The Most Disrespectful Things People Do During Conversations

In 2012, researchers at the McCann Melbourne advertising agency coined the term “phubbing” — a portmanteau of “phone” and “snubbing” — to describe the act of ignoring someone in favor of one’s smartphone during a social interaction. What began as a neologism has since become a subject of serious academic inquiry. James A. Roberts and Meredith E. David, researchers at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, published a study in the journal Computers in Human Behavior in 2016 examining partner phubbing specifically, and found that participants who reported being phubbed by a romantic partner experienced significantly lower levels of relationship satisfaction and higher levels of conflict. The study drew on survey responses from 145 adults and found a statistically significant relationship between perceived partner phubbing and depression.

What makes phubbing particularly corrosive is its implicit message: the contents of a phone screen are, in that moment, deemed more important than the person physically present. Even when the phone user intends no offense — scrolling out of habit, or responding to a message they considered brief — the person on the receiving end interprets the behavior as a signal of low priority. Further research has shown that even the mere presence of a smartphone on a table between two people, without anyone actively using it, can reduce the quality of conversation and the sense of connection felt by both parties. This has led some communication researchers to describe smartphone visibility itself as a low-level inhibitor of interpersonal depth.

Interrupting someone while they are speaking is one of the most universally recognized disrespectful conversational behaviors. Linguists and communication scholars have long studied the mechanics of interruption, distinguishing between cooperative overlaps — brief interjections of agreement or encouragement — and disruptive interruptions, where one speaker cuts off another to claim the floor or to redirect the conversation. It is the latter category that researchers consistently associate with social dominance, dismissal, and disrespect.

The late sociologist Harvey Sacks, alongside colleagues Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson, laid foundational groundwork in the 1970s for understanding conversational turn-taking, demonstrating that conversation operates by implicit, orderly rules about who speaks when. Violating those rules — particularly through what they classified as “interruptive overlaps” — is understood by speakers as a bid for conversational control. Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and author of multiple books on communication, has written extensively on how interruption patterns vary across gender, culture, and social hierarchy, noting that those with more social or institutional power tend to interrupt more frequently in mixed-power conversations. The experience of being repeatedly interrupted in conversation is consistently reported as demoralizing and dismissive by those on the receiving end.

Among the most psychologically damaging behaviors in conversation is the use of dismissive language — responses that minimize, trivialize, or outright deny the emotional experience of the speaker. Common examples include phrases such as “you’re overreacting,” “that’s not a big deal,” “you’re being too sensitive,” or “calm down.” While these statements might be offered casually or without malicious intent, they function as a form of emotional invalidation that communication researchers and clinical psychologists consistently identify as harmful to both the immediate interaction and the long-term relationship.

Psychologist Marsha Linehan, who developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), identified emotional validation — the acknowledgment that a person’s feelings make sense in context — as a foundational element of effective interpersonal communication. Its absence, she argued, is not neutral: it actively communicates to the speaker that their internal experience is incorrect or unjustified. This has measurable consequences. Studies in clinical psychology have documented links between chronic invalidation in close relationships and increased rates of anxiety, depression, and self-doubt in the invalidated party. In conversations between colleagues, acquaintances, or strangers, dismissiveness tends to shut down dialogue quickly and leave lasting impressions of disrespect.

Not all disrespect is communicated through words. A significant portion of interpersonal communication is conveyed through nonverbal cues, and conversations can be profoundly disrespected through body language alone. Research by Albert Mehrabian, a professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA, explored the relative contributions of verbal and nonverbal cues to the overall impression a person makes in communication, particularly in emotional exchanges. While the specific percentages from his work have often been misrepresented in popular culture, the broader principle — that tone, facial expression, and posture carry substantial weight in how messages land — is widely accepted in communication research.

Eye contact is among the most powerful nonverbal signals in face-to-face interaction. Consistently avoiding the gaze of a person who is speaking signals absence of engagement and is widely interpreted as dismissal or disinterest. Similarly, closed-off body posture — crossed arms, a turned or angled torso, a gaze directed toward an exit — communicates that the listener is not fully present or would prefer to be elsewhere. Psychologist John Gottman, known for his decades of research on relationship dynamics at the University of Washington, identified contempt as the most corrosive of all interpersonal behaviors. Contempt is often expressed nonverbally: the eye-roll, the dismissive sneer, or the derisive sigh communicate not merely disagreement but a fundamental lack of respect for the other person’s worth. Gottman found that contempt — more than conflict, criticism, or defensiveness — was the single strongest predictor of relationship dissolution in his longitudinal studies.

