The purpose of this study was twofold. First, the study investigated the influence of nonsmokers' argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness levels on their compliance-gaining message selection. Second, the study examined compliance-gaining usage on the basis of two additional independent variables -- agent and target gender. One hundred fifty-four participants completed instrumentation consisting of seven pages. The instrumentation included the Modified Argumentativeness Scale, the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale, the Nonsmoking Compliance-Gaining Scale, demographic and smoking questions.A median split was used to dichotomize both argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness into the two categories of high and low. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the first three hypotheses which made predictions about compliance-gaining strategy use on the basis of the agent's argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness levels. None of the ANOVAs produced significance between high and low argumentativeness. However, there was significance between high and low verbal aggressives. Specifically, high verbal aggressives reported greater use of a variety of compliance-gaining strategies than did low verbal aggressives.The second set of hypotheses made predictions about compliance-gaining strategy use on the basis of the agent's and target's gender. A repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and univariate analyses were used to test these hypotheses. Males reported greater use of the explanation, direct request, and threat strategies when the target was of the same sex than did females. When the target was of the opposite sex, males reported more use of the threat strategy than did females. An interaction was found with threat. Both men and women reported using the threat strategy more when the target was male.Some of these findings were contradictory to previous research. Sprowl (1984) did not find a distinction between compliance-gaining strategies on the basis of target gender. Further research should examine the effects of agent and target gender on compliance-gaining usage. Additionally, high verbal aggressives reported using positive strategies. Infante and Rancer (1982) described verbal aggressiveness as a negative phenomena. Hence, future research needs to explore the potential positive traits of verbally aggressive individuals. / Department of Speech Communication
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/184335 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Smith, Ronda |
| Contributors | Ball State University. Dept. of Speech Communication., Flint, Lyle J. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | viii, 57 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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