Notes on The Communication Apprehension Perspective
The Communication Apprehension Perspective
Author and focus: James C. McCroskey; central construct in study of communication avoidance since 1970.
Purpose of chapter: trace evolution of CA, and present the most current conceptualization.
The Original Conceptualization
Original definition (McCroskey, 1970): CA as "a broadly based anxiety related to oral communication."
Later refinement: CA as "an individual's level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons" (McCroskey, 1977a, 1978).
Two early conceptual modifications:
Oral focus of CA (initially central to CA).
Trait vs state: whether CA is a stable trait or a response to specific situations.
The Oral Focus of CA
1970 article emphasized oral communication; CA rooted in stage fright and reticence.
Later programs broaden CA beyond speaking:
Writing apprehension (Daly & Miller, 1975); WAT (Writing Apprehension Test) widely used; moderate correlation with CA measures.
Singing apprehension (TOSA); low correlations with CA measures (Andersen, Andersen, & Garrison, 1978).
Summary: CA broadened beyond talking to all modes of communication.
Practical consequence: Current CA instruments (e.g., PRCA; McCroskey, 1970, 1978, 1982) focus on oral CA (apprehension about talking to or with others).
My focus here: oral CA; most following points apply to other forms as well.
The Trait Conceptualization
Early CA work treated CA as a trait: viewed as a relatively enduring, personality-type variable.
Measures (PRCA; WAT; TOSA) presumed to be trait-like; scores stable across time unless interventions occur.
Some research began to examine both trait and state forms (e.g., Richmond, 1978; Prisbell & Dallinger, 1981).
Current view (over the decade): CA represented both trait and state approaches; popular measures remain trait-centered but situational perspectives require other instruments.
The Current Conceptualization of CA
Four major areas conceptualized: (1) types of CA, (2) causes of CA, (3) treatment of CA, (4) effects of CA.
Important caution: CA has evolved through minor, nonsystematic changes; some elements lack explicit spelling-out in the literature.
Types of CA (the CA Continuum)
Core idea: reject a strict trait vs state dichotomy; CA exists on a continuum across four types:
Traitlike CA: an enduring, personality-type orientation toward a given mode of communication across contexts (across context, receiver, and time).
Generalized-Context CA: enduring orientation within a single type of communication context, across receiver and time (e.g., public speaking, meetings, small groups, dyadic interactions).
Person-Group CA: reaction to communicating with a given person or group across time and contexts; influenced by prior history with that person/group.
Situational CA: transitory, context- and time-specific reaction to communicating with a given receiver in a given situation.
Four types are not people types; every individual can experience all four to varying degrees.
Pathological CA: extremely high CA in many situations or extremely low CA in threatening situations may be considered abnormal; rare but acknowledged.
Figure 1.1 (conceptual) ties to three dimensions: context, receiver (person/group), and time. Time includes not just clock time but topic, mood, health, and other changeable factors.
Traitlike CA cuts across context, receiver, and time; generalized-context CA cuts across context and time; person-group CA cuts across context and time; situational CA is tied to a specific context, receiver, and time.
Pathological CA
Not about different types of people; CA varies by situation and individual.
Abnormal CA: nonadaptive, nonresponsive, or nonfunctional in the environment; normal CA involves functional adaptation.
Distinction is degree-based: extreme high or extreme low CA can be considered pathological in some contexts.
Empirical distinction commonly used: score beyond one standard deviation (SD) above or below the mean on CA measures identifies high/low CA groups; middle-range scores can be less predictive of behavior.
Important cautions:
Sample norms matter; use population norms rather than just a sample mean.
Classification by SD is appropriate for groups, not for predicting behavior of individuals; avoid basing judgments on a single score.
Intervention planning should consider multiple factors beyond a single CA score.
Causes of CA
Etiology has received less controlled study; most causal theories combine trait-like and situational elements.
Traitlike CA causes:
Heredity and environment (two major explanations in social sciences).
Social biology suggests heritable predispositions (e.g., sociability) exist and interact with environment.
Twin studies show identical twins are more similar in sociability than fraternal twins, implying a hereditary component.
Environment/reinforcement patterns influence CA development; reinforcement can shape communication behavior.
