TY - JOUR
T1 - Feeling heard
T2 - Operationalizing a key concept for social relations
AU - Roos, C.A.
AU - Postmes, Tom
AU - Koudenburg, Namkje
N1 - Copyright: © 2023 Roos et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2023/11
Y1 - 2023/11
N2 - Feeling heard is considered a cornerstone of close relationships and crucial to healthy self-development, but psychologically, this sentiment of feeling heard remains understudied. The current paper therefore aims to define and measure the experience of feeling heard. Based on an integrative literature review, feeling heard is conceptualized as consisting of five components at two conceptual levels. At the interpersonal level people feel heard when they have 1) voice, and receive 2) attention, 3) empathy, 4) respect. At the collective level people should experience 5) common ground. In two population surveys (N = 194, N = 1000), we find that feeling heard is a unitary concept, and we develop and validate the feeling heard scale (FHS); a concise eight-item scale with good psychometric properties. Results show that the FHS is a distinct predictor of conversation intentions in many different contexts and relationships. In fact, the FHS is the strongest predictor of intentions for conflict behavior among a set of 15 related variables (e.g., acquaintance, intimacy). We conclude by reflecting on the potential applications of this scale: in interpersonal relations and professional contacts, the FHS enables the assessment of one crucial dimension of social interaction.
AB - Feeling heard is considered a cornerstone of close relationships and crucial to healthy self-development, but psychologically, this sentiment of feeling heard remains understudied. The current paper therefore aims to define and measure the experience of feeling heard. Based on an integrative literature review, feeling heard is conceptualized as consisting of five components at two conceptual levels. At the interpersonal level people feel heard when they have 1) voice, and receive 2) attention, 3) empathy, 4) respect. At the collective level people should experience 5) common ground. In two population surveys (N = 194, N = 1000), we find that feeling heard is a unitary concept, and we develop and validate the feeling heard scale (FHS); a concise eight-item scale with good psychometric properties. Results show that the FHS is a distinct predictor of conversation intentions in many different contexts and relationships. In fact, the FHS is the strongest predictor of intentions for conflict behavior among a set of 15 related variables (e.g., acquaintance, intimacy). We conclude by reflecting on the potential applications of this scale: in interpersonal relations and professional contacts, the FHS enables the assessment of one crucial dimension of social interaction.
KW - Communication
KW - Emotions
KW - Empathy
KW - Humans
KW - Interpersonal Relations
KW - Voice
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178495329&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0292865
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0292865
M3 - Article
C2 - 38032901
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
JO - PLOS ONE
JF - PLOS ONE
IS - 11
M1 - e0292865
ER -