The Dangerous Protection of Selective Listening
Executives are smart people. People with ADD have a hard enough time paying attention to things that matter. So what happens when smart people run into things they don’t want to pay attention to?”The brain is an extremely sensitive physical organ, and the psyche is equally sensitive. Megaminds build up complex defense mechanisms to avoid hurt. One such mechanism is selective listening.
“Selective listeners hear only what they want to hear. And what they want to hear is praise. People of all calibers of mental attainment prefer boosts to knocks, of course, and we would all like to hear only pleasant things. Most of us cannot avoid hearing the negatives.
“…[But] certain brilliant minds use their brilliance to create screening mechanisms that fend off criticism altogether, so that the subject truly does not hear it…
“It takes a certain kind of complex and supple intelligence to build and maintain such a screen. For one thing, the individual must be motivated by a high level of narcissism, so high that no negatives at all can be tolerated. Then, the mental equipment must be sophisticated and powerful enough to intercept bad messages before they penetrate the sphere of consciousness.”
Mortimer Feinberg and John Tarrant in Why Smart People Do Dumb Things: Lessons from the New Science of Behavioral Economics
Is there something you need to be hearing that you aren’t?
