MFT627 Adler School of Professional Developing Listening Skills Questions These are two separate questions with separate answers, and should be a minimum o

MFT627 Adler School of Professional Developing Listening Skills Questions These are two separate questions with separate answers, and should be a minimum of 200 words each and at least one in text cite. Please use the reading provided to answer each question correctly as the reading are separate. NO PLAGIARISM

1)Describe how the therapist guides the therapeutic process (based on the reading). What are the barriers to active listening

Reading for above question Person-Centred Communication : Theory, Skills And Practice. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education. Retrieved from EBSCO multi-search in the Touro library. (Read Chapter 4)

2) Describe the different theories of supportive listening. Why is listening considered a “multidimensional construct?”

The reading for the question above question is attached.

Please inform me in anything else is needed THE INTL. JOURNAL OF LISTENING, 25: 85–103, 2011
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1090-4018 print / 1932-586X online
DOI: 10.1080/10904018.2011.536475
Supportive Listening
Susanne M. Jones
Department of Communication Studies
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Listening is a multidimensional construct that consists of complex (a) cognitive processes, such as attending to, understanding, receiving, and interpreting messages;
(b) affective processes, such as being motivated and stimulated to attend to another
person’s messages; and (c) behavioral processes, such as responding with verbal and
nonverbal feedback (e.g., backchanneling, paraphrasing). In addition, active listening consists of verbal strategies (e.g., asking clarifying questions), whereas passive
listening is nonverbal in nature (e.g., providing backchanneling cues). The purpose
of this article is to show that supportive listening is a central dyadic mechanism
of providing, perceiving, and receiving beneficial emotional support. Supportive
listening differs from other types of listening (e.g., listening during chit-chat or a
conflict, informational listening) because it requires that the support listener demonstrate emotional involvement and attunement while attending to, interpreting, and
responding to the emotions of the support seeker—a complex and challenging task.
Dear 5402 Commie Expert,
How do I deal with other people’s emotional problems? Many people think that I am
rude or insensitive because of the way I react to their problems. I want to help them
feel better and comfort them, but I am very bad at showing support. For example,
my friend approached me last week and told me that his dad had lost his job. My
friend was really scared about what the family was going to do. I care deeply about
my friend and his family, but the only thing I could say is, “That’s too bad.” When
someone presents me with an emotional problem I feel as though the situation is
very frustrating, but I also feel a lot of pressure on what I am supposed to say. How
can I show people that I’m not insensitive, that I care about their problems, and
This paper was presented as part of a panel, entitled Theorizing about Listening in Interpersonal
Communication, at the 2009 National Communication conference, Chicago, Illinois.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Susanne M. Jones, Associate
Professor, Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 225 Ford
Hall, 224 Church Street, SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail: jones344@umn.edu
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I want to comfort and support them? — Advanced Undergraduate Student Letter
(Spring 2010)
This letter, written by a student in response to a class assignment illustrates vividly
how difficult it is to comfort a person in need of help. We want to “be there” for
our friends and loved ones, but what exactly do we say and do? Is it enough
to say “I’m so sorry . . .”? Do we hug, give advice, or just plain listen and
“throw in” the occasional “Uh huh . . .”? Supporters often feel overwhelmed by
the expectation to be “the best supporters” they can be. What is perhaps most
poignant about the student letter above is that not being a “good” supporter
can have dire personal and relational consequences, (Holmstrom, Burleson, &
Jones, 2005). So, what should the student do and say to demonstrate that he
cares?
Listening, the ability to effectively attend to, interpret, and respond to verbal
and nonverbal messages (see Bostrom; Burleson; Edwards, all this volume), plays
an important role in the support process and can be executed more or less skillfully (see also Bodie, Worthington, Imhof, & Cooper, 2008). As has been noted
elsewhere in this volume, listening is a multidimensional construct that consists of
complex (a) cognitive processes, such as attending to, understanding, receiving,
and interpreting messages; (b) affective processes, such as being motivated and
stimulated to attend to another person’s messages; and (c) behavioral processes,
such as responding with verbal and nonverbal feedback (e.g., backchanneling,
paraphrasing). In addition, active listening consists of verbal strategies (e.g., asking clarifying questions), whereas passive listening is nonverbal in nature (e.g.,
providing backchanneling cues).
