Verbal aggressiveness

Verbal aggressiveness in communication has been studied to examine the underlying message of aggressive behavior and to gain control over occurrences. Infante and Wigley (1986) defined verbal aggressiveness as "a personality trait that predisposes persons to attack the self-concepts of other people instead of, or in addition to, their positions on topics of communication". Verbal aggressiveness is thought to be mainly a destructive form of communication, but it can produce positive outcomes. Verbal aggressiveness consists of offset constructive types which can produce satisfaction in relationships and destructive types that have a negative impact on relationships. Infante and Wrigley (1986) defined aggressive behavior in interpersonal communication as " a joint product of the individual's aggressive traits and the way the person perceives the aggressive inhibitors and disinhibitors in the given situation."

There are four primary reasons or causes suggested by Infante, Trebing, Shepard, and Seeds (1984), which are:

These motivators of verbal aggressiveness contribute to an individual with a verbally aggressive personality trait.

More recently Shaw, Kotowski, Boster, and Levine (2012) demonstrated that verbal aggression may be caused by variation in prenatal testosterone exposure. They conducted two studies in which they measured the length of the second and fourth digits (2D:4D) on each hand of participants, an indicator of amount of prenatal androgen exposure, and conducted a questionnaire to determine the verbal aggressiveness of participants. A negative correlation between 2D:4D and verbal aggressiveness was determined.

Self-concept damage is the most fundamental effect, which can cause long lasting and more harmful results than the temporal effects. The more temporal and short term effects are: hurt feelings, anger, irritation, embarrassment, discouragement, humiliation, despair, and depression. Verbal aggressiveness that harms an individual's self-concept can follow an individual throughout their life. For instance, Infante and Wigley (1986) state "the self-concept damage done by teasing a child about an aspect of physical appearance can endure for a lifetime and exert an enormous impact on the amount of unhappiness experience". Verbal aggressiveness is also a major cause of violence. When verbal aggressiveness escalates, it often turns into physical violence.

...
Wikipedia