One-upping — the conversational habit of immediately responding to another person’s experience with a comparable or superior one of one’s own — is a widely recognized form of conversational disrespect. When a person shares a difficult experience and is met not with acknowledgment but with “that reminds me of a time when something even harder happened to me,” the original speaker is implicitly told that their experience was not significant enough to hold the conversation’s attention on its own terms. The one-upping response redirects empathy toward the listener and away from the speaker, reversing the direction of support that the original disclosure typically seeks.

Communication researchers and therapists often frame one-upping as a manifestation of poor active listening. Active listening, a concept developed in the 1950s by psychologist Carl Rogers as part of his client-centered therapy approach, involves giving full attention to a speaker — not only hearing their words but attending to the emotional content and meaning behind them, and reflecting that understanding back. One-upping violates nearly every principle of active listening simultaneously: it shifts focus from the speaker to the listener, it prioritizes self-expression over comprehension, and it signals — however unintentionally — that the listener’s own narrative is more relevant than the one being shared. While one-upping is rarely conscious or malicious, it is consistently experienced as dismissive by those who encounter it regularly.

Subject hijacking — abruptly redirecting a conversation away from what someone else was discussing toward a different topic, usually one the hijacker finds more personally interesting or relevant — is a form of disrespect that can be difficult to identify in the moment but is almost always felt by the person whose thread was abandoned. It communicates, in effect, that what the original speaker was saying was not worth the investment of sustained attention. Like many disrespectful conversational behaviors, subject hijacking frequently occurs without deliberate intent; the hijacker may genuinely not realize they have derailed the exchange.

Closely related is selective listening — the practice of attending only to the parts of a conversation that are personally engaging or relevant, while mentally disengaging from the rest. Selective listening is distinct from the ordinary cognitive limits of attention; it refers specifically to the pattern of visibly tuning in and out based on self-interest rather than genuine engagement with the speaker. The International Listening Association, a professional organization that has advocated for listening research and education since the 1970s, has noted in its published materials that poor listening is one of the most frequently cited complaints in workplace and personal relationships alike. The sense of not being genuinely heard is among the most common sources of interpersonal frustration across cultures and contexts.

Talking over someone — continuing to speak at elevated volume or pace while another person is also speaking, rather than yielding the floor — is a more aggressive form of conversational dominance than interrupting. Where an interruption seizes the conversational turn, talking over someone refuses to cede it, using volume or persistence to drown out the other voice rather than wait for a natural pause. This behavior is experienced as particularly disrespectful because it combines both the act of ignoring what the other person is saying and the act of physically drowning it out, leaving no space for the overridden speaker to feel heard even momentarily.

Research on conversational dynamics in group settings has found that talking over others is not evenly distributed: it tends to cluster around dynamics of status, familiarity, and perceived social authority. In workplace environments specifically, individuals in positions of greater authority have been documented as more likely to engage in this behavior, and those lower in organizational hierarchy as more likely to endure it. Communication scholars have noted that this pattern, when left unaddressed in institutional settings, can entrench existing power disparities and create environments in which only certain voices are effectively heard.

A frequently overlooked form of conversational disrespect is the habit of offering unsolicited advice or solutions when a person has not asked for them. When someone shares a problem, a frustration, or a difficult experience, their primary need is often simply to be heard. Responding immediately with “here’s what you should do” bypasses acknowledgment entirely and frames the conversation as a problem-solving exercise rather than an act of connection. This can feel dismissive even when the advice is well-intentioned, because it implies that the speaker’s primary need is a solution rather than a witness to their experience.

Therapists and communication professionals commonly distinguish between emotional support and informational support. The former involves listening, validating, and empathizing; the latter involves offering guidance, resources, or strategies. Research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships has examined support provision in close relationships and found that the mismatch between the type of support a person wants and the type they receive — including receiving advice when emotional validation was sought — is consistently associated with lower satisfaction with the interaction. Asking “are you looking for advice, or do you just need to talk?” before launching into suggestions is a practice some communication researchers have described as a simple and effective way to align the response with the speaker’s actual need.