Chris R. Sawyer

16Communication Apprehension and Public Speaking Instruction

Abstract: Since McCroskey’s seminal article in 1977, communication apprehension (CA) has remained one of the most often studied topics in the field of communication studies. Defined by McCroskey as an individual’s “level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons,” CA impedes the formation of oral communication competence especially by novice public speakers. This chapter presents an integrated summary of research on CA conducted by communication scholars and other social scientists. It examines the trait and state aspects of the construct, theories accounting for the development of CA among children and adults, strategies for measuring CA, and methods designed to help students manage public speaking apprehension. The chapter concludes with a discussion of future directions for CA research and pedagogy.

Keywords: communication apprehension, public speaking, communibiology paradigm, comparator theory, skills training, systematic desensitization, visualization, exposure therapy, McCroskey

Teachers of public speaking encounter the effects of communication apprehension among their students in an array of commonplace situations. Consider the first-year community college instructor who feels inundated with requests by her students to postpone giving their presentations. She accommodates as many as she can but is further surprised by the number who fail to attend the class meetings when their speeches were re-scheduled. A university faculty member, who directs the basic course for the Communication Studies Department, notices a spike in the number of students dropping the course around the time of the first major speaking assignment. Lab instructors who grade speeches for this professor detect a recurring pattern of errors or problems with speech delivery among their students including poor eye contact, monotone vocal delivery, deadpan facial expressions, and rigid or non-existent gestures. Many others also display filled pauses, hesitations, and other disfluencies, despite preparing and appearing to read from extensive notes or manuscripts. The majority of students fail to achieve the minimum speaking time set for their speech assignments. During academic advising sessions, another professor is appalled to learn that his advisees use terms like upsetting, nerve-wracking, or terrifying to describe their experiences with public speaking. Many of them report feeling uncomfortable, physical sensations while speaking, ranging from butterflies or knots in their stomachs to rapid heart rate, chest pressure, and trouble breathing. These scenarios represent just a few of the ways that communication apprehension impacts public speaking instruction.

Communication apprehension (CA) refers to the physiological, psychological, and behavioral symptoms associated with the fear of real or imagined public speaking situations. Within the field of communication, CA has been studied as both a state and as a trait. State CA can be observed in the moment-by-moment reactions of speakers before, during, and after giving their public speeches. By contrast, trait CA reflects differences among individuals that remain stable over time and are resistant to change due to maturation or learning.

Within the context of public speaking instruction, CA continues to be an evolving construct. Beginning with its roots in social learning theory, CA was first attributed to issues in upbringing such as excessive punishment for speaking that suppressed the development of oral communication competence. When combined with poor modeling of social skills in the home, the resultant effect was the “quiet child” in the classroom who shrinks from the notice of teachers, preferring silence to embarrassment and humiliation by peers. With few skills and little encouragement to develop more and better ones, anxiousness about speaking simply compounds with time. Consequently, students and workers with this background suffer, while their less anxious counterparts enjoy greater success at school and in professional life. With time, social learning explanations gave way to advances in the biological sciences, including the work of neurophysiologists and behavior geneticists. At first, these new explanations for traits augmented and then later supplanted the more traditional ones upon which the modern field of communication science was based. Although these advances improved theories of CA by making them more economical and powerful, the practical concerns of how to treat students with high CA still remain.

This chapter presents an integrated summary of research on the issue of communication apprehension conducted by communication scholars and other social scientists over the past 50 years. It examines theories accounting for the prevalence of CA among children and adults, strategies for measuring trait and state CA, and methods designed to help students manage or reduce public speaking apprehension. The chapter concludes with a discussion of future directions for CA research and pedagogy.

Theories Accounting for the Prevalence of CA

Estimates for the incidence of trait CA average approximately 20% for the general population (Sawyer & Richmond, 2015), while between 24.4% and 9.1% of college students report high to severe CA, respectively (Bruneau, Cambra, & Klopf, 1980). These figures are consistent with other forms of social phobia, which constitute the most common emotional disorders in the industrialized world (Davidson, 2006).Furthermore, public speaking is regarded as the greatest fear among contemporary Americans. More than 60% of adults in the United States rank giving a public speech as the situation they dread most (Dwyer & Davidson, 2012). In the field of communication, several explanations have been advanced to explain the prevalence of CA, including social learning processes, lapses in skills development, and neurobiological susceptibility.

Social Learning Perspectives

Bandura’s (1977, 1986) social learning theory provides a comprehensive explanation of behavior in which humans are seen as thoughtful, self-regulating organisms that are the products of the social structures they themselves create. According to this perspective, which is also known as social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), the chief characteristic of human nature is plasticity or the dual capacity of acting upon one’s environment and adapting to it. This is facilitated by the construction of social structures, the use of symbols, and self-critical or reflective thought to modify personal conduct. According to Bandura (2001), plasticity

depends upon neurophysiological mechanisms and structures that have evolved over time. These advanced neural systems specialized for processing, retaining, and using coded information provide the capacity for the very capabilities that are distinctively human: generative symbolization, forethought, evaluative self-consciousness, and symbolic communication. (p. 266)

Social learning theory has proved influential in studies of mass communication (Bandura, 2001; Waite, 2009), aggression (Bandura, 1978; Check, Malamuth, & McLaughlin, 1986), and family communication (Ledbetter, 2010; Schrodt et al., 2009).