Modeling: observing others' communication leads to imitation; reinforcement of modeled behavior reinforces similar patterns.
Cognitive elements are not fully captured by simple behaviorist accounts; reinforcement is central but not sole explanation.
Situational CA causes (causality clearer): Buss (1980) framework with situational elements that raise CA:
Novelty, formality, subordinate status, conspicuousness, unfamiliarity, dissimilarity, degree of attention from others.
Opposite factors tend to reduce CA in a given situation.
Daly & Hailey introduce two additional elements: degree of evaluation and prior history.
Prior history: past successes reduce CA; failures increase CA; success breeds confidence; past failures predict fear of future failures.
Learned helplessness and learned responsiveness (cognitive expectancy learning):
CA arises from expectations about the probable outcomes of talking; if expect outcomes are negative or there is no regularity to outcomes, anxiety and fear can develop.
Reinforcement is a key component of expectancy learning; organisms form expectations based on attempts and outcomes.
Learned helplessness (Seligman, 1975) example: dogs exposed to unpredictable rewards/punishments become passive and stop trying; analogously, humans may stop attempting communicative behaviors when consistent rewards/punishments are lacking.
Three possible cognitive outcomes in humans:
Positive expectations: successful communicative behavior leads to regular use and confidence.
Negative expectations: belief that attempts will fail; avoidance or withdrawal.
Helplessness: lack of regularity in outcomes leads to inability to develop a stable behavioral pattern, generating anxiety.
Learned helplessness and learned negative expectations form the foundational components of CA; broader helplessness increases traitlike CA, contextualized helplessness increases situational CA.
Learned responsiveness is the opposite: development of positive expectations and adaptive communicative flexibility; can result from unsystematic learning or formal instruction.
Treatment of CA
Distinction: rational vs nonrational CA.
Rational CA: cognitions align with external reality; positive expectations with feasible behaviors; or helplessness with available behavioral options.
Nonrational CA: negative expectations or helplessness not supported by external reality; e.g., expecting failure when outcomes would be favorable.
Implication: some people feel CA in situations with no objective reason; others may not feel CA even in challenging situations.
Treatments fall into two broad categories:
Treatments aimed at communication skills (behavioral dimension): improving ability to communicate within/across contexts.
Treatments aimed at reducing CA (cognitive dimension): reducing apprehension about engaging in communication.
The two-dimensional treatment matrix (Figure 1.2) combines skill level (satisfactory vs unsatisfactory) with CA level (low vs high) to define four conditions:
Condition I: Low CA / Satisfactory skills (rational). No treatment required; goal is to maintain this state.
Condition II: Low CA / Unsatisfactory skills (nonrational cognitions). Improve communication skills; raises likelihood to move toward Condition I.
Condition III: High CA / Satisfactory skills (nonrational cognitions). Reduce CA; move toward Condition I.
Condition IV: High CA / Unsatisfactory skills (rational cognitions). Both skill and CA require treatment; address both dimensions.
Basketball analogy:
Condition IV: poor foul shooters who are very anxious in games; fixing only anxiety or only skill is insufficient; both must be addressed.
Condition II: poor foul shooters but not anxious; improving skill moves to Condition I.
Condition III: good shooters in practice but choke in game; reducing CA relocates to Condition I.
Practical treatments recommended:
Skill-based: regular classroom instruction in communication, individualized skills training, rhetoritherapy (Phillips, 1977).
CA-focused: systematic desensitization (McCroskey, 1972; Paul, 1966) and cognitive restructuring (Fremouw & Scott, 1979).
Combinations of treatments are allowed and sometimes necessary depending on the individual.
Effects of CA
Focus of discussion: global patterns of CA rather than single-variable findings; CA as mediator between competence/skill and behavior.
Internal impact of CA (cognitive perspective):
The only universal effect is an internally experienced discomfort or unease; physiological arousal is not universally linked to CA across individuals or CA types.
Self-reports are the most valid measure of CA; physiological measures or behavioral observations provide only indirect evidence and require validation with self-report data.
If measures disagree with self-report, validity concerns arise; current data show low-to-moderate validity for physiological/behavioral measures.
External impact of CA (behavior): depends on CA type and situation; three patterns are typically observed (with an atypical fourth):
Communication avoidance: choosing not to engage in communication when possible.
