Arguments, Aggression, and Conflict

New Directions in Theory and Research

Theodore Avtgis, Andrew S. Rancer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136997464
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Études sur la communication

Arguments, Aggression, and Conflict provides a thorough examination of argumentative and aggressive communication. Editors Theodore A. Avtgis and Andrew S. Rancer bring together a score of prolific and informed authors to discuss aspects of the conceptualization and measurement of aggressive communication. The book features an exclusive focus on two "aggressive communication" traits: argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness, one of the most dominant areas of communication research over the last twenty five years both nationally and internationally. The chapters include cutting-edge issues in the field and present new ideas for future research.

This book is a valuable resource for instructors, researchers, scholars, theorists, and graduate students in communication studies and social psychology. Covering a variety of topics, from the broad-based (e.g. new directions in aggressive communication in the organizational context) to the more specific (e.g. verbal aggression in sports), this text presents a comprehensive compilation of essays on aggressive communication and conflict.

Chapter 1
Verbal Aggressiveness as an Expression of Selected Biological Influences

Michael J. Beatty and Michelle E. Pence

Over twenty years ago, Infante and Wigley (1986) defined verbal aggression as “attacking one’s self-concept instead of, or in addition to, one’s positions on a topic of communication” (p. 8). As this volume attests, verbal aggressiveness has attracted a huge amount of research over the past decades. One of the enduring theoretical questions concerns the possible causes of verbal aggressiveness. Two accounts dominated the literature for over ten years, one derived from the principles of social learning theory and the other attributing aggressive symbolic tactics to an argumentative skills deficit (for a review, see Wigley, 1998). However, the mounting literature in the fields of behavioral genetics, psychobiology, and cognitive neuroscience as well as the relatively low predictive power of models based on social learning theory and argumentative skills deficiency began redirecting theoretical attention to individual differences in verbal aggressiveness as an expression of mostly inborn, hardwired individual differences in neurobiological systems (e.g., Beatty & McCroskey, 1997). This chapter will present an empirical basis for a theory of verbal aggressiveness rooted in biological differences and contrast it with both social learning theory and the argumentative skills deficiency perspective.

Conceptual Orientation

At the outset, it should be made clear that our conceptual orientation is that the discipline of communication is the scientific study of the ways in which people construct, use, and respond to messages. In the simplest sense, verbal aggressiveness constitutes just another type of message to be explained scientifically. However, four dimensions of the treatment of aggressiveness in this chapter require attention to put the ensuing presentation and discussion of the literature in the proper theoretical perspective to fully appreciate the biological underpinnings of aggressive displays.

A Scientific Perspective

A commitment to scientific explanation often runs counter to the widespread remedial impulse in our discipline. A commitment to scientific explanation requires that competing theories are evaluated and endorsed first and foremost on the basis of predictive power and in many cases this results in models depicting the phenomenon under study as relatively stable and impervious to modification attempts. Conclusions drawn from treatment studies or skills programs are often cited as evidence against biologically-based positions but inspection of the studies cited usually reveals serious design flaws and/or effects that are small enough to fit within the parameters of variance in a construct not explained by the theoretic models being challenged. For example, those interested in the treatment of systematic desensitization believed that programs such as systematic desensitization or visualization reduced communication apprehension, thereby disproving that anxiety about public speaking was a hardwired trait. However, Duff et al. (2007) designed and conducted an experiment that indicated that the presumed reduction of anxiety attributed systematic desensitization and visualization, which was statistically small to begin with, was most likely a placebo effect. Examining the studies upon which alternative explanations of verbal aggressiveness are based is an essential task if the destination is theory that possesses acceptable validity.

Trait Verbal Aggressiveness and Acts of Verbal Aggression

It is possible to study isolated symbolic aggressive acts, likelihoods of engaging in such acts, or the endorsement of such acts, all under various conditions but it is also possible to consider predispositions or tendencies toward aggressive communication, referred to as trait verbal aggressiveness (Infante & Wigley, 1986). Although Beatty (2005) adopts a trait perspective and proposed that overt behavior or action was the result of a chain of factors starting with genetic inheritance, best depicted as a mediated effects model, the treatment of verbal aggressiveness as biological expression will be broader than the model described by Beatty.