From his earlier writings it is clear that McCroskey (1977, 1984) believed CA was a function of social learning. At that time, he believed that children developed CA through the dual pathways of punishment and modeling. According to this perspective, children learn their communication skills by modeling after their parents and other adults. Children who are exposed to poor exemplars of communication in their formative years are more likely to develop inadequate communication skills. Often, they are discouraged from communicating in the home, which further restricts their development of speaking and listening competence. Upon entering school, these children receive punishment for speaking from teachers who correct them in front of their classmates and by their school peers who subsequently ridicule them for their mistakes. Consequently, CA results from a history of repeated punishment for speaking that children received from their family members, teachers, and peers. As a consequence, children learn to fear speaking. Left unchecked, this learned response carries over into adult life. Consequently, adults with high CA who enroll in their first undergraduate communication course will have experienced many incidents of negative reinforcement in the form of being silenced by siblings or parents, teasing from classmates for their awkward responses in class, low marks from teachers on speaking assignments, and unfavorable comments from employers about their shortcomings relating to customers and co-workers. From a social learning perspective, years of modeling and reinforcement contribute to a lack of speaking skills and an abundance of fearfulness when asked to speak.

Skills Deficits and Public Speaking CA

One of the more common explanations that students give for the fear of giving a public speech is their own lack of public speaking skill (Bippus & Daly, 1999; Chesebro et al., 1992). From this perspective, fear naturally results when the level of challenge in a social situation exceeds an individual’s self-perceived communication skill (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Consequently, impeded development of social skills during youth, such as when so-called quiet children are not encouraged to speak in class (Marshall & Stevenson-Hinde, 2005; Standart & Le Couteur, 2003), directly contributes to the level of CA experienced during adolescence and adult life. Some family communication patterns appear to be precursors of this effect. Specifically, families that discourage conversation (Elwood & Schrader, 1998; Kelly et al., 2002) and expressiveness (Hsu, 1998) appear to diminish the likelihood that children will develop communication skills.

Students with high levels of CA often evade graded speaking assignments and avoid enrolling in courses that teach public speaking skills. Consequently, high CA students rarely overcome their skills deficits, thereby perpetuating the problem. Even when enrolling in public speaking courses, other forms of avoidance, such as procrastination, impede the development of their communication skills. Students who delay preparing their speeches often perform more poorly than their classmates and receive lower grades as a direct result (Menzel & Carrell, 1994). Behnke and Sawyer (1999b) found that the tendency of students to put off preparing for their classroom speaking assignments was a function of communication apprehension and perceptions of their own speaking competence. That is, procrastination on public speaking assignments was positively correlated with the CA of students (r = .70) but was inversely related to their self-perceived communication competence (r = -.48). Behnke and Sawyer (1999b) observed that when students procrastinate, they often become dissatisfied with the inferior quality of their speeches. This emotional upset, in turn, contributes to public speaking anxiety.

The Communibiology Paradigm

For more than twenty years following McCroskey’s (1977b) summary of CA research, social learning remained the preeminent explanation for the development of CA in communication literature. Coincidentally, during the same period researchers in a number of emerging disciplines, such as the cognitive neurosciences and behavioral genetics, were beginning to discover how individual differences in biological functioning contributed to the formation of traits such as social anxiety. Several communication scholars followed suit (e.g., Beatty, 1998; Cappella, 1991; Horvath, 1995). Knapp, Miller, and Fudge (1994) concluded that among the future trends in communication research would be greater attention to the work of geneticists in explaining interpersonal behavior. Scholarly interest in temperament research eventually coalesced in the communibiological paradigm.

Entitled Why We Communicate the Ways We Do: A Communibiological Perspective, McCroskey’s (1997) Carroll C. Arnold lecture set forth five central propositions that marked a departure from conventional thinking about human communication:

Combined, these propositions amount to a radical departure from social learning as a way of accounting for communication traits.

The field of behavioral genetics contributed additional support to the communibiological perspective, particularly through studies of temperament and heritability. Identical or monozygotic (MZ) twins share the same genetic make-up, whereas fraternal or dizygotic (DZ) twins are no more genetically similar than any other pair of siblings. Organizations known as twins registries maintain information on MZ and DZ twins, including whether they grew up in the same households or were reared separately, such as in the case of each twin in the pair being adopted by different families. By comparing the correlation coefficients for each type of twin paring on any behavioral or personality trait, researchers can estimate the degree to which that specific trait is a function of genetics. Beatty, McCroskey, and Heisel (1998) proposed that CA is blend of two such traits, namely neurotic introversion. Twins studies of that time showed a level of heritability averaging around 48% of the variance in neuroticism and introversion (Loehlin, McCrae, Costa, & John, 1998) with little or no effect of shared environments, such as early family life or upbringing. In their meta-analysis, Beatty, Heisel, Hall, Levine, and La France (2002) reported that 65% of the variance in social anxiety is attributable to genetics. These scholars also found no support that family environment played a meaningful role in the development of social anxiety.

Beatty, McCroskey, and Heisel’s (1998) reinterpretation of CA as temperamental expression represents perhaps the sharpest critique of social learning arising from the communibiology paradigm. Among the complaints presented in this paper were that only a few prior studies (Ayres, 1988; Beatty, Plax, & Kearney, 1985; Daly & Friedrich, 1981) actually tested social learning as an explanation for CA, and that the models featured in this research required as many as seven variables to yield only a modest proportion of the variance in trait CA (between 3 and 19 percent). As a result, the number of propositions needed to explain CA could be markedly reduced while simultaneously accounting for types of social anxiety disorders and personality characteristics associated with CA. Thus, compared to social learning, temperament-based explanations offered more parsimonious models of trait CA with substantially greater explanatory power (Beatty, McCroskey, & Heisel, 1998).

