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Public speaking procrastination as a correlate ofpublic speaking communication apprehension andself‐perceived public speaking competenceRalph R. Behnke a & Chris R. Sawyer ba Professor of Speech Communication , Texas Christian University , Fort Worth, Texasb Assistant Professor of Speech Communication , Texas Christian University , Fort Worth,TexasPublished online: 06 Jun 2009.

To cite this article: Ralph R. Behnke & Chris R. Sawyer (1999) Public speaking procrastination as a correlate of publicspeaking communication apprehension and self‐perceived public speaking competence, Communication Research Reports,16:1, 40-47, DOI: 10.1080/08824099909388699

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Public Speaking Procrastination as a Correlate of Public SpeakingCommunication Apprehension and Self-Perceived Public Speaking

Competence

Ralph R. BehnkeTexas Christian University

Chris R. SawyerTexas Christian University

In the present study, the relationship between public speaking pro-crastination and communication apprehension, and the relationshipbetween public speaking procrastination and self-perceived publicspeaking competence were investigated. A significant, positive corre-lation was found between public speaking procrastination and com-munication apprehension. A significant, negative correlation was foundbetween public speaking procrastination and self-perceived publicspeaking competence. The implications of public speaking procrasti-nation for students and their instructors are discussed along with "anti-procrastination " pedagogical strategies.

Researchers in communication apprehension and speech anxiety have long distin-guished between state and trait measures of these variables (Beatty & Behnke, 1980;Spielberger, 1966). Subjects' levels of trait communication anxiety commonly have beenfound to be correlated, at low-to-moderate levels, with performance anxiety during publicspeaking (Behnke & Beatty, 1981; Behnke, Carlile & Lamb, 1974). Consequently, trait mea-sures of apprehension and anxiety administered early in a course are capable of predictingat least some of the anxiety that speakers will report experiencing during their performances.As a result, special instructional methods and interventions can be used for speakers forwhom it is anticipated that unusually high levels of anxiety will be experienced whilespeaking (Robinson, 1997).

Ralph R. Behnke (Ph.D., University of Kansas) is Professor of Speech Communication at TexasChristian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Chris R. Sawyer (Ph.D., University of North Texas) isAssistant Professor of Speech Communication at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH REPORTS, Volume 16, Number 1, pages 40-47

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Trait anxiety levels combine with situational factors, such as size and composition ofthe audience (Neer, Hudson, & Warren, 1982), presence of a television camera (Bush, Bittner,& Brooks, 1972), and whether or not the assigned speech will be graded (Beatty, 1988; Beatty& Friedland, 1990), thereby further increasing speaker discomfort during speech perfor-mance. As a result, novice speakers will often seek to escape such threatening speakingsituations by inventing excuses for not participating or by becoming distracted by morepleasant and hence less fear arousing activities (McCroskey, 1984).

The amount of time a speaker has to prepare and practice a presentation has also beenfound to be related to speech anxiety (Menzel & Carrell, 1994). Sometimes the available timefor preparation and practice is artificially curtailed because the speaker procrastinates ex-cessively until the available time for working on the speech is no longer sufficient for thetask.

Avoidance of communication tasks, including preparation and rehearsal of speeches,has been linked to anticipatory anxiety (Beatty, 1987; McCroskey, 1982). Likewise, educa-tors often speculate that procrastination, such as delaying preparation for a speaking as-signment, contributes to low performance evaluations and high levels of public speakinganxiety. Although some evidence for this pedagogical assumption has been reported (Daly,Vangelisti, Neel, & Cavanaugh, 1989; Menzel, & Carrell, 1994), the underlying relationshipbetween communication anxiety and procrastination has not been fully explained. Thepurpose of the current study is twofold: to examine the relationship between communicationapprehension and procrastination and the relationship between procrastination and self-perceived communication competence in public speaking.

