Students’ perceptions of instructors’ socio‐communicative style and the influence on instructor credibility and situational motivation

This study investigated whether instructors with different socio‐communicative styles differed in their students’ perceptions of their credibility and their students’ Situationen motivation. Students (N = 260) completed a questionnaire on the class/instructor they had immediately before their current class. The questionnaire consisted of measures of assertiveness, responsiveness, credibility, and situational motivation. Instructors with the socio‐communicative style of competent were perceived highest in all three dimensions of credibility (expertise, character, and caring) and in students’ situational motivation. Instructors classified as noncompetent were perceived as lowest in caring and expertise, while instructors classified as aggressive were perceived as lowest in character. Additionally, situational motivation was positively correlated to all three dimensions of credibility. The results support the importance of instructors being able to display assertive and responsive communication behaviors.     

The association of socio‐communicative style and relational type on perceptions of nonverbal immediacy

This study examined how an individual's perceived use of nonverbal immediacy is related to his or her perceived socio‐communicative style, and whether the use of nonverbal immediacy behaviors differs across relational types. Reflecting on a recent interaction, participants (N = 309) completed the Assertiveness‐Responsiveness measure (Richmond & McCroskey, 1990) and a modified version of the Nonverbal Immediacy Behaviors instrument (Richmond, Gorham, & McCroskey, 1987). Results indicate that (a) competent communicators differ from noncompetent, submissive, and aggressive communicators across ten nonverbal immediacy behaviors and (b) the use of nonverbal immediacy behaviors differs across relational types.     

Eysenck's BIG THREE and communication traits: three correlational studies

Over the past decade, communication scholars have increasingly considered biological contributions to the ways in which we communicate. One approach to exploring the links between biology and communication involves analysis of relationships between communication variables and variables containing strong biological underpinnings. The present study was designed to provide an examination of the relationship between Eysenck's personality dimensions and communication variables. This essay reports the results of three separate studies that encompass more than a dozen communication variables. The results seem to indicate that non-neurotic extraverts are not shy or apprehensive about touch, tend to perceive themselves as more competent, view themselves as assertive and responsive, and express greater degrees of self-acceptance. Neurotic introverts report apprehension about communication, perceive themselves as less immediate, rate themselves as having a lower affect orientation, and somewhat higher levels of verbal aggressiveness. Neurotic participants report less self-acceptance. Neurotic non-psychotics report a greater degree of affect orientation, more apprehension about communication, and lower verbal aggression. Neurotic psychotic extraverts tend to be compulsive communicators and report greater tolerance for disagreement. Psychotics are non-responsive, and tend to report higher levels of verbal aggressiveness, argumentativeness and assertiveness. Finally, psychotic non-neurotics tend to have a greater tolerance for disagreement and are less likely to identify themselves as compulsive communicators. Possible directions for future research are suggested.     

An analysis of social style among disparate cultures

Using the Assertiveness‐Responsiveness Measure, scores of Finnish, Japanese, Korean, and American university students were compared. The American scores indicated that they were significantly more assertive than were the participants from the other cultures. The Korean men scored as more responsive than the other men, the American men more assertive, and the American women as more responsive than any of the men and women.     

Individual differences in on‐air television and radio personalities

This study examined on‐air television and radio newscasters' traitlike communication dispositions. Television and radio personalities were found to be less apprehensive, less shy, less responsive, more assertive, more willing to communicate, and more extroverted than the average individual. The study also indicated that individuals working for higher paying/ranked television or radio stations/ markets are more willing to communicate, more extroverted, more assertive, less responsive, and less shy than those in the same field working at smaller, lower‐paying/ranked stations.     

Players' perceptions of their coaches' immediacy,assertiveness, and responsiveness

This study involved players’ perceptions of their coaches’ nonverbal immediacy, assertiveness, and responsiveness. Previously in the classroom setting, Thomas, Richmond, and McCroskey (1994) found that in the classroom setting nonverbal immediacy was positively, moderately correlated to both assertiveness and responsiveness. College students (N = 192) were asked to fill out a questionnaire based on a coach that they had in high school. Players who perceived their coaches as being nonverbally immediate, also perceived their coaches as being responsive, and to a lesser extent, assertive. Future research directions include considering the relationships between a coach's nonverbal immediacy with player motivation and satisfaction.     

Global questioners: examining journalists’ aggressiveness at Chinese premiers’ press conferences (1993–2015)*

This paper explores the different levels of aggressiveness in five dimensions exhibited by journalists with diverse global backgrounds at the press conferences of four Chinese premiers. Four attributes of the journalists’ home countries are examined: (1) power distance, (2) press freedom, (3) stage of development, and (4) frequency of questioning opportunities. The results show that journalists from countries with lower power distances tend to be more direct in their question designs than those with higher power distances; journalists with higher levels of press freedom tend to show more initiative, directness, assertiveness, and adversarialness than those with lower levels; journalists from developed countries are more direct, assertive, adversarial, and accountable than their counterparts; frequent questioners are more assertive, adversarial, and accountable than those infrequent. The theoretical and practical implications of journalists’ aggressive behaviors are discussed.     