Gray’s Comparator Theory of Anxiety

Many studies of public speaking apprehension that appeared in communication journals during the late 1990s forward were also informed by Gray’s (1982; Gray & McNaughton, 2000) general theory of anxiety known as reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST), which explains how the dual processes of approach and avoidance serve as complementary strategies for managing threats and opportunities in the environment. According to RST, the cognitive, physiological, and behavioral responses most often associated with stage fright represent activity in a particular arrangement of neurological structures within the human brain.

Specifically, a neural circuit located in the septo-hippocampal region of the brain called the comparator assesses the level of threat in the immediate environment. Under low-threat or non-threatening conditions, the comparator gives control of on-going behavior to the behavioral approach system (BAS). Activation of the BAS is associated with purposeful, goal-directed behavior. This means that anxiousness will not impede both planned (e.g., giving a speech from prepared notes) and spontaneous communication behaviors, such as unrehearsed vocal cues and gestures. In fact, BAS activity is more often associated with positive emotions such as relief, hope, and joy. However, in situations perceived as threatening, the comparator triggers the behavior inhibition system (BIS), which suppresses motor activity while simultaneously increasing physiological arousal and defensive psychological reactions, including worry and heightened levels of vigilance. Among the environmental triggers for the BIS are punishment, frustration (non-reward), novel stimuli, and innately feared stimuli.

Classroom public speaking situations are replete with these stimuli, such as when students worry about getting low grades (punishment), become frustrated with assignment requirements (non-reward), are intimidated by the size of their audience (innate fear stimuli), or have seldom ever given a presentation (novelty). BIS control over behavior persists in direct proportion to the duration of these environmental triggers during exposure to the fear-arousing stimulus. Accordingly, the BIS is the most economical account for an array of defensive reactions including heightened vigilance, increased heart rate, and suppressed motor responses. Properly applied, speaker self-reports, physiological reactions, and the ratings of their speaking performances by trained observers offer measures of particular aspects of the trait and state CA.

Strategies for Measuring Communication Apprehension

Beginning with the earliest empirical studies in the discipline of communication studies, research into the causes, symptoms, and remedies for speech anxiety has followed a familiar pattern. That is, conceptual advances and the related work of developing appropriate measurement strategies precede experimental research that, in turn, provides the basis for recommendations on how teachers can help students overcome or at least manage the fear of public speaking. Specifically, Gilkinson’s (1942, 1943) analysis of social anxiety among students enrolled in college public speaking courses was followed by Dickens’ work in the measurement of stage fright (Dickens, Gibson, & Prall, 1950; Dickens & Parker, 1951). Clevenger’s (1959) synthesis of stage fright research focused on the relationships among various operational definitions of speech anxiety in use at that time. These included speaker-reported stage fright, physiological measurements, and observations of speaker behaviors. Although each measurement strategy seemed to possess adequate reliability, the level of correlation among these variables was not sufficient to provide evidence of concurrent validity for any of them (Clevenger, 1959). Based on this empirical fact, it was unclear whether naive construct definitions or faulty measurement strategies were to blame. Within a few years, however, it became evident that previous approaches to the problem of speech anxiety shared a number of conceptual weaknesses that impeded the progress of scholars, including their failure to recognize how each type of measurement reveals unique information. Moreover, communication scholars did not have a strong understanding of important conceptual distinctions, such as the differences in traits and states.

Measuring Communication Apprehension via Student Self-Reports

Appearing in the December 1969 issue of Spectra, the Ad Hoc Committee on Evaluation of the Speech Association of America (now known as the National Communication Association) published the following call:

Since many problems in speech communication pedagogy may result from students’ inhibitions rather than their inability, we recommend the development of instruments to measure at various ages the extent of communication-bound anxiety. (pp. 3–4)

In response, McCroskey (1970) published his own anxiety instrument, the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA). Citing the notorious unreliability of observer ratings and the expense of physiological equipment, McCroskey (1970) chose instead to use student self-report as a measure of public speaking and interpersonal communication anxiety. The various forms of the PRCA reported by McCroskey (1970) enjoyed good levels of internal consistency and concurrent validity.

This initial foray into anxiety measurement was quickly followed by a series of studies including systematic desensitization as a means of reducing communication apprehension (CA) among undergraduate speech students (McCroskey, 1972)and the effects of CA on interpersonal attraction (McCroskey, Richmond, Daly, & Cox, 1976), person perception (McCroskey & Richmond, 1976), academic achievement (McCroskey & Andersen, 1976), and self-esteem (McCroskey, Daly, Richmond, & Falcione, 1977). Combined with related work of like-minded scholars, this line of studies culminated in several major papers on the CA perspective (McCroskey, 1977a, 1977b, 1983) and the eventual founding of an NCA interest group, the Communication Apprehension and Competence Division. By defining communication apprehension (CA) as the “level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons,” McCroskey (1977b, p. 78) was able to provide educators with useful information about the public speaking anxiety of their students, namely, self-reported speaker apprehension.

Trait vs. state self-reported speech anxiety

Around the time that McCroskey was beginning his work with CA, Spielberger (1966, 1972) advanced the related but distinct concepts of state and trait anxiety. Basing his definitions on the factor analytic work of Cattell and Scheier (1958, 1961), Spielberger (1966, 1972) used the term state when anxiety fluctuates with time and traits when referring to measures of individual differences that are stable, such as personality characteristics. Prior to Spielberger’s work, anxiety measures were often ambiguous or excessively broad in their coverage. Self-report measures that recognize the trait-state distinction, on the other hand, either required respondents to generalize about their experiences or to respond to a specific event or moment. That is, this distinction translated down to “How do you generally feel” (trait) versus “How do you feel at a given moment in time,” usually “right now” (state). This conceptual breakthrough proved both useful and influential.3 McCroskey’s (1970) seminal article on measures of communication-bound anxiety, in which CA was described as having both trait-like and state-like characteristics, enabled communication scholars to appreciate this distinction. Taken in turn, both dispositional (trait) and situational (state) aspects of public speaking apprehension have been used by communication scholars in studies of classroom speech assignments.

