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Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask
The first two moves
Receive means paying attention to the person who is talking. Appreciate means making little noises like hmm, oh, and OK.
The last two moves
Summarize rests on the word so, which matters a great deal in communication. Ask means putting questions to the person afterwards.
Where it applies
The acronym works in listening and in communication generally, for anyone in either of those roles, which covers nearly everybody.
How did rasa become a theory of feeling?
In ancient Sanskrit texts, rasa meant the sap or juice of a plant. The Natya Shastra, a treatise on theater attributed to Bharata and dated somewhere between roughly 200 BCE and 200 CE, used the word for the emotional flavor a performance leaves in its audience. It named eight rasas, among them love, humor, anger, and wonder. The philosopher Abhinavagupta developed the theory further around the year 1000.
Why do small sounds like 'hmm' matter?
Linguist Victor Yngve coined the term back channel in 1970 for the short signals a listener sends while another person holds the floor. Conversation researchers find that these signals show attention without taking over the turn. Their frequency and timing differ across languages. Japanese conversation is known for frequent responses called aizuchi.
Why does summarizing show someone understood?
Carl Rogers and Richard Farson described active listening in a 1957 paper from the University of Chicago's Industrial Relations Center. In it, the listener restates the speaker's message in their own words and checks that it is right. The restatement gives the speaker a chance to correct any misunderstanding on the spot. Rogers had developed the approach in his client-centered therapy during the 1940s and 1950s.
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