A discrepancy theory of the relationship between communication and job satisfaction

This study found moderate differences in correlations between communication and job satisfaction using a discrepancy framework when high, as opposed to low, valence rewards are communicated and significant differences in job satisfaction when high valence rewards are communicated versus when high valence rewards are not communicated.     

Improving health communicationSupporting the practice of health communication

Background: Health authorities, hospitals, commercial enterprises, and mass media all deliver health and medical communication in different forms. With such a vast amount of biomedical and clinical information available, any action to ensure the spread of clinically relevant news items is welcome. Objectives: This paper tries to define a new role for health science librarians in improving medical communication and reporting. Methods: Literature relating to the health and medical reporting is analysed to identify major difficulties encountered by health communicators. Results: There are two areas where health science librarians can develop new roles in health communication: (i) supporting journalists and health communicators in selecting sources and understanding scientific papers, and (ii) directly translating scientific information into news items, supplying a list of products in this direction (i.e. targeted newsletters, media releases, news items). New skills and competencies needed to cope with the new roles are described in detail in a suggested academic curriculum for health communicators. Conclusions: A better understanding of the mass media's needs can provide much needed support in the field of health communication.     

Assessment of MLA assertiveness training for librarians: students' behavior changes after taking C.E. 669, Assertiveness and Human Relations Skills

C.E. 669, offered for three years, was MLA's first personal development continuing education course. Participants were asked to respond to a follow-up survey about their current assertive philosophy, awareness, and behavioral repertoire. They were also assessed by the Librarian's Assertiveness Inventory, a tool that indicates patterns of behavioral responses, for which some normative data were available from librarians who had not taken the class. Class participants were found to be more likely to behave assertively and less likely to behave aggressively than librarians who had not taken the class. In nine out of ten situational categories, librarians who had taken the class demonstrated assertive response patterns. They also reported remembering and using more than one third of the behavioral techniques covered in class, with particular use of the nonverbal techniques. A majority saw themselves as more assertive since taking the class, although most believed that others viewed them much the same as they had prior to the class. Positive progress toward reaching specific behavioral goals was also reported.     

What type of leader am I?: a training needs analysis of health library and information managers

Background: Leadership is a necessary facet of professional practice for health library and information managers (HLIMs). Several training needs analyses (TNA) in the health library and information services field have been conducted in recent years, all identifying a need for professional development in leadership skills. However, these previous TNAs have not focused on specific elements of leadership skills required by health library and information managers. Objectives: The National Library for Health (NLH) commissioned the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield to conduct a TNA where HLIMs assess their current leadership skills and identify any future development needs in this area. The results would inform a programme of influencing skills workshops. Methods: HLIMs in the UK were invited to complete a self‐assessment online questionnaire. The questionnaire utilised items from Manning and Robertson’s Influencing Skills Style Profile (ISSP). This allowed the results to be characterised by influencing ‘style’. Results: HLIMs considered themselves to have strengths in the leadership areas of influencing, negotiating, managing change and delivering presentations to decision‐makers. They identified significant development needs in communicating with stakeholders, conflict resolution, using body language and being assertive. Most HLIMs demonstrated two collaborative styles identified by the ISSP, namely strategic collaborator and opportunistic collaborator. Conclusions: In difficult times, HLIMs may need to adapt to more of an ‘opportunistic‐battler’ influencing style. It is important that HLIMs not only assess their own leadership skills but also that they take opportunities to employ 360^° feedback, comprising assessment from subordinates, peers and supervisors.     

Meeting the Needs of Avid Book Readers: Access,Space, Concentration Support and Barrier Mitigation

Contemporary libraries perform multiple roles that greatly expand the scope of traditional service and resource provision. In order to determine how libraries can best meet the needs of avid book reading clientele, more needs to be known about their preferences of access and space, as well as barriers to their concentration and performance of sustained reading. Findings from the 2015 International Study of Avid Book Readers suggest that libraries should offer comfortable and quiet spaces conducive to reading for pleasure, that are responsive to the time, cost and concentration barriers that avid readers face, and not assume that avid readers will easily adapt to library environments with elevated noise levels.     

Patronizing young and elderly adults: Response strategies in a community setting

Within the context of an elaborated model of the communication predicament of aging, the effects of particular response strategies to patronizing, intergenerational talk were investigated with written vignettes depicting a community situation. Young adults (N = 222) evaluated a patronizing speaker more negatively than a non‐patronizing speaker, and they also judged both conversational partners to be more satisfied when patronizing speech was absent. As compared to cooperative responses, assertive responses from the patronizee led to evaluations that she was higher status, more controlling, less nurturing, and less satisfied. Patronizing individuals receiving an assertive response were evaluated as less in control and satisfied than when they received a cooperative response.     