Primacy of Biological Factors as Exogenous Variables

Harry Houdini once said “pulling a rabbit out of a hat isn’t the trick: The trick is getting the rabbit in there in the first place.” As a third issue regarding conceptual orientation, this chapter embraces the idea that explanations relying on social experience are necessary only to the extent that evidence indicates that humans are not already “hardwired” for aggressiveness at birth. In Houdini’s terms, aggressiveness might already be in the humans at birth. All theories that rely on the influence of social environment to explain how humans become aggressive start with the presumption that the potential for aggressive action is not a natural condition, that humans are blank slates. However, Jane Goodall’s (1986) intensive and well-known study of primates, humankind’s closest biological relatives, observed a variety of acts of aggression, including rape, conflict amongst males over copulation rights, and raids by one band of chimps on another band over territory. An alternative to the blank slate approach is to consider aggression as an inborn, evolutionarily significant strategy, which humans carry forward. It is certainly clear that humans are born with the neurobiological structures and biochemical processes that produce the fight part of the fight or flight response (Gray, 1991, 1994).

This is not to say that social environments have no effect on aggressive behavior but it is important to be precise when attributing cause in the construction of theoretical models. For example, some scholars have argued that any intrafamily similarity between parents and children in terms of assertiveness or aggressiveness (e.g., Plax, Kearney, & Beatty, 1985), which is generally small, might actually be due to genetic commonality rather than some social learning process (e.g., Widom, 1991). Certainly, a minimum criterion for attributing variance in verbal aggressiveness to social learning processes is that the variance due to inborn factors (e.g., prenatal hormone exposure, heredity) must be first removed from the equation. The coefficient of alienation should determine the degree to which variables in the social environment are needed to explain variance in aggressive behavior. Otherwise, research findings may provide false support for inaccurate theoretic formulations.

Interpersonal Efficiency and Strategic Aggression

Finally, understanding aggressiveness as an inborn, evolutionarily significant trait, which varies across the species, also entails the possibility that aggressiveness is simply more efficient than more complex means of achieving goals and evolution favors efficiency. As Taylor and Fiske (1978) put it, humans are “cog-nitive misers.” As a species, we favor strategies that do not require a great deal of mental effort. This notion is reflected in a broad range of theory such as Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) proposition that a high level of involvement is required to direct issues to a central rather than a peripheral processing route, Tversky and Kahneman’s (1974) contention that when possible, humans rely on “heuristics” rather than complex analysis to make decisions, and Abelson’s (1976) proposition derived from dynamic memory theory that people rely on “scripts” and other knowledge structures rather than spontaneous message construction to craft responses in routine social situations.

In a fairly recent study, Beatty and Heisel (2007) demonstrated that the increased electrical activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, indicating increased cognitive load in a cortical region in which adaptation to novel stimuli is implemented, was dramatic when persuaders were required to adapt social influence strategies in light of goal failure. Moreover, some participants quickly endorsed aggressive to violent reactions to target rebuffs as electrical activity increases, a finding consistent with previous studies of persuaders’ reactions to resistance (de Turck, 1987; Hample & Dallinger, 1998; Lim, 1990). Similarly, perspective-taking or empathy, which are widely known to buffer against aggression and violence on the part of an actor (Lykken, 1995), impose considerable cognitive load as indicated by electrical activity in the cortex when a target resists influence attempts (Heisel & Beatty, 2006). In short, regardless of interpersonal skill level, considering another’s perspective and crafting alternative influence strategies when the persuader’s best argument (i.e., one the persuader has already judged to be compelling and sufficient to induce compliance) has already failed is a heavily taxing task, not to mention other emotional dimensions to social influence scenarios associated with relational contexts. Although the destructive impact of verbal aggressiveness on relationships is often underscored in the literature (Wigley, 1998), the effectiveness of associated tactics for goal achievement, at least in the short term, the efficiency afforded over more cognitively taxing approaches, and the possible long-term benefits afforded by simply being a “problematic person” whom others might choose to conciliate with rather than provoke a scene are seldom examined by researchers. Embracing the possibility that aggressiveness represents expressions of inborn neurobiological systems that survived evolution might shed light on the prevalence of verbal aggressiveness and human aggression in general.