Appearing in more than 300 studies published in the fields of communication, education, and psychology, McCroskey’s (1982) Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24) is by far the most popular measure of trait anxiety used by scholars to study public speaking. The PRCA-24 is comprised of 24 general statements about communication such as, “While giving a speech I get so nervous that I forget facts I really know.” Respondents are asked to rate the extent to which each statement applies to them on a five-step scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The PRCA-24 also yields subscales for conversations, meetings, small group discussion, and public speaking. Norms for low, normal, and high levels of CA have been established for each of the subscales of the PRCA-24, as well as for the total score. Excellent overall levels of internal consistency (α = .93 to .94) have been reported for the PRCA-24 (Beatty, 1994; McCroskey, Beatty, Kearney, & Plax, 1985). Moreover, its stability coefficients are high (test-retest reliability < .80). Similar indices of reliability and stability are routinely reported for the public speaking subscale.

Alternatively, Spielberger’s (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1970) state anxiety subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI A-State) consists of 20 items that ask respondents to describe their feelings for a particular moment. Since Lamb (1972) first used it to validate his own speech anxiety inventory, the STAI A-State has grown in popularity to become the most widely used measure of state anxiety in empirical social science research today. The STAI A-State has been used in more than 1,200 empirical studies of speech anxiety to date.

Narrowband measures of state anxiety

More recently, the STAI A-State scale has been used in studies of communication to focus measurement on very specific events or moments in time called milestones. This narrowbanding principle (Behnke & Sawyer, 1998) has enabled scholars to gain new insights into how human defensiveness impacts communication, including the effects of stimulus exposure on public speaking state anxiety (Finn, Sawyer, & Schrodt, 2009), physical symptoms of discomfort (Smith, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2005; Witt et al., 2006), anxious remorse following employee interviewing (Young, Behnke, & Mann, 2004) and the relationship between anxiety and depression (Witt, Roberts, & Behnke, 2008).

Four milestones have been used in studies of narrowband public speaking. Anxiety measures taken one minute prior to giving a speech are said to represent the anticipation milestone. Next, the first minute of the presentation, beginning at the moment when the speaker stands before an audience, has been called confrontation or the moment-of-truth (Sawyer & Finn, 2012). In previous research, the state anxiety of public speakers is highest during either anticipation or confrontation. As a general rule, state anxiety tends to decline progressively from peak levels. Consequently, the third milestone occurs during the final minute of a presentation and has been called adaptation. Habituation, or the rate at which speaker anxiety declines during performance, is usually measured by comparing the adaptation milestone to the speaker’s peak anxiety level (Craske et al., 2008). Because state anxiety for most speakers is only slightly higher after giving a speech than for baseline conditions, the fourth and final milestone is said to represent a period of psychological release.

In early speech anxiety studies, speakers completed self-report surveys immediately following their presentations and were instructed to record their reactions to speech as a whole. These procedures made it difficult to tell when speakers experienced their greatest levels of stress and whether any pattern differences existed for public speaking apprehension. Researchers began to “unravel the ball of string” in an effort to determine the major anxiety-producing moments or events. This revealed an overall pattern for public speaking state anxiety. In these studies, the peak response for self-reported speaker anxiety occurred during anticipation and then declined steadily throughout the remainder of the speech. Furthermore, speakers consistently reported that their lowest levels of anxiety were during the release milestone.

Once group-level patterns are established for many psychological variables, researchers often move on to teasing out component patterns that exist within overall ones. An important goal of this research strategy is to identify new categories or sub-groups so that therapists and educators will be able to more accurately diagnose and more effectively treat the underlying conditions. In the case of psychological measures of public speaking anxiety, Behnke and Sawyer (2004; Sawyer & Behnke, 1999) discovered two component patterns. Specifically, more than two-thirds of their speakers displayed the aforementioned monotonic decreasing function. The remaining participants in these studies reported inverted v-shaped patterns, in which their peak anxiety levels occurred during the first minute of their presentations. Behnke and Sawyer (2004) also identified each pattern type with a particular response to acute stress. Whereas progressively diminishing levels of anxiety reflected the psychological process of habituation, a peak anxiety response during initial confrontation with the audience was said to indicate sensitization. Speakers who displayed each pattern were labeled habituators and sensitizers, respectively. In addition to adapting more slowly to public speaking situations (Behnke & Sawyer, 2004), sensitizers have more worrisome thoughts (Addison, Clay, Xie, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2003), and they report more cardiopulmonary discomfort and gastrointestinal distress (Horvath, Hunter, Weisel, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2004) than their habituator counterparts. Furthermore, sensitizers display greater psychological (Roberts, Finn, Harris, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2005) and physiological (Howard & Hughes, 2013; Roberts, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2004) reactivity than habituators, as well.