How to respond to journalists’ questions? A new perspective on Chinese premiers’ aggressiveness at press conferences (1993–2015)

This study extends the framework describing journalists’ aggressiveness at politicians’ press conference and develops five dimensions to measure politicians’ aggressiveness in response to journalists’ questions (initiative, directness, assertiveness, adversarialness, and accountability). Using the records from Chinese premiers’ press conferences (1993–2015), this research investigates five factors which might affect premiers’ aggressiveness: the administrative life cycle, economic conditions, journalists’ country of origin, the topic of questions, and number of questions. The results show that premiers exhibit less assertiveness during honeymoon periods and more assertiveness in other years. Premiers are more adversarial amid good economic growth but less adversarial during poor economic growth. They are more assertive and adversarial in response to questions related to politics and the military and less so in response to questions related to other areas. Premiers display more initiative and accountability toward journalists who ask more questions and less toward those who ask fewer questions. Premiers are more assertive and adversarial toward journalists from developed countries but less so toward those from developing countries. Over the past 23 years, premiers’ initiative, directness, and adversarialness have decreased while their accountability has gradually increased. The theoretical contributions of this research are discussed.     

The persuasive effects of delaying identification of high‐and low‐credibility communicators: A meta‐analytic review

A review of extant research evidence indicates that when source identification is delayed until after the message has been presented, the differential effectiveness of high‐ and low‐credibility communicators is reduced. In particular, those combinations of credibility level and advocated position that are ordinarily (i.e., with pre‐message identification) relatively advantageous (a low‐credibility source with a proattitudinal position, or a high‐credibility source with a non‐proattitudinal position) have persuasive effectiveness reduced by delayed identification, whereas those combinations that are ordinarily relatively disadvantageous (a high‐credibility source with a proattitudinal position, or a low‐credibility source with a non‐proattitudinal position) enjoy enhanced effectiveness with delayed identification. The magnitude of the effects associated with identification‐timing variations is quite large (mean absolute value of d = .753), at least by comparison to other factors for which quantitative estimates of persuasive effect are available. The observed effects place constraints on explanations of credibility's effects; in particular, credibility's effects cannot be explained through the mere association of a given communicator with a particular position.     

Implicit theories of communicative competence: The semantics of social behavior

Observers evaluating the competence of communicators use both observed behaviors and traits inferred from these behaviors in their evaluation. In order to understand the process by which these evaluations are made, the manner in which the beliefs about trait/behavior relationships that underlie this process must be understood. Based on analysis of judgments of prototypical “communicators” of different skill levels and of actual people, trait/behavior relationships are, with one exception, similar across competence level and communicative situation.     

Instructional Dissent as a Function of Student Conflict Styles

The purpose of this study was to examine how students’ conflict styles (i.e., integrating, avoiding, dominating, obliging, and compromising) were related to the expression of instructional dissent (i.e., expressive, rhetorical, and vengeful). Participants were 160 undergraduate students, who completed a questionnaire measuring their conflict-handling communication with an instructor and how frequently they engaged in instructional dissent throughout the semester. Results of a canonical correlation revealed that (a) when students used the integrating, dominating, and compromising conflict styles, but did not use the avoiding style, they communicated more rhetorical dissent, and (b) when students used the dominating style, but not the integrating or obliging styles, they communicated more expressive, rhetorical, and vengeful dissent.     

No Greater Sacrifice: American Airlines Employee Crisis Response to the September 11 Attack

This case study reports the identification strategies and related tactics that American Airlines CEO Don Carty and his team of professional communicators used in their employee crisis response to the September 11 attack. Data analyzed in the study include 78 internal documents; 10 articles from the airline's corporate newspaper; and interviews with Timothy Doke, then American Airlines Vice President of Corporate Communications, and Andrea Rader, a senior member of Doke's team. The results of this study provide guidance to corporate communicators tasked with rebuilding employee morale after a malevolent-type crisis.     

A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of Social Media Communicators: An Extension of Role Theory to Digital Media Workers

The life of knowledge workers in the information age is enwrapped in both uncertainty and opportunity. Organizations have faced ill-defined times by placing their confidence in the ability of digitally literate workers. We explored how social media communicators navigate the role stressors of this recently developed organizational position. The qualitative results revealed communicators struggled with and managed role ambiguity by relying on outside social media experts and Web analytics. A separate international quantitative survey of social communicators showed organizational leadership and social media self-development activities diminished levels of perceived ambiguity. The implications of this research suggest that organizational leaders possess minimal authority and influence in defining the role of knowledge workers.     

Better Together: Responsive Community Programming at the U-M Library

In the past seven years, the University of Michigan Library's programming model has evolved to be responsive and reflective of staffing areas of interest and expertise. Our team-based, iterative model enables us to develop responsive exhibits, workshops, experiences, and events in our community. This article explores our experiences in developing this model through the lens of some of our collaborations with the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL). Our approach to programming opportunities builds on learning by doing, building deeper, mutually beneficial relationships with other organizations, and continually making sure we are truly developing programming with our audience (our community) in mind. While public and academic libraries often develop distinct sets of services, collections, and expertise to serve their respective communities, successful collaborations can yield interesting opportunities for more effective engagement and programming. Our relationship with AADL has helped us to identify and better understand how we can connect our teaching and research missions with the interests and needs of the broader community in which we are situated.