5. Listening

Chapter 5 discusses the analogous belief for the listener, the “first-order listening belief”. It comes in two variants, depending on whether the listener learns about the state of the world or about the talker’s subsequent actions – e.g., the actions that may follow after a promise is made. Like for the talker, the listener’s belief is conditional on information about the other person’s type and about the context, and the chapter discusses the importance of whether or not the listener realizes the relevance of such information. Notably, the empirical evidence reported in this chapter points to an insufficient conditioning of listening beliefs.