Measuring Communication Apprehension via Speaker Physiology

Heart rate as an index of speech anxiety

When confronted with threat or psychological stress, changes in cardiovascular responses reflect the action of the autonomic nervous system. Consequently, these moment-by-moment fluctuations in the vascular activity of public speakers have been used as an index of their state CA. Among the first such hemodynamic variables used by communication researchers (Behnke & Carlile, 1971) was heart rate (HR), or the average number of contractions in the heart muscle or beats per minute. Among the more beneficial aspects of using HR to measure speech anxiety is that humans are unable to intentionally raise or lower their own HR. As a result, speaker HR is comparatively free from the effects of repression-sensitization. This issue is important to communication educators because sensitizers and repressors give widely differing interpretations to the anxiety symptoms they experience (Franklin, Smith, & Holmes, 2015), thereby making it difficult to determine which students actually have high levels of trait and state CA. Although most speakers will report anxiety levels that are consistent with their physiological reactions, such as heart rate, many others do not. Sawyer and Behnke (2014) found that relative to their HR during speech performance, approximately 40% of speakers either under-reported their stress levels (repression) or over-reported their state (sensitization).

In addition to scholars in the field of communication, several prominent programs of research in other fields employ HR as a physiological indicator of social anxiety. Notably, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993; Kudielka, Hellhammer, & Kirschbaum, 2007) uses public speaking as a stimulus to elicit state anxiety reactions. Research using the TSST has largely confirmed the empirical results of communication researchers, including that confrontation (first minute of a speech) is the most physiologically stressful moment of any speech, and that the time course of state anxiety during a speech is a monotonic decreasing function. The TSST has also provided evidence to support Porhola’s (2002) findings of individual differences in arousal styles.

Previously, measuring speaker HR was time-intensive, involved expensive equipment that was complicated to operate, and required advanced training on the part of investigators. However, the current state of technology has made the collection of physiological data by educators more practical. These include self-contained physiological measuring equipment, such as systems manufactured by Bio-Pac (www.biopac.com ) and IWorx (www.iworx.com), wearable HR monitors from Polar (www.polar.com ), and apps for the iOS and Android devices (Pappas, 2015). Due to advances in technology, measuring HR in the classroom is now simpler, cheaper, and more accessible to faculty unfamiliar with psychophysiology. Communication educators can now accurately gauge public speaking CA even when speakers are misreporting their actual levels of stress.

Blood pressure and speaker anxiety

Together with heart rate, blood pressure falls into the general class of hemodynamic variables that measure momentary fluctuations in vascular activity produced by disease or psychological factors, such as mental strain. Blood pressure is the hydraulic force exerted on the walls of arteries as oxygenated blood circulates throughout the body and is measured in terms of millimeters of mercury or mmHg4. Communication researchers and other social scientists use blood pressure as an indicator of psychological stress experienced during stressful social interactions, such as public speaking (Bodie, 2012; Gramer, 2006). For example, Dickens and Parker (1951) reported that when compared to baseline conditions the blood pressure of student speakers was elevated immediately after presenting their classroom speeches. They concluded that this global post-performance measurement represented total anxiety or some form of summation of all of the anxiety-producing elements of the presentation. More recently, Elfering and Grebner (2012) took readings of systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressure of Swiss graduate students who were giving required oral presentations over their Master’s degree thesis projects to audiences composed of fellow graduate students and their faculty advisors. Among these speakers, mean levels of SBP (140.16 mmHg) and DBP (90.85 mmHg) during speech performance were higher than during rest or baseline conditions (SBP = 126.34 mmHg; DBP = 77.68 mmHg). It should be noted that although their baseline SBP and DBP measures indicated that these speakers had normal blood pressure, their average performance levels were consistent with Stage 1 hypertension (Chonanian et al., 2003). Heretofore, blood pressure has not been used extensively in communication research. Recent advances in wearable technology now permit scholars and educators to collect more precise readings of speaker blood pressure with greater economy and convenience than in the past.

Measuring Communication Apprehension via Observed Behavior

Behavioral Assessment of Speech Anxiety (BASA)

Throughout history many notable figures have described the physical or outward manifestations of stage fright. No less a classical scholar than Cicero once admitted in his book De Oratore (circa 55 BCE) that he would “turn pale at the outset of a speech and quake in every limb and in my soul” (p. 85). In modern communication research, speech anxiety has been identified with trembling (Behnke, Beatty, & Kitchens, 1978), rigidity (Ayres, Hopf, & Ayres, 1994; Freeman, Sawyer, & Behnke, 1997), diminished eye contact (Hofmann, Gerlach, Wender, & Roth, 1997), vocal disruptions (Lewin, McNeil, & Lipson, 1996), and elevated vocal pitch and faster speech rates (Laukka et al., 2008).

Behavioral indicators of speech anxiety have been used less frequently in communication research than either psychological or physiological measurements. Perhaps the most ambitious and successful instrument for capturing audience observations of speaker anxiety is Mulac and Sherman’s (1974) Behavioral Assessment of Speech Anxiety (BASA). Most studies employing the BASA use an 18-item version that requires observers to rate the severity of speaker vocal cues (e.g., Quivering or tense voice; Monotonous, lack of emphasis), verbal fluency (e.g., Nonfluencies, stammers, halting; Vocalized pauses), facial expressions (e.g., Deadpan facial expression) and gestures (e.g., Motionless, lack of appropriate gestures). The response format for each BASA item is anchored by four descriptors of severity positioned along a nine-point scale, as shown below:

Observers rate speaker behaviors for brief, well-defined moments of a speech, such as video recordings of one-minute segments. In previous communication research, scholars have reported good levels of inter-rater reliability for the teams using the BASA and four stable factors (Mulac, Wiemann, Moloney, & Marlow, 2009). Specifically, the BASA contains subscales for speaker rigidity, inhibition, disfluency, and agitation.

