When communication fails: Physical aggression as a compliance‐gaining strategy

Abstract

This study investigated the possibility that persuasive agents’ inability to obtain their goals symbolically is the major factor underlying their decisions to use direct coercion as a compliance‐gaining tactic. Several higher‐order interactions were tested to determine the joint effects oj persuasive agents’ communicative failure, persuasive agents’ and persuasive targets’ gender, and the nature of their relationship on agents’ decisions to use violence as a means of achieving their persuasive ends. Results confirmed the hypothesis that males were more likely than females to use violence against a noncompliant male persuasive target in a noninterpersonal relational context. Males were also more likely than females to use direct coercion against persistently noncompliant and noninterpersonal persuasive targets in relational contexts with short‐term consequences.