Communication withdrawal: retreating from interaction (absolute silence or minimal participation).
Communication disruption: disfluencies, nonverbal oddities, poor strategy choices; sometimes confounded with skill deficits.
Overcommunication (rare): overcompensation to prove effectiveness; can occur with high CA or, less often, low CA.
CA and communication behavior: CA is a cognitive variable but with behavioral manifestations influenced by context and skill.
The relationship between CA and behavior is most direct for situational CA; traitlike CA manifests in interaction with contextual constraints; observed behavior in a single situation may resemble others due to context or personal factors.
CA and Learning/Communication Competence
Three learning domains in human learning (cognitive, affective, psychomotor):
Cognitive: knowledge/understanding of appropriate behavior (communication competence).
Affective: feelings toward communication (positive/negative affect).
Psychomotor: actual performance of communicative behaviors (communication skill).
Distinction:
Communication competence = cognitive understanding of appropriate behavior in a situation.
Communication skill = psychomotor ability to perform appropriate behavior in a situation.
Three learning components for desired long-term behavior:
Communication competence (cognitive) + communication skill (psychomotor) + positive communication affect (affective).
Impact of CA on learning and behavior:
High CA can hinder observation and experience in natural settings, reduce formal study of communication, and limit practice opportunities.
High CA is associated with lower positive affect toward communication; low CA facilitates competence, skill development, and positive affect.
Practical implication: CA is a central concern for instructional programs aiming to improve communication effectiveness; basic competencies and skills cannot be separated from CA.
Notes on Measurement and Validity (Notes from the Text)
PRCA-24 (McCroskey, 1982): preferred form over older 20- or 25-item versions; reliability around internal consistency ≈ 0.94; mean ≈ 65.6; SD ≈ 15.3; normally distributed in large samples.
CA measures often require four subscores plus an overall score.
Caution: high variability in samples; classification by SD should reference population norms; single-case judgments are unreliable.
Early findings: traitlike CA scored only weakly with physiological arousal, but together they predicted >80% of variance in state apprehension (Behnke & Beatty, 1981).
Distinction between cognitive vs statistical usage of terms: CA as cognitive variable vs general behavioral patterns; avoid conflating the two.
Key Takeaways
CA is multi-faceted: it exists on a continuum across four types (traitlike, generalized-context, person-group, situational).
It has both trait-like and situational determinants, shaped by heredity, environment, reinforcement, modeling, learning history, and cognitive expectancies.
Treatments should be matched to whether CA is rational or nonrational for the individual, and whether skill deficits exist; combined approaches are often necessary.
Internal discomfort is the universal thread in CA; observable behaviors vary by CA type and situation and must be interpreted carefully with an understanding of context.
For research and practice, self-report measures remain the most valid indicators of CA; other measures should be validated against self-reports.
Terminology and Concepts to Remember
CA: communication apprehension; fear or anxiety about communication in various contexts.
Traitlike CA: enduring propensity to experience CA across contexts (measured by PRCA, WAT, TOSA).
Generalized-Context CA: CA across a type of context (public speaking, meetings, small groups, dyadic interactions).
Person-Group CA: CA with specific individuals or groups due to prior history.
Situational CA: CA in a specific situation with a specific recipient/time.
Rational CA: CA behaviors/search patterns consistent with external reality and available behavioral options.
Nonrational CA: CA patterns not supported by external reality; anxiety or fear persists despite feasible outcomes.
Learned helplessness: cognitive state where one feels unable to influence outcomes due to inconsistent reinforcement.
Learned responsiveness: adaptive, positive expectation-driven adjustment to communication across contexts.
Competence vs Skill: cognitive knowledge of appropriate behavior vs actual performance ability.
Four treatment conditions (I–IV): combinations of CA level and communication skill levels guiding intervention type.
ext{Normal distribution reference: } P(|X-mu|
leq sigma) \approx 0.68, ext{ with } P(X > mu + sigma) \approx 0.16, ext{ and } P(X < mu - sigma) \approx 0.16.
ext{CA measurement summary: } ext{PRCA-24: } \, ext{mean } 65.6, \, ext{SD } 15.3, \, r \, \approx 0.94.