feelings and meaning and reflecting them back
- Introduced by
- Rogers & Farson (1957)
- Roots
- Rogers’s person-centered therapy
- Key techniques
- Reflecting, paraphrasing, summarizing, open questions
Rogers’s core conditions
Rogers (1957) described the therapist attitudes he considered necessary for change. Active listening can be seen as turning these attitudes into conversational skills.
| Condition | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Empathic understanding | Sensing the other person’s feelings and thoughts as if from the inside |
| Unconditional positive regard | Accepting the person without judgment |
| Congruence (genuineness) | Being authentic rather than putting on a front |
Key techniques
| Technique | Example |
|---|---|
| Paraphrasing | "So three assignments are due at the same time?" |
| Reflecting feelings | "That sounds really frustrating with all those deadlines." |
| Summarizing | "So the time pressure is hard, but you’re more worried that a teammate isn’t responding." |
| Open questions | "How did you feel when that happened?" |
By contrast, advice, moralizing, judging and quick reassurance ("Everyone goes through that") tend to act as roadblocks that shut the conversation down.
How active listening reached families
How did active listening become a foundation of parent education? Psychologist Thomas Gordon, who had studied with Rogers, proposed in Parent Effectiveness Training (1970) that when a child owns a problem, parents should use active listening to acknowledge the child’s feelings rather than jumping to solutions, and when the parent owns the problem, they should express their own feelings with I-messages. This distinction went on to influence many parent and teacher training programs.
I-messages connect closely to assertiveness training. If criticism and defensiveness keep repeating in a couple’s conversations, see also Gottman’s Four Horsemen.
Everyday examples
- A child says "I don’t want to go to practice": "You really don’t want to go. Did something happen today?" Responding first with "You still have to go" usually ends the conversation.
- A coworker says "This schedule is unrealistic": "You feel the timeline is too tight. Which part worries you most?"
- Helping professions: active listening is a core skill in training for counselors, social workers and healthcare staff.
Frequently asked questions
- What is active listening?
- It is a way of listening in which you understand the feelings and meaning behind someone’s words and reflect that understanding back through paraphrasing or summarizing.
- What are active listening techniques?
- Common techniques are paraphrasing, reflecting feelings, summarizing and asking open questions, while holding back advice and judgment.
- How is active listening different from I-messages?
- In Gordon’s model, you use active listening when the other person owns the problem and I-messages when you own the problem.
References
- Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045357
- Rogers, C. R., & Farson, R. E. (1957). Active listening. Industrial Relations Center, University of Chicago.
- Gordon, T. (1970). Parent effectiveness training. Wyden.