The purpose of this article is to show that supportive listening is a central
dyadic mechanism of providing, perceiving, and receiving beneficial emotional
support. Supportive listening differs from other types of listening (e.g., listening during chit-chat or a conflict, informational listening) because it requires that
the support listener demonstrate emotional involvement and attunement while
attending to, interpreting, and responding to the emotions of the support seeker;
a complex and challenging task. To date, little if any research has explicitly integrated listening into the support literature (Bodie et al., 2008). First, I demonstrate
the central role of listening in the support process by defining verbal and nonverbal
emotional support. I then situate supportive listening in the emotional support literature. As we shall see, the crucial characteristics that have been examined in the
context of emotional support are conceptually complementary behavioral manifestations of supportive listening. Second, using the student’s letter as a pragmatic
springboard, I present an interaction adaptation model of supportive listening. The
model is based on the corollary that listening effectively is necessary for beneficial
emotional support.
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CONCEPTUALIZING VERBAL AND NONVERBAL EMOTIONAL
SUPPORT
Social support encompasses phenomena, behaviors, and activities that are
intended to improve the well being of another person and that range from hugging a crying co-worker who got diagnosed with a terminal disease, to lending
money to a close family member who just lost her job (for a review of support
types see Wills & Shinar, 2000). These examples illustrate that social support is
moderated by factors, such as support type (e.g., tangible aid, emotional support,
advice), relationship closeness and type (e.g., distant relative, close friend), and
stressor (e.g., severe chronic stressors, everyday hassles).
In our work we have focused on emotional support, because it has been
found to be particularly beneficial to people’s health and life satisfaction (Barger,
Donoho, & Wayment, 2009). Emotional support is one unique type of social
support that consists of “specific lines of communicative behavior intended to
help another person cope beneficially with emotional stress” (Burleson, 2003, p.
552). In line with cognitive, person-environment (P-E) fit models (for a review see
Radnitz & Tiersky, 2007), emotional stress is a result of events that are appraised
(i.e., evaluated) as difficult or threatening to one’s well-being. The vast majority of our research on comforting communication has examined how people cope
with emotional stress as a result of everyday hassles and upsets rather than severe
chronic stressors (Hobson & Delunas, 2001).
Person Centeredness
Almost 30 years of research in comforting communication has shown that
beneficial emotional support must be person-centered. Person-centered support
validates the difficult emotional experiences of the distressed person by explicitly acknowledging them in talk. This message function is important because
it signifies “awareness of and adaptation to the subjective, affective, and relational reality” of the events that lead to the distress (Burleson, 1987, p. 305).
Furthermore, person-centered support encourages the distressed person to elaborate on what lead to the upset. This function is crucial because it sets in motion
a cognitive reappraisal process that leads to affective improvement (S. M. Jones
& Wirtz, 2006). Highly person-centered support is also other-centered, evaluatively neutral, and feeling-oriented (as opposed to fact-based or task-oriented; see
Burleson, 1994).
Highly person-centered messages are evaluated consistently as more helpful
and sensitive than low person-centered messages (e.g., minimizing messages;
Samter, Burleson, & Murphy, 1987). People also report feeling better after a
person-centered support interaction (S. M. Jones & Guerrero, 2001). Further, support of this nature carries beneficial relational consequences. For example, people
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who consistently use this kind of support are better liked (Burleson, 1990). Low
person-centered support is viewed negatively (Samter et al., 1987), and this kind
of support as well as insensitive social support in general may harm the supporter,
the receiver, and the relationship (Beehr, Bowling, & Bennett, 2010; Burleson,
2003; Seidman, Shrout, & Bolger, 2006).
Nonverbal Involvement
Research on supportive communication has focused almost exclusively on the
study of verbal person-centered messages, because “symbolic language provides
more flexible, adaptable, and complex means of conveying support (Burleson,
2003, p. 553). However, nonverbal cues play an important role in the comforting process. One nonverbal concept that has received attention in the study
of emotional support is nonverbal involvement. Involvement conveys relational
information (e.g., inclusion-exclusion, affinity, control) about how people view
themselves, their partner, and their relationship (Burgoon & Bacue, 2003). This
kind of relational information is particularly important during the emotional support process because it provides information for the support seekers that the
supporter is willing and motivated to comfort. After all, requesting support is often
viewed as relationally burdensome and face-threatening (Brashers, Goldsmith, &
Hsieh, 2002; Brashers, Neidig, & Goldsmith, 2004; Goldsmith, 2000; Goldsmith
& Parks, 1990). Involvement cues are thus approach (vs. avoidance) cues that convey psychological and physiological closeness, warmth, and openness to engage
with others (Andersen & Andersen, 2005; Burgoon & Bacue, 2003; Miczo &
Burgoon, 2008).
