4th Sunday Easter C- The Cocktail Party Effect: tuning in to God's voice

What is the cocktail party effect?  This effect is what allows most people to "tune into" a single voice and "tune out" all others, much the same way that a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room. Or notice even when the conversation gets dull, you can even eavesdrop on the conversation of the table next to you without moving your place. And in a party even how interesting is the conversation is with your friend, your attention will immediately shift when you hear your own name being called or spoken about somewhere in the room.

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” (Jn 10.27) The CPE ability is what enables the sheep to hear the voice of their shepherd amidst all that noise of the other shephers and sheep.

The cocktail party effect is our impressive and under-appreciated ability to tune our attention to just one voice from a multitude. Sadly we use it for choosing to hear the more unimportant things in life making us lousy listeners and unable to hear God’s voice.  Here are four types of lousy listeners:

A son brought home his fiancee to meet his father:
Son: Dad I’m introducing to you the most beautiful girl in the world. She is the one I love and I’m going to marry her.
Father: Son, are you sure? Look at her. Her teeth are crooked and you could see what she ate for breakfast.
S: I know, Dad, but I love her.
F: And look at her eyebrows, they are uneven and her eyes, her eyes, one eye is squinted.
S: I know, Dad, but I love her.
F: And oh my! she has so many pimples and blackheads.
S: I know, Dad, but I love her.
F: And her ears are too big like a bunny. And her nose is so flat.
S: Uh Dad, by the way, why are you whispering these to me?
F: Oh, she might hear us and she might get embarrassed.
S: It’s alright Dad, she is also deaf, but I love her and will marry her.

Who do you think is deaf, the girl or the father? The father is what you may call the Insensitive listener.  He is not able to listen beyond the face value of the other's words. And he could rarely pick-up on hidden meanings of what the other tries to say.

Pseudo-Listener. A person who gives the appearance of being attentive, with smiles, head-nods, minimal responses, but behind this polite face, he is ignoring or not attending to the other person.

Selective listener. When you choose what you want to hear.
A medical doctor who was invited as a guest speaker to address a group of alcoholics. He wanted to make a demonstration that would be powerful enough to make people realize that alcohol was injurious to their health. He had two containers, one with pure distilled water and one with pure alcohol. He put an earthworm into the distilled water and it swam beautifully and came up to the top. He put another earthworm into the alcohol and it disintegrated in front of everyone's eyes. He wanted to prove that this was what alcohol did to the insides of our body. He asked what the moral of the story was and one person from behind said, "If you drink alcohol you won't have worms in your stomach." 

Insulated Listener.  The opposite of selective listeners, insulated listeners are people who actively avoid or ignore certain topics. When that topic arises in the conversation, they turn off.

We have become lousy listeners because our world has gotten louder. We hear thousand of voices – all the time. Our ears get assaulted so much, that it’s a wonder we can hear the quiet, intimate, gentle voices at all. We hear so much that’s just noise. But Jesus’  voice is so gentle and sweet. So the quieter we become, the more we can hear.  To hear the voice of God, we must turn down the volume of the world around us. And then in the silence of our heart and mind, we may be able to hear the whisper of God.

During the depression in the 1930’s, a room was filled with applicants for a job opening as telegraph operator all waiting to be called and interviewed outside the secretary’s office since only one will be accepted.  The drone of conversation competed with the steady flow of dots and dashes. Just then one of them boldly stood up, bypassed the secretary’s office, instead knocked in the room with a sign: “Do not enter- authorized persons only” and didn’t come out. So they all wondered what happened, then the secretary announced: You all may go now, that man got the job.  They asked: How? The secretary said: While you were all talking, that man listened to the dots and dashes repeated time and again. It said: “If you can hear this, then enter the other room now and the job is yours.”

God is constantly speaking to us. As Psalm 50 attests: “The LORD speaks… from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets.”  Should we not stop to listen for a while, use our cocktail party effect ability to focus on what is essential, and really try to hear what God wants to tell us? “My sheep listen to my voice. I call each one by name. I lead them out and they follow me because they know my voice… I give them safe pasture and they go out with me in the path of righteousness.” (Jn.10:3,9-10)


References:

The Executive Advisory. The Toolkit: Poor Listening Habits
http://www.theexecutiveadvisory.com/toolkit/poor_listenting_habits.html

Dean, J. (2009). Psyblog. The Cocktail Party Effect.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/03/the-cocktail-party-effect.php