The effects of listening with “time-sharing” on psychological safety and social anxiety: the moderating role of narcissism and depression

ABSTRACT

Listeners who interrupt speakers upset the speakers and prevent the benefits of good listening. Interruptions can be avoided with “time-sharing,” where each partner listens (silently) for an equal amount of time. Yet, is time-sharing good for all? In an experiment with 50 pairs (95 participants with useable data), participants conversed freely for one minute and were then assigned either to a time-sharing (of three minutes each) or a free conversation condition. Consistent with our hypotheses, speakers in the time-sharing condition showed reduced social anxiety if they were high on narcissism but elevated social anxiety if high on depression, explaining past inconsistent effects of time-sharing.

KEYWORDS:

• Listening
• psychological safety
• social anxiety
• narcissism
• depression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2022.2161337.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2022.2161337.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the Recanati Fund at the Hebrew University Business School NA and The Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 928/17) to the second author.