Finn, Sawyer, and Behnke (2003) examined the patterns of audience-perceived anxiety for public speakers using the BASA. In this study, 30 students (13 males, 17 females) enrolled in introductory undergraduate communication courses presented informative speeches to audiences composed of 20–25 fellow classmates and their course instructors. All presentations were video recorded and then shown later to teams of raters who assessed the severity of each speaker’s anxiety behaviors using the 18-item BASA. All presentations were divided into four segments of 60 seconds each. Rating teams viewed every presentation segment and evaluated each speaker’s rigidity, disfluency, inhibition, and agitation. A total BASA score was also computed for each segment. Half of the rating teams viewed the speech segments in chronological order, and the remainder viewed the segments in random order. Irrespective of the order in which the speech segments were viewed by the rating teams, behavioral public speaking anxiety was highest during the first minute of these presentations and then decreased each minute thereafter. Consequently, this analysis of speaker behavior reveals a pattern of anxiety over time that is consistent with habituation.

In sum, the levels of reliability for each of the methods for measuring CA usually range from adequate to good. Based solely on this fact, any of the measures discussed in this chapter will provide useful information about the speech anxiety of public speaking students. Each taps into a particular anxiety response system. That is, self-reported speaker apprehension represents cognition, heart rate is used as an indicator of physical stress, and observers can ascertain the degree of behavioral inhibition or disruption present during a speech. However, cost and ease of interpretation are also factors that researchers and instructors must consider when deciding on the most appropriate measure of public speaking apprehension. Compared to physiology and direct observation, by far the most economical strategy for measuring CA is to use speaker self-report instruments, such as the PRCA-24 or the STAI (A-State). Economy alone could explain why self-reported measurement dominates studies of public speaking as well as its pervasiveness in the classroom. However, measures of speaker self-reported anxiety take considerable time and effort to score, often require training to interpret, and can be difficult for students to understand. Despite being less expensive than physiological measurement, observational methods like the BASA require an extensive amount of time to score and are more difficult to analyze than traditional self-reports. This is because observation inventories summarize ratings from teams of raters who must be trained to use the instruments. Third, despite being the most costly method of measuring public speaking CA and the strategy requiring the most training to use, physiological measurement is not subject to misreporting errors that can plague self-report data.

Strategies for Treating Classroom CA

Although a number of communication scholars have embraced the communibiological perspective, still others have resisted it favoring instead some version of the social learning model. Over the years, this theoretical divide has led to numerous panels at communication conferences, several public debates, and a special issue of Communication Education on the nature-nurture question. In his Editor’s Comments, which prefaced the special issue, Ayres (2000) observed:

The question at issue concerns which communication activities are largely learned, which are largely ‘wired in,’ which are amenable to change and under what circumstances, which can be altered by conventional teaching strategies, which need to be addressed by non-traditional approaches, and so forth. In the essays that follow, all of these issues and others are considered in one way or another. In my judgment, these essays establish the general parameters that will guide theory, research, and intervention work for the foreseeable future. (pp. viii)

Since its publication, communication scholars have sought to address a number of the issues raised in that special issue, including the extent to which CA impacts public speaking (Beatty & Valencic, 2000) and the instructional practices that might help students to better manage their speech anxiety (Dwyer, 2000; Kelly & Keaton, 2000). Specifically, if CA is largely a function of social learning, to what extent can students use social structures and reflective thinking to become more confident public speakers? Conversely, if CA is mainly a function of biological temperament, to what extent can students habituate to public speaking situations? The following section will discuss various interventions and instructional strategies designed to reduce speech anxiety, including some criticisms of these approaches. Following descriptions of the intervention methods, comparative rates of efficacy will be reported.

Systematic Desensitization

McCroskey (1972) proposed the use of systematic desensitization as the primary means of helping undergraduates enrolled in introductory speech courses to reduce or manage their public speaking CA. Systematic desensitization (SD) makes use of Wolpe’s (1969) principle of reciprocal inhibition. That is, the bond between an environmental trigger and anxiety is weakened when anxiety-inhibiting stimuli are introduced during the exposure to the trigger. For example, laboratory animals that were fed while being exposed to a fear-arousing stimulus (such as predator stress) displayed less anxiousness than those that did not receive food. Moreover, animals that were fed in a preceding trial displayed less fear in subsequent stress trials than their unfed counterparts. The conclusion is that because feeding inhibits defensiveness, the bond between environmental triggers and the fear reaction was weakened. Applied to humans, SD is a therapy in which individuals are trained to self-induce relaxation in the presence of fear-arousing stimuli. This relaxation response inhibits fear reactions and is carried over to subsequent exposures to the stimulus. Under SD, trainees are first taught relaxation strategies including deep breathing exercises often aided by the use biofeedback equipment. Next, they construct a list of public speaking situations or events that make them fearful and then rank those in ascending order of potency. According to Lane, Cunconan, Friedrich, and Goss (2009), a typical fear hierarchy for public speaking might include reading about speeches alone in one’s room (low level), getting dressed the morning of a speech (mid level), and walking to the podium before an audience (high level). In guided sessions with a therapist or lab teacher, and in individual practice or homework assignments, trainees visualize each fear-arousing situation or stimulus in ascending order until they sense their bodies becoming tense. At that point, they use relaxation exercises until their tension subsides. The process is repeated for each step of the hierarchy.