Involvement is frequently viewed as synonymous with immediacy, which
encompasses behaviors that reflect the degree of psychological distance between
(or closeness with) people. Yet involvement may also be communicated through
expressivity (e.g., animated facial expressions), altercentrism (e.g., backchanneling, no interrupting), conversation management (e.g., interactional synchrony,
short response latencies, effective turn taking), composure (e.g., behavioral relaxation, no self adaptors), and positive affect (e.g., vocal pleasantness, postural
mirroring; Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 2010). A series of studies conducted by
myself (S. M. Jones, 2004; S. M. Jones & Wirtz, 2006; S. M. Jones & Wirtz,
2007) and Trees (Trees, 2000, 2002, 2005) found that both nonverbal immediacy
and nonverbal involvement are perceived as beneficial and helpful when providing
support to others. Specifically, using Sensitive Interaction Systems Theory (SIST;
Barbee & Cunningham, 1995), which captures the ambivalence and tension that
people experience when they request or provide emotional support, Trees (2000)
found that mothers who used vocal warmth were viewed by their children as
more supportive. She also found that more coordinated body movements between
mothers and children predicted children’s perceptions of maternal supportiveness.
SUPPORTIVE LISTENING
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SITUATING SUPPORTIVE LISTENING
Research examining the roles, skills, and correlates of listening has mostly
adopted a functional, skills-based approach that focuses on two questions: What
constitutes active listening and how can we assess it? Listening has predominantly been examined in sales (Comer & Drollinger, 1999; Drollinger, Comer,
& Warrington, 2006) and in the healthcare field, specifically in the context of
counseling (Cormier, Nurius, & Osborn, 2009; Hill, 2009; Hutchby, 2005; Little,
Packman, Smaby, & Maddux, 2005), doctor-patient communication (Fassaert,
van Dulmen, Schellevis, & Bensing, 2007; Wanzer, Booth-Butterfield, & Gruber,
2004), and nurse-patient communication (A. C. Jones & Cutcliffe, 2009).
Supportive Listening in Healthcare
A case in point that vividly demonstrates the dearth of systematic theoretical
listening research is a construct that is widely endorsed as a central component of high quality healthcare: patient-centered communication (PCC; Rao,
Anderson, Inui, & Frankel, 2007). PCC has been linked to improved health outcomes (Epstein & Street, 2007), better patient adherence to prescribed regimen,
and reduced diagnostic screening costs (Epstein et al., 2005). A physician who
listens actively to a patient (e.g., by asking clarifying questions) not only validates the patient’s perspective and emotional state but also encourages the patient
to disclose health information more freely (Fassaert et al., 2007). Thus, through
active listening, both physician and patient gain not only important information,
but patients may also develop a trusting relationship with physicians, which in
turn affects health recovery (Street, Makoul, Arora, & Epstein, 2009).
Situating supportive listening within PCC is relatively easy if we consider that
PCC is operationally defined a physician’s ability to (a) elicit and capture patients’
perspectives; (b) capture patients’ unique psychosocial contexts (i.e., integrating
the person into family, work, and culture); and (c) reach shared doctor-patient
understanding that is concordant with patients’ values (Brown, Stewart, & Ryan,
2001; Epstein, Franks, et al., 2005). These components all require active listening. For example, shared understanding can only be reached when both doctor
and patient actively listen to one another by asking questions and paraphrasing
what was said. However, the role and importance of supportive listening in PCC
is frequently assumed, rather than explicitly operationalized. Where listening is
operationalized, it is done so in problematic ways. Consider the Active Listening
Observation Scale (Fassaert et al., 2007), one example of a scale that operationalizes listening in PCC with seven items that range from observations of relatively
concrete behaviors (e.g., is distracted, is hasty, uses exploring questions) to more
global evaluations (e.g., is good in leading the conversation, expresses understanding nonverbally). Attentive listening is itself a scale item and possesses the
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highest factor loading on this scale (the scale is unidimensional). This is problematic because it begs the question what exactly attentive listening is (or rather is
not), that is not yet captured by the other six scale items.
