How are your Empathy and Listening skills? (yes, mando content)

[soliver]

I was reading an article on communication for some work related training and came across this interesting blurb/factiod:

Hear the emotion behind the words:
It’s the higher frequencies of human speech that impart emotion. You can become more attuned to these frequencies—and thus better able to understand what others
are really saying—by exercising the tiny muscles of your middle ear (the smallest in the body). You can do this by singing, playing a wind instrument, or listening to certain types of high-frequency music (a Mozart symphony or violin concerto, for example, rather than low- frequency rock, pop, or hip-hop).

I have a lot of counselor training from both schooling and otherwise and consider myself rather attuned to others' emotions with a pretty good level of empathy. I can't help but wonder if or how playing the Mandolin has contributed that.

How about you? Do you find others telling you "You're a good listener..." or something similar? Do you think mando picking' sharpens your empathy?

Or is that a bunch of hooey?

[Roger Moss]

I was always more a fan of low - end thunder. I guess that makes me a yobbo.

[EdHanrahan]

I sense some blurring of the difference between "good listeners" and "bad hearers".

- "Bad hearers" are everywhere and, eventually, the majority of us past the teenage years IF you want to measure frequency response. Most of us adults have lost the top octave or three of the 10 octave hearing range (usually put at 20 - 20,000 hz). It's just the human condition. Plus, MUCH of the "emotion behind the words" is conveyed by facial expression and body language, beyond the sound itself.

- "Good listeners", aside from any "hearing" acuity, tend to exercise the muscles BETWEEN their ears, rather than IN their ears.

So I guess you can put me in the "hooey" column!

[farmerjones]

Trying to read "tells" will get you in trouble.

Excluding music, I'm a poor listener and I know it. At least that's what DW says. Or something like that.

[ukenukem]

At work yesterday (I am a librarian) we had a Meditation program featuring two musicians, one playing a set of Tablas, the other trumpet. They played together at the end I was really getting into that unique combination.

When you talk about "listening" it made me realize that my increased attention to this duo was likely because 1) I'm a musician 2) My first instrument was drums and 3) It was a non-standard combination. I was even replacing the trumpet with mandolin as they played (sound only, not fingerings!). Afterwards I talked to the Tabla player who showed me how he got some of the "moving" tones that I clearly heard within his playing. Quite different technique than congas.

Point is, I think our attention in listening is highly variable based on our interest level.

[Bob A]

I'm more often moved emotionally by the cello than by the violin. Stirs me on a deeper level?

But then I'm getting old, and my hearing in the upper ranges has deteriorated over time.

I've learned to be a good listener, because I prefer not to be the talker. More to do with personality than with playing a mandolin.

[Randi Gormley]

I'm a professional listener -- more than 40 years as a journalist, most of that time as a reporter -- and while a lot of my coworkers have some musical leanings, it doesn't necessarily match up with how well they listen or how successful they are at reading people or listening to them, nor their empathy level. I'd say that the observation was made backward -- people under stress tend to -- but not always -- speak with a changed voice, and someone extrapolated that out to an equivalency they could place neatly into a worksheet box. Certainly, there are people who raise their voice into a higher frequency when they are emotional but there are people who drop their voices, too, or who become speechless. And following that, it's certainly easier to say so-and-so-is-being-emotional if their voice is naturally higher -- women and children come to mind -- so you might get a false sense of whatever emotion is there -- if any -- based merely on whether their voice is in the upper or lower register. Whether the graf is hooey or not would depend on the research, if there is any. You'd be surprised at the number of things that are passed around as fact in management handouts that are simply observations, wishes, natural bent or bias of the author.

[HonketyHank]

Spence, I am a bit skeptical. But psych being a science, it might be a worthy hypothesis capable of being tested in a controlled manner.

Purely as an anecdote, I will note that consider myself more empathetic than most but I have had at least some degree of high frequency hearing deficit since childhood.

[soliver]

Thanks for the feedback, if nothing else, I did find it interesting to think about.

Keep the comments coming... interesting topic IMO.

[Louise NM]

What I immediately found interesting about this statement is that women and children have higher-pitched voices, and are also perceived as being more emotional than you folks who live in the tenor-baritone-bass range.

Playing music in a group, be it Haydn quartets, bluegrass, or rock, requires that you learn to listen to others, read their non-verbal cues, and work together as one to achieve the end result. (At least if you want to play well.) One could argue that this builds understanding and empathy, regardless of what pitch you are playing. Is a tuba quartet less empathetic than a piccolo group?

My guess is that this hypothesis is untested and unproven.

[Frankdolin]

As a life lifelong musician and listener with selective empathy ,who is also a cynical skeptic of anything not factual. I vote hooey.

[Denny Gies]

I've thought about this for a couple of minutes and I have another vote for "hooey".

[OldSausage]

Sorry, I only respond to questions if they are about me and how great I am.

[farmerjones]

Sorry, I only respond to questions if they are about me and how great I am.

you mock me

I don't mind

[sblock]

Well, it has not been my experience that musicians who play the piccolo, sopranino clarinet, Baroque trumpet -- or the mandolin, for that matter -- are any more or less empathetic, on the average, than musicians who happen to play the tuba, double bass, or bassoon. In other words, I don't think that listening often to higher-pitched instruments makes you somehow more able to summon empathy for fellow human beings. That is WAY too simplistic and naive, to my way of thinking. And as we grow older and lose our ability to hear high frequencies, we don't tend to lose our empathy. On the contrary, many people grow more empathetic with longer life experience.

It used to be thought that singing in the higher ranges addled the mind, due to constantly shaking the brain at higher frequencies (or possibly higher amplitudes). In classical music, they have the common saying "Stupid as a soprano, dumb as a tenor." Toscanini was big on this notion. This idea, too, has been pretty thoroughly debunked. See here for a discussion of that.

So I vote "hooey" too!

[LadysSolo]

As a medical professional, I take more of my cues from body language and facial expression than tone of voice. I find that my patients who are upset tend to NOT talk, rather than raise the pitch of their voice (this based on 36 years of observational experience, rather than scientific testing.) But I feel that listening music tends to make us sensitive to the emotions of others, and playing with others helps us to watch body language for cues as to what the others will be doing (always helpful for human interactions.)