Cognitive Restructuring or COM Therapy

A second prominent method of reducing CA in public speaking is cognitive restructuring (Fremouw & Scott, 1979; Gross & Fremouw, 1982) or cognitive orientation modification or COM therapy (Motely, 2009). Cognitions play an important role in many theories of human social anxiety, a view bolstered by numerous empirical studies (Plana, Lavoie, Battaglia, & Achim, 2014). Differing types of cognitions have been associated with certain anxiety reactions, such as worrying or rumination with apprehension and catastrophic thinking with panic disorder (Finn, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2009) Furthermore, these seem to emanate from differing areas of the nervous system (Engles et al., 2007). This evidence supports the claim that the types of cognition or self-talk that speakers have during public speaking either maintains or diminishes the human anxiety response.

Currently, several methods of cognitive restructuring have been proposed for use in public speaking, including stress inoculation (Jaremko, 1980) and rationalemotive therapy (Straatmeyer & Watkins, 1974). More recently, Motley (1990, 2009) has proposed that two cognitive orientations have a direct impact on public speaking CA. In performance orientation, speakers view public speaking assignments as challenging tasks in which their presentations must impress their instructor or audiences. Students with performance orientation tend to approach giving a speech as actors might prepare to portray their roles in play or like musicians rehearsing for a concert. Practice sessions are aimed at reducing errors and making sure speech delivery is aesthetically pleasing. Conversely, under communication orientation, speakers see public speaking as a conversation in which they are trying to reach audiences with information (Motley, 2009). Practice sessions are not aimed at perfecting delivery but in making their communication more natural, as one might in everyday situations. Speakers with performance orientation experience report higher levels of CA than their communication orientation counterparts. As a result, one method for remediating public speaking CA is to help students to shift from performance-oriented cognitions to communicative ones.

Skills Training

Skills training for social interaction problems, such as speech anxiety and shyness, usually involves screening students for skills deficits, followed by cognitive training, goal setting, and behavioral interventions such behavioral rehearsal and feedback. These directly attack one of the main explanations for public speaking CA, namely, that some level of communication skill is required for students to develop confidence. According to Kelly and Keaten (2009), the most comprehensive program of skills training for anxiety reduction is Phillips’ (1977) reticence program or rhetoritherapy. This program has been in place at Pennsylvania State University for many years and has been the model for similar programs across the United States. Applied to public speaking instruction, programs of anxiety reduction via skills training are usually augmented with systematic desensitization or some form of cognitive modification, especially in the basic course (Robinson, 1997). One of the chief advantages of using skills training for anxiety reductions is that, compared to most other methods, it can be more easily integrated into the instructional activities of courses in which public speaking is taught.

Visualization Therapy and Performance Visualization

According to Ayres, Hopf, Hazel, Sonandre, and Wongprasert (2009), “Visualization refers to the nonverbal processes people use to create or recreate sensations associated with real or hypothetical experiences” (p. 375). Visualization therapy (VT) involves scripts in which trainees engage in imagined interactions with an audience during a hypothetical speaking situation. Similar to systematic desensitization, VT scripts begin with a brief period of guided deep breathing and relaxation exercises. Then, the script guides the trainee to imagine positive images related to getting ready for the day, waiting to be called on to speak, the first moments of the presentation, presenting the body of the speech, and concluding the speech successfully. The script ends as it began with a brief deep breathing and relaxation exercise. VT scripts may be presented aloud in class by a lab instructor or trainer or read alone silently by the student. Audio recordings of VT scripts are also available for use in class or by individuals as a homework assignment. VT combines aspects of other anxiety-reduction methods. An alternative method, called performance visualization, uses video recordings of effective public speeches and asks students to imagine modeling their behavior after the highly proficient speakers in the video. Studies of both approaches report that the scripted form of VT lowers CA, while performance visualization improves speaking skill (Hsu, 2009).

Evaluating Anxiety Reduction Strategies

Hsu (2009) followed Cohen’s (1977) standards when reporting the effect sizes in her meta-analysis of speech anxiety reduction strategies.5 Accordingly, systematic desensitization has a medium effect on trait CA (r = .34) and a small effect on state CA (r = .17). VT has a large effect on both trait (r = .52) and state CA (r = .55), with performance visualization showing a medium effect on trait CA (r = .41) and a large effect on state CA (r = .59). Two methods have been examined only in relation to reducing trait CA and they have widely differing results. Specifically, skills training reportedly had no effect (r = .09), while COM therapy has by far the largest effect of any single method for reducing trait CA (r = .82). Scholars studying the efficacy of speech anxiety treatments have reported that students appear to benefit most when several methods are combined (Allen, 1989; Allen, Hunter, & Donohue, 1989; Hopf & Ayres, 1992; Hsu, 2009). Currently, Dwyer’s (2000, 2009) multidimensional approach to reducing public speaking anxiety offers the strongest effect on trait CA (r = .88).

The efficacy of speech anxiety reduction strategies have been challenged on grounds that trait CA is anchored by biological factors including heritability and temperament (Beatty, McCroskey, Heisel, 1998). Consequently, the effects reported for treating CA treatment may be subject to threats to validity that were not controlled in the research designs of previous studies. Further, Beatty et al. (1998) argued that students participating in many anxiety treatment studies were selected because they reported high levels of trait CA. Consequently, changes in trait CA could be a function of regression to the mean. Duff, Levine, Beatty, Woolbright, and Park (2007) criticized previous research into the reduction of public speaking CA on the grounds that practically no study of any method used a credible placebo condition. Consequently, the changes in CA reported by participants in many previous studies could be a simple matter of reflecting back on what anxiety researchers were hoping to find all along, namely, that their methods worked. In their follow-up experiment testing this speculation, Duff et al. (2007) reported that the effects of a credible placebo were similar to visualization therapy in the reduction of trait CA. Clearly, future research on treatment of public speaking CA should control for these and other potential validity threats.

