Aggressive Communication

Symbolic Aggressive Communication

The first distinction made in categorizing aggression is physical versus symbolic. Aggression can take both physical and symbolic forms. Physical aggression involves the aggressor's forceful use of his or her body (roughly handling or striking objects or others). Symbolic aggression involves the aggressor's forceful use of his or her communication (words, gestures, facial expressions, vocal tone, etc.). It is this latter set of behaviors with which aggressive communication is concerned.

Symbolic aggression can be divided into two types: constructive and destructive. Aggressive communication is composed of not one but several traits including assertiveness, argumentativeness, hostility, and verbal aggressiveness. Each of these traits interact with environmental factors to produce message behavior.

Constructive Aggressive Communication

Assertiveness is considered a constructive trait because it involves verbal and nonverbal symbols to exert control, obtain justified rewards, and to stand up for one's rights. Individuals who are assertive use symbols aggressively, but they do so in socially acceptable ways. One facet of assertiveness is argumentativeness, defined as a stable trait [Page 66]that predisposes individuals involved in a conflict to defend positions on controversial issues and to verbally attack the positions of others. Argumentativeness is considered a subset of assertiveness as all arguing is assertive communication, but not all assertiveness involves arguing.

Individuals differ in their level of trait argumentativeness and can be classified into three groups: high, low, and moderate. A person high in argumentativeness enjoys arguing and will eagerly and readily use arguments to attack others' positions and defend their own positions on issues. Highly argumentative individuals view arguing as an intellectual challenge and as an exciting competitive situation that allows them to display to others how communicatively skillful they are. Highly argumentative individuals also hold positive beliefs about arguing.

People low in argumentativeness feel uncomfortable about arguing before, during, and after the event that calls for argument. They lack the motivation, desire, and skill to argue across most situations and generally avoid talking about controversial issues because it makes them uncomfortable. Those low in argumentativeness hold negative beliefs about arguing. Individuals can also be moderate in argumentativeness. There are three types of moderate argumentative individuals: Conflicted-feelings moderates are highly emotional when it comes to arguing; they feel compelled to argue because of their level of competitiveness, yet they are also highly anxious about arguing because of their fear of failure. Apathetic moderate argumentatives are low in emotion when it comes to arguing, yet they feel little to no anxiety about engaging in an argument. Neutral moderate argumentatives will argue only when they see some good coming out of it and feel that they have a good chance of winning.

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