"Argumentative and Aggressive Communication is an excellent balance between research and application. This fits with the tradition of having high concern for application in the field of communication, and leaning on strong research to guide that application."

—James C. McCroskey, West Virginia University

"The thoroughness of coverage that this book devotes to perhaps the most important research area in communication today provides students with amazing insight into conflict, argumentativeness, aggressiveness, and a variety of other concepts and skills central to communication!" —Joseph A. DeVito, Hunter College of the City University of New York

Argumentative and Aggressive Communication: Theory, Research, and Application is the first text to describe the development, history, research, and application efforts on the communication traits of argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness. Authors Andrew S. Rancer and Theodore A. Avtgis include a collection of nine widely used reliable and valid instruments which the reader, the researcher, and the practitioner can use for diagnostic and research purposes.

Key Features:

• Discusses the origin and structure of argumentative and aggressive communication: The book completely describes the development of the argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness trait constructs. In addition, the measurement of argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness is treated in the most comprehensive way to date.


• Explores the function of argumentative and aggressive communication in various contexts: Guidelines are provided on how to approach conflict and disagreement across multiple contexts in a constructive fashion. This text synthesizes the large corpus of research in several areas of communication, including family, organizational, intercultural, instructional, and mediated contexts.


• Provides conclusions drawn from this literature: Suggestions are given for future research on argumentative and aggressive communication from ten distinguished communication scholars.

Intended Audience:

Written in a style accessible to undergraduates, yet comprehensive and detailed enough for graduate students and researchers, this is an ideal text for courses in Communication and Personality; Communication and Conflict; Interpersonal Communication; Social Psychology-Personality; and Psychology-Aggression.