In summary, early attempts at developing effective treatments for speech anxiety were based on the premise that if CA was learned, then there was the possibility that it could be unlearned, or at least new responses acquired through training. Coupled with precise tools for measuring speech anxiety, a number of highly regarded treatment strategies borrowed from clinical research offered hope that communication scholars could determine the underlying causes and potential remedies for public speaking CA. However, this initial optimism was short-lived. Treatments for public speaking anxiety were scarcely as efficacious as expected. No single method of reducing CA was found to be superior, although combinations of methods were believed to be somewhat more effective. Furthermore, though several scholars attempted to put forward a global theory of anxiety for communication, none became preeminent.

Directions for CA Research and Pedagogy

A long-standing pattern of instruction, particularly in introductory college communication courses, is to screen students for their levels of public speaking CA (Heuett, Hsu, & Ayres, 2003) and then implement methods designed to remediate theconditions (Bodie, 2010; Connell & Border, 1987). However, future efforts at improving the efficacy of CA reduction methods, such as those that were reviewed in this chapter, will be contingent on the following three issues.

Each of these issues is inextricably linked to the other two. Consequently, solving any single issue portends progress in the others. The remainder of this chapter will examine each in turn, pointing out directions for future research and pedagogy related to public speaking CA.

First, advances in theory and conceptual refinements are always preparatory to improvements in pedagogy and treatment. Over the past 50 years, explanations for CA have evolved from social learning perspectives to biological ones. Likewise, emerging fields such as behavior genetics and social neuroscience will continue to offer advances in social anxiety theory and portend new strategies for treating the condition. Currently, researchers have begun to recognize that state anxiety is composed of at least two fear-related syndromes called anxious apprehension and anxious arousal. The former of these is synonymous with worry, and the latter with panic attack. Each emanates from its own circuitry within the human nervous system (Nitschke et al. 1999) and is supported by unique patterns of psychological and behavioral response. For example, worrying differs substantially from catastrophic thinking (Breitholtz et al., 1999). Proneness either to worry or to panic under stress appears to represent individual differences and has been detected among public speakers. For example, Finn, Sawyer, and Behnke (2009) advanced a predictive model of anxious arousal based on trait anxiety and the human startle reflex. Distinguishing which students will worry from those who will panic is the first step in developing specialized treatments for each syndrome. In turn, this knowledge could inform future pedagogy in the public speaking classroom. Future researchers should begin this project by identifying the cognitions that distinguish worry from catastrophic thinking.

Additionally, conventional thinking about CA is that it is an emotional condition that can be observed in the self-reports, physiological reactions, and vocal and physical delivery of speakers. This expectation is consistent with Buck’s (Buck, 1997; Buck & Powers, 2013) readout theory of emotion. Unfortunately, attempts to correlate each of these types of emotional readouts have met with disappointing results. That is, psychological, physiological, and behavioral measures of speech anxiety usually do not correlate with one another to the extent that many scholars expect. This phenomenon is commonly reported by psychophysiologists in their studies of anxiety and is called the problem of response system concordance (Calvo & Miguel-Tobal, 1998). In his review of early stage fright research, Clevenger (1959) commented on a lack of interdependence among psychological measures, heart rate, and ratings of speaker behavior. More recently, Sawyer and Behnke (2014) proposed a possible solution to response system concordance by constructing a speaker profile based on individual differences in the startle reflex and psychological trait anxiety. When they controlled for these response patterns in their experiment, Sawyer and Behnke were able to improve the correlation between speaker self-reported anxiety and their peak heart rates during each of the four public speaking milestones of anticipation, confrontation, adaptation, and release. Future researchers should amend this psychophysiological profile by including types of speaker delivery behavior.

Current research supports the use of exposure therapy for treating public speaking anxiety (Foa, Hupper, & Cahill, 2006). Under this treatment method, students are placed in the presence of a fear-arousing stimulus for brief periods of time, and their interactions with that stimulus are controlled so that they experience little or no harm. Habituation to the stimulus occurs as a natural function of human adaptation to the environment. This means that with repeated and prolonged exposures to audiences under controlled conditions, public speakers will naturally become less anxious and fearful. Finn, Sawyer, & Schrodt (2009) reported that students in the basic course became progressively more comfortable while practicing speeches before small audiences composed of their peers. This effect carried over during graded speech assignments before much larger groups, such as when the entire class was present. Exposure therapy for public speaking has shown clinical success, including when delivered through virtual reality (Owens & Beidel, 2015). An added benefit of exposure therapy is that teachers of public speaking can combine it with other instructional activities, such as lab exercises, practice sessions, and other skills training strategies. Instructional scholars should examine the extent to which exposure therapy can provide an overarching paradigm for future studies of anxiety reduction.

Traditionally, teachers of public speaking and instructional researchers have shared a two-fold ethic, namely, that treating CA should be motivated by compassion and pragmatism. Graded speeches, which are required in many undergraduate courses besides those offered in departments of communication, provoke feelings of physical discomfort, social embarrassment, and alarm among a sizeable proportion of those who must perform those assignments. Further, social anxiety has been shown to impede the development of communication competence, thereby diminishing the prospects for personal and professional success among those affected populations (Sawyer & Richmond, 2015). Consequently, helping students to overcome their fears of giving public speeches alleviates suffering while simultaneously promoting personal effectiveness. However, for instructional communication scholars and educators to achieve continued progress toward this goal, they must embrace advances in theory, measurement, and treatment of social anxiety.

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