PROCRASTINATION AND PUBLIC SPEAKINGTrait anxiety responses are produced by a process of Pavlovian conditioning in which a

neutral stimulus, such as having a conversation or giving a speech, becomes associated withpunishment (Rolls, 1990). While negative reinforcement is primarily used by parents andteachers to suppress the errant social behaviors of children (Strongman, 1987), the anxiety itproduces becomes deeply rooted in the affective memory of humans (Sawyer & Behnke,1997). Since individuals do not receive the same level of punishment in each type of speak-ing situation, communication apprehension develops as a dynamic trait (Behnke & Sawyer,1998), that is, it varies in amplitude given the specificity with which negative reinforcementis interposed in a particular class of situations. Therefore, negative feelings about perfor-mance, such as those associated with receiving a low grade on a speech, may intensify thespeaker's level of communication apprehension for that situation. As a result, individualswill formulate routine coping strategies for managing specific anxiety-arousing situations.

Gray (1982) identified two distinct anxiety coping strategies. When confronted by athreatening or novel stimulus, subjects often suppress motor responses while carefully moni-toring the situation in order to respond appropriately if signs of imminent danger develop.This phenomenon, called behavior inhibition, has been observed in classroom public speak-ing situations (Freeman, Sawyer, & Behnke, 1997). However, operating along side Gray's(1982) behavior inhibition construct is a more interactive strategy in which one either takesdecisive steps to engage the threat or actively avoids confronting it. Whereas behavior inhi-bition occurs during a stressful situation, behavior activation is often initiated well beforeactual contact. Whether the impending threat is avoidable or inevitable largely determinesthe extent to which one's coping strategy is effective.

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Examples of active avoidance are reflected in the speech preparation procedures ofanxious students. Daly, Vangelisti, Neel, and Cavanaugh (1989) found that anxious speak-ers often waste valuable preparation time complaining about the assignment or employingdilatory tactics such as selecting unfamiliar topics that take longer to prepare. Similarly,Ayres (1992) reports that students with high levels of communication apprehension havemore negative thoughts about the impending communication event and fewer task-relevantones. As a result, high communication apprehensives require substantially more prepara-tion time than their less anxious counterparts (Ayres & Robideaux-Maxwell, 1989).

While reporting that students often fail to prepare adequately for classroom speakingsituations due to fear reactions to speech assignments, Menzel and Carrell (1994) concludethat:

Future research should examine more closely the quality of time spent inpreparation. For example, did a student sit in the library thumbing throughmagazines, or did that same student do a methodical search for specificinformation on a specific topic? While both processes might yield the sameamount of time spent in "library research," they are likely to produce radi-cal differences in the speeches that follow (p. 24-25).

Given appropriate communication-related skills, speakers need adequate time in order toproduce high quality speeches. The more time that is consumed by procrastination, theless is available for preparation and practice. At some critical point, there is no longerenough time to execute the complex behaviors necessary to construct and deliver a goodspeech. Consequently, these performances will be evaluated less favorably than those of aspeaker's more industrious peers.

Since students have other, competing, interests (including pleasant ones), the problemappears to be one of attraction/avoidance. In other words, they are, at once, being put off byunpleasant tasks while being attracted to pleasant ones. Delaying preparation for perfor-mance activities has been linked with various affective, cognitive, and behavioral measuresof traits relevant to human communication, such as self-esteem (Solomon & Rothblum, 1984;Rothblum, Solomon, & Murakami, 1986). Ayres (1986) has proposed an inverse relationshipbetween self-efficacy and trait anxiety. Specifically, anxious speakers often perceive thatthey lack the ability necessary to meet audience expectations. In light of the preceding dis-cussion, anxious speakers procrastinate because they do not believe that they have therequisite skills to succeed in public speaking situations.

