Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have identified a surprising pattern: some people feel anxious even when they are resting. This finding challenges the long held belief that calm simply follows rest. The results were published in the Journal of Social Psychology and have sparked discussions about how rest and alertness interact in the mind. The study adds a fresh perspective to the broader conversation about anxiety and daily behavior, offering new angles for clinicians and educators in Canada and the United States who work with anxious individuals in quiet settings.
In psychology, an active listening approach exists where the therapist or facilitator does not interrupt, instead reflecting or asking clarifying questions. The goal is to create a sense of safety and validation for the person speaking. This method has been used for decades in counseling, group therapy, and training programs, and it remains a staple technique for helping people feel heard and understood. The central idea is that a listener helps regulate the pace of conversation, allowing the speaker to share more openly without fear of judgment or interruption.
The experiment involved one hundred university students arranged into fifty pairs. Participants alternated between listening and speaking roles or simply talked without a structured listening format. Before and after sessions, they completed questionnaires to measure narcissistic traits and social anxiety. They also described their feelings during the activity and reflected on their experiences in a brief debriefing. The design enabled researchers to observe how listening styles influence social comfort across different personality profiles, particularly when intense self-regard or low self-esteem is at play. The findings offer a nuanced picture of how rest, attention, and social dynamics interact in real life settings, including classrooms, workplaces, and social gatherings observed by researchers in Canada and the United States who study cross cultural patterns in anxiety and communication.
During the study, experts noted that listeners with elevated narcissistic traits exhibited more social anxiety in shared environments when conversation was conducted in a turn-taking format. Narcissism is a personality characteristic marked by a heightened sense of self-importance and a tendency toward dismissing others. From this, the researchers concluded that individuals with such traits may feel more uneasy when they cannot maintain the center of attention, especially in situations that require evenly distributed participation. These insights push practitioners to consider how group dynamics and rest periods shape comfort levels for different personality types, with implications for therapy rooms, classrooms, and team settings. The researchers emphasized that the environment itself can amplify or alleviate tension, and strategies that emphasize inclusive participation might reduce stress for some participants while heightening it for others. This nuanced understanding helps professionals tailor approaches to support diverse groups in both North American contexts and broader, multilingual settings [citation].”