Verbally Aggressive Instructors and Machiavellian Students: Is the Socio-Communicative Style an Over-Bridging?

Alexandra Bekiari

doi:10.4236/psych.2017.810095

Abstract

Goals of this research are: 1) to examine the role of gender, 2) to explore the relationship between perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness, socio-communicative style and students’ Machiavellian tactics, 3) to investigate the influence of instructors’ verbal aggressiveness on their socio-communicative style and students’ Machiavellian tactics in physical education context and 4) to propose a students’ and instructors’ typology which will be the final over-bridging of verbal aggressiveness and Machiavellianism through communication style. The sample consisted of 269 students (141 males, 128 females) aged 12 - 14 years old (M = 12.6, SD = 0.65) from secondary public schools who completed three types of questionnaires during physical education classes. The results supported the internal consistency of the instruments. According to the results of the study, statistically significant differences were observed in perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness, responsiveness, assertiveness and students’ amoral manipulation, desire for control, desire for status, distrust of others between the genders of the students. Correlational analysis indicated that perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness was positively related to assertiveness, amoral manipulation, desire for control, desire for status, distrust of others and was negatively related to responsiveness. The results of regression analysis revealed that perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness could significantly predict the variables of responsiveness, assertiveness, desire for status and distrust of others. Three behavioral types are revealed: 1) the unrestraint, 2) the responsive, and 3) the distrustful, where verbal aggressiveness appears to be connected with Machiavellianism through communication style in these particular combinations.

Highlights

The perception of everyday communication is unpredictable
This study aims at investigating relations among perceived socio-communicative style and verbal aggressiveness of instructor sand students’ Machiavellian tactics in physical education
The results indicated that perceived instruct or verbal aggressiveness could predict significant variance in socio-communicative style (F(2266) = 47.37, p < 0.001) with an R2 of 26.3%

Summary

Introduction

The perception of everyday communication is unpredictable Thereby, it can sometimes be regarded as aggressive by particular individuals and by some others not. Aggressive individuals are supposed to intend to cause psychological pain (humiliation, embarrassment, etc.), which sometimes leads in physical attack (Piko & Keresztes, 2006). Verbal aggressiveness is defined as attack on an individual’s self-concept rather than attack to person’s position on a topic of communication aiming at inflicting psychological pain to this person and often involves sat tacks to character or competence, physical appearance, racial features, as well as threats or teasing and cursing (Infante & Rancer, 1996). Instructors’ verbal aggressiveness is perceived as less favorable for the students and restricts sportsmanship (Kassing & Infante, 1999) and credibility (Mazer, Barnes, Grevious, & Boger, 2013) and feel less motivated (Bekiari, Perkos, & Gerodimos, 2015). There are several studies including network analysis and typologies of verbal aggressive profiles (Bekiari & Balla, 2017; Bekiari, Deliligka, & Koustelios, 2016; Bekiari, Hasanagas, Theoharis, Kefalas, & Vasilou, 2015; Bekiari, Nikolaidou, & Hasanagas, 2017; Theoharis & Bekiari, 2016 a, b)

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Conclusion