Explaining Communication:

Communication predispositions are known to be personality traits that can

influence people to communicate in particular ways in different situations. However,
we cant predict an individuals behavior based solely on an understanding of
communication predispositions. People with an aggressive personality or that show
those traits are predisposed to communicate aggressively, but that persons actual
communication will vary in intensity depending on the situation they are in.
Predispositions towards aggressiveness is one of the most commonly researched
collections of communication predispositions.
Aggression is made up of several traits. A way that people can categorize
aggression is physical versus symbolic. Physical aggression is the use of force by his
or her body. Symbolic aggression is the forceful use of his or her communication by
words, gestures, vocal tone, etc. There are two categories involved in symbolic
aggression: constructive and destructive. Constructive symbolic aggression, also
known as assertiveness, is a stable trait that predisposes a person to defend a
position on an issue and verbally attack the positions of othersthis is seen as an
aspect of argumentativeness. Destructive symbolic aggression is seen as hostility.
An aspect of hostility is verbal aggressiveness which is the tendency to attack the
self-concepts of individuals instead of their positions on topics of communication.
These attacks include teasing, character attacks, and physical appearance attacks.
The chapter talks about how family communication plays a role on how we
communicate in many contexts like how we communicate on the job or with
romantic partners. Researchers then decided to conducts studies on how family
communication influences the aggression in children. Weber and Patterson observed
from a study that children who are exposed to verbal aggression from their mothers
became more verbally aggressive for themselves. These children get into romantic
relationships and are verbally aggressive with their partners. As a result, their
partners become verbally aggressive and a cycle of verbal aggression begins to
from and lead to less productive interpersonal relationships.
Organizational communication is also discussed and the role aggressive
communication play in the workplace. After a study, Infante and Gorden found that
if subordinates saw that their bosses had high argumentativeness traits and low
verbal aggressiveness traits, then they were more satisfied with them. Vice versa, if
subordinates saw low argumentativeness and high verbal aggressiveness, they
were less satisfied with their bosses. This study is how the Independent-Mindedness
Theory of Organizational Communication was developed. It suggests that when
superiors encourage freedom of speech among their employees in the workplace,
the better the outcome of commitment to the job.

Application:
Aggressiveness in communication is prevalent and looked at a lot by
researchers. I thought one thing in the chapter that applied was about the family
communication section. I have been able to observe for myself that if a child is
exposed to aggressive behavior and/or language, that child is more likely to develop
those qualities. Children are products of their environment, and if they are exposed
to that behavior, they are bound to pick up those traits.

Questions:
1. How do these traits of aggressiveness apply to videogames and childrens
behavior?
2. What are the cultural and cross cultural differences in aggressiveness? How is
this applied to our lives/how we interact with others in the world?
3. Do we see patterns of aggressiveness on social media?