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Perhaps no communication skill is identified as regularly as active listening in training programs across a variety of disciplines and activities.Yet little empirical research has examined specific elements of active listening responses in terms of their effectiveness in achieving desired interpersonal outcomes.This study reports an experiment designed to test the influence of a specific element of active listening responses, namely, the message paraphrase.One hundred and eighty undergraduate students participated in peer interviews in which they received either a paraphrased reflection or a simple acknowledgement in response to their expressed opinions regarding comprehensive examinations.The results of data analysis indicated that message paraphrases were associated with the social attractiveness of the listener but were not associated with participants' conversational satisfaction or perceptions of feeling understood by the listener.The importance placed on interpersonal communication skills training has reached nearly every corner of the cultural landscape in the United States, including books and courses in skills training spanning fields such as law enforcement (e.g., Wallace & Robertson, 2003), pharmaceutical care (Meldrum, 1994), business (Bartolome, 1993), and Christian ministry (Neff, 2006), to name a few.Interpersonal skills training is an important element in applying communication theory to the real world.One skill routinely recognized in both popular treatments of improving interpersonal skills as well as basic interpersonal communication
Weger et al. (Tue,) studied this question.