Although people who experience communication apprehension are less likely to speak up in groups, there are also people whose traits make them more likely to speak up. Have you noticed when working on class projects that some members of your group always seem to voice their opinions boldly or never seem to be afraid to speak out when they disagree with group members? These are likely to be students with assertive and argumentative personalities. Assertiveness refers to the use of communication messages that demonstrate confidence, dominance, and forcefulness to achieve personal goals. For example, you are being assertive when you openly tell your group members, “I want an ‘A’ on this project, so I would like us all to work as hard as possible to make this happen.” Some people have a greater tendency than others to use such assertive messages. Argumentativeness is a particular form of assertiveness, in which a person tends to express positions on controversial issues and verbally attack the positions that other people take (Infante & Rancer, 1982)—in other words, people who are argumentative tend, not surprisingly, to argue, and they often even enjoy it! But note that to be “argumentative” and not “aggressive” means that you refute the other people’s positions on issues—you do not attack them personally!

What effect do assertive or argumentative people have on group interaction? Highly argumentative group members are likely to be more dominant and, hence, play a significant role in group decision making (Limon & La France, 2005). In meetings, for example, individuals who are more argumentative are perceived as more credible communicators (Infante, 1981), and within small groups they are more often perceived as leaders (Schultz, 1980, 1982). Interestingly, research has found that leadership appears to be most strongly associated with higher levels of argumentativeness in combination with lower levels of communication apprehension (Limon & La France, 2005).

You might think that group harmony would suffer when people openly assert or argue their positions, but argumentativeness can actually reinforce cohesion within a group (Anderson & Martin, 1999). This is because group members are advocating for the solutions that may be most helpful at accomplishing the group’s tasks. Indeed, in most group situations, assertiveness and argumentativeness are perceived as constructive traits (Infante, 1987). It is important to remember, however, that we must distinguish these constructive forms of speaking up with the destructive tactic of “verbal aggressiveness” that we discussed in Chapter 8 as a negative, hostile way of handling conflict.