Supportive Listening in Interpersonal Relationships
Systematic research examining the components and outcomes of supportive listening in interpersonal communication is scant. Much like it is the case in
healthcare research, there is quite a bit of research that implicitly assumes the relevance of listening in interpersonal communication (e.g., Affectionate Exchange
Theory; Floyd, Judd, & Hesse, 2008), but there are only a few empirical studies that explicitly focus on the impact of stress talk on listeners in interpersonal
communication and close relationships (Lewis & Manusov, 2009; Notarius &
Herrick, 1988; Pasupathi, Carstensen, Levenson, & Gottman, 1999; Pasupathi
& Rich, 2005; Perrine, 1993). For example, Notarius and Herrick examined the
affective reactions of listeners after a conversation with a distressed confederate. Listeners who gave advice or joked were significantly more depressed and
more rejecting of their distressed partners than were listeners who acknowledged the distressed confederate’s mood and who relied on supportive listening
techniques.
Similarly, Lewis and Manusov found that listening to an upsetting event is
healing for the support seeker but stressful for the listener. Compared to those
who gave advice, listeners who validated support seeker’s emotions (an important
person-centered feature) reported increased levels of distress (see also Perrine,
1993). One reason why listeners may experience elevated levels of stress is
because they are likely influenced by and pressured to conform to normative
expectations of what constitutes beneficial emotional support. Listeners tend
to think that merely appearing involved and providing encouragements (i.e.,
being there or passively listening) is not enough when comforting another person; they ought to do something and resolve the problem. Perrine (1993) had
participants freely provide support to a distressed confederate who either indicated affective improvement or no affective improvement. Listener responses
were categorized as either supportive (e.g., providing encouragement or listening) or active (e.g., problem solving). Whatever the confederate’s manipulated
level of improvement, listeners who relied on problem solving felt that they
had helped more than did participants, who relied on listening alone. Merely
validating or acknowledging emotions, and backchanneling may be perceived
as less helpful than actually helping the distressed person resolve the problem
and providing advice, even though research clearly shows that advice is often
neither well received nor wanted in the first place (Feng & MacGeorge, 2006;
Goldsmith, 2004; Goldsmith & Fitch, 1997; MacGeorge, Feng, & Thompson,
2008).
SUPPORTIVE LISTENING
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Integrating Person-centered, Involved Comfort and Supportive Listening
At the heart of comforting another person lies the supporter’s goal to facilitate
emotional improvement. As I have shown earlier, we know a good bit about
what constitutes “good comfort,” namely that it ought to be person-centered and
involved. The connections between person-centered support and supportive listening seem obvious. Beneficial person-centered support of any kind must explicitly
validate and acknowledge the distressed person’s emotional upset. Therefore,
compared to other interpersonal listening contexts (e.g., listening for directions,
conversational listening, listening in conflicts), supportive listening requires that
the listener pay particular attention to emotional cues. Person-centered support
also requires that the supporter be attuned to the emotional state of the upset support seeker. Person centeredness likely plays a crucial role in all three stages of
the listening process (attending, interpreting, responding). First, when attending
to the support seeker it is important that the supporter captures all emotion cues.
This can be challenging because these cues may be ambiguous; seeking support
is face-threatening and thus support seekers may not only use cues that visibly
express distress but also politeness cues (e.g., smiling). Second, when interpreting
and making sense of these cues, the support seeker’s skill in accurately ascribing
meaning to emotional cues should play a particularly important role. This skill
may gain in import especially in the last listening stage when responding to the
support seekers, because supporters often paraphrase what is felt (e.g., “I totally
understand how you feel; it’s like everything is falling apart around you, right?”).
Thus, an initial entry point to conceptualizing supportive listening is person centeredness, because it captures the unique emotional state of the upset person and
indicates that the supporter has attended to and interpreted the support seeker’s
emotional upset.
Many nonverbal behaviors that operationalize involvement (i.e., immediacy, expressivity, altercentrism, conversation management, composure, positive
affect) also operationalize supportive listening. For example, Fassaert et al.’s
(2007) aforementioned Active Listening Observation Scale contains items that
tap primarily two involvement factors, namely altercentrism and conversation
management (e.g., distraction,…
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