Student Antisocial Compliance-Gaining as a Function of Instructor Aggressive Communication and Classroom Justice

Abstract

This study investigated students’ perceptions of their instructors’ argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness, classroom justice, and effectiveness of and likelihood of communicating student antisocial behavior alteration techniques (BATs). Results indicate that student perceptions of instructor argumentativeness were not related to their perceptions of the effectiveness of or likelihood of communicating antisocial BATs, or to their perceptions of classroom justice. In contrast, student perceptions of instructor verbal aggressiveness were positively related to their perceptions of the effectiveness and likelihood of communicating virtually all the antisocial BATs and negatively related to all three types of fairness. Finally, classroom justice mediated the relationships between instructor verbal aggressiveness and antisocial BAT effectiveness and likelihood of use, but did not mediate the relationship between instructor argumentativeness and antisocial BATs.

Keywords:

• Student
• Antisocial
• Compliance-Gaining
• Instructor
• Aggressive
• Communication
• Classroom
• Justice

Notes

1. My instructor is energetic and enthusiastic when he/she argues with students; my instructor enjoys a good argument over a controversial issue with students; my instructor enjoys defending his/her points of view on an issue; my instructor considers an argument with students to be an exciting intellectual challenge; my instructor has the ability to do well in an argument with students.

2. As past studies only reported Pearson correlations between student perceptions of instructor VA and outcome variables, r ² served as the indicator of variance explained.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher J. Claus

Christopher J. Claus (M.A., University of the Pacific, 2007) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University

Rebecca M. Chory

Rebecca M. Chory (Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2000) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University

Colleen C. Malachowski

Colleen C. Malachowski (M.A., West Virginia University, 2009) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University