Every time I insert something in my phone output jack, the sound is muted and I have to go into alsamixer and turn up the volume on the Speaker lever.

I can see the reason this is so - when I'm listening in phones, I don't want the laptop speakers on - but my hardware does this for me automatically, and the Speaker lever goes to the phone jack when something is inserted there. The result of alsamixer doing this adjustment is that I have to open a terminal, type alsamixer, find the speaker lever and turn it up again, every time I insert something in the phone jack.

There has to be a way to turn off this behavior. But how?