Biological Factors Exogenous to Verbal Aggression

Genetic Inheritance

In terms of the discipline of communication, the “nature or nurture” debate, as it is often called, embraces the question as to whether communicator traits and social behavior are genetically inherited or acquired through experience. The same question arises in the theoretical treatment of verbal aggression. Of course, as Zuckerman (1995) points out, “we do not inherit personality traits or even behavior mechanisms as such. What is inherited are chemical templates that produce and regulate proteins involved in the structure of nervous systems and the neurotransmitters, enzymes, and hormones that regulate them . . . we are born with different reactivity of brain structures and levels of regulators” (pp. 331–332).

Zuckerman’s (1995) observation is represented in Beatty’s (2005) mediated effects model, which specifies that genetic inheritance leads to neurobiological characteristics, which in turn leads to traits. As such, individual acts of aggression, whether physical or symbolic in nature, occur because the social stimulus excites the neurobiological systems to the degree required to implement such as response. Beatty and McCroskey (1997) argued that traits such as verbal aggression represent a person’s threshold for activation of those systems. Accordingly, a person high in trait verbal aggressiveness requires a less potent stimulus to trigger aggression than does a person low in the trait.

Behavioral geneticists have long relied on twins studies to provide indirect tests of models such as that delineated by Beatty (2005). The attraction of the twins design is that “monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs are genetically identical, but dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs share only 50 percent of their genes” (Hughes & Cutting, 1999, p. 429). Comparing the “within-pair correlations therefore provides an estimate of the proportion of trait variance attributable to genetic influences, the heritability of the trait” (Hughes & Cutting, 1999, p. 429). Once heredity coefficients are calculated, it is possible to estimate the contributions of both shared and unshared environments to the variance in the trait. (For a discussion of techniques and complicating factors, see Beatty et al., 2002.) At the outset, behavioral geneticists portioned the data into four cells: monozy-gotic twins raised together, monozygotic twins raised apart, dizygotic twins raised together, and dizygotic twins raised apart. In this way, it was possible to separate the effects of common environment from common genetic effects. However, as Zuckerman (1994) observed, “There is little difference between the corrections for identical twins who were raised apart and those who were raised together” (p. 245), which Lykken (1995) points to as the reason researchers dropped the distinction regarding whether twins are raised together or apart from formulas for calculating heritability.

Although the twins design has been described as “the perfect experiment” (Martin, Boomsma, & Machin, 1997, p. 387), the heritability coefficients estimate the direct path of genetics to traits and, therefore, constitute only indirect or suggestive evidence about the direct paths proposed in Beatty’s (2005) mediated effects model. As estimates of coefficients for direct paths, heritability coefficients represent products of intervening direct paths. Thus, with a path coefficient equal to .70 between genetic inheritance and a particular neuro-biological feature (e.g., MAO production) and a path coefficient of .70 between that neurobiological feature and trait verbal aggressiveness, the predicted correlation or heredity coefficient for trait verbal aggressiveness would be .49. Therefore, heredity coefficients greater than .50 implicate substantial coefficients for linkages not tested directly in a given study.

Eight years ago, Beatty and colleagues (2002) meta-analyzed the twins studies on aggressiveness as part of a broader meta-analytic investigation of the twins studies related to social interaction. Their literature search included an electronic search using PsychInfo, Biological Abstracts, Bioethics Online, EBSCOhost, Eric, HealthStar, and the General Science Index databases, a review of research journals that published twins studies, and a scan of the reference sections of all articles retrieved through the databases and journal searches. The twin studies of aggression that met the inclusion...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Contributors
• Section I Conceptualization and Operationalization of Argumentative and Aggressive Communication
• Chapter 1 Verbal Aggressiveness as an Expression of Selected Biological Influences
• Chapter 2 Verbal Aggression and Prefrontal Cortex Asymmetry
• Chapter 3 Aggressive Communication
• Chapter 4 Measuring Argumentativeness and Verbal Aggressiveness
• Chapter 5 Exploring Constructive Aggressive Communication in China
• Chapter 6 Culture and Aggressive Communication
• Chapter 7 Global Communicator
• Section II Contextual Research on Argumentative, Aggressive, and Conflict Communication
• Section III Factors Influencing Arguments, Aggression, and Conflict Communication
• Index