Consequently, self-perceived communication competence is a likely contributor to theexpedience with which students prepare speeches. Richmond, McCroskey, and McCroskey(1989) report an inverse relationship between self-perceived communication competenceand communication apprehension. Academically at-risk students, those who have a greaterthan normal likelihood of attrition from educational programs and courses, are higher incommunication apprehension and lower in self-perceived communication competence thannational norms (Cheseboro, McCroskey, Atwater, & Barenfuss, 1992). Conversely, academi-cally gifted students, those who tend to persist and achieve excellence in the academy, arelower in communication apprehension and higher in self-perceived communication compe-tence than national averages. Students who perceive that they lack sufficient skill to success-fully perform a classroom speech will often actively evade participating in these assign-ments. A commonly heard excuse for not speaking on the prescribed day is "I'm sorry. I'm

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not prepared." As Phillips (1984) observes, a student who expects to perform poorly in aspeaking situation is often unwilling to communicate with others. Therefore, the tendency todelay preparation is affected by the perception of one's own communication competence.

While the relationship between communication apprehension and self-perceived com-munication competence has been established, it is important to determine the extent to whichthese variables are related to public speaking procrastination.

Consequently, the following hypotheses are advanced:

HI: There is a significant, positive correlation between public speaking procrastinationand public speaking communication apprehension.

H2: There is a significant, negative correlation between public speaking procrastinationand self-perceived public speaking competence.

METHODSubjects

Participants in the present study were 73 students (37 males, 36 females) enrolled in acollege-level introductory speech communication performance course. Fifty-five were intheir freshman year and eighteen were sophomores. They ranged from 18 to 25 years of agewith an average age of 20.5.

ProceduresAll participants presented five-minute informative speeches to audiences of their peers

in a normal classroom setting. Eighteen-to-twenty audience members served in each group.The administration of self-report scales for pedagogical purposes, were routine instruc-tional procedures in the course and participants were so informed.

InstrumentationThe procrastination variable was operationalized as scores on the Tuckman Procrasti-

nation Scale, an instrument commonly used to measure student procrastination on class-room assignments with an established record of validity and reliability (Tuckman, 1991). Inthis study, the items on the scale referred to procrastination about working on public speeches(For example, "I postpone starting on a speech I don't like to do." and "I waste time whenpreparing to speak but I can't seem to do anything about it."). In the present study, this scaleyielded an alpha reliability of .90.

Trait communication apprehension was measured by the public speaking sub-scale ofMcCroskey's Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) a well-establishedmeasure of communication apprehension in the speech communication discipline (Beatty,& Behnke, 1980; Beatty, & Andriate, 1985; Lustig, & Andersen 1990). Alpha reliability for thePRCA (Public Speaking Sub-scale) was .85.

Communication competence was measured by the public speaking sub-scale ofMcCroskey's (McCroskey & McCroskey, 1988) Self-Perceived Communication CompetenceScale (SPCC). The SPCC has demonstrated acceptable levels of reliability in previous empiri-cal studies (McCroskey & McCroskey, 1988). Alpha reliabilitiy for the SPCC (Public Speak-ing Sub-Scale) was .89

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RESULTSMeans and standard deviations for trait procrastination, public speaking trait anxiety,

and self-perceived public speaking competence were, respectively, 38.45(7.34), 19.45(4.67),and 71.61(12.63).

Hypothesis 1, that a significant positive correlation exists between trait public speakingcommunication apprehension scores and speech trait procrastination scores, was supported.That relationship, tested by a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, produced thefollowing results: r= .7, ̂ =.49, df=71, p<.05.

Hypothesis 2, that a significant negative correlation exists between speech trait procras-tination and self-perceived public speaking competence, was supported. That relationship,tested by a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, produced the following results:r= -.48, r*= 2$, d/=71,p<.05.

DISCUSSIONThe results of this study suggest that high communication apprehensives actively avoid

public speaking situations by employing dilatory tactics, especially those that have helpedthem escape from threatening situations in the past (Gray, 1982). Moreover, self-perceivedpublic speaking competence was inversely related to procrastination. This finding is consis-tent with theorists such as Ayres (1986) who believe that anxiety is a function of one'sperceived skills relative to the demands of a task. As a result, when speakers sense that theywill be unable to overcome a threat they procrastinate as a coping strategy.

These findings have practical implications for students and instructors in basic speechcourses that include public speaking assignments. Instructors should help students to avoidprocrastination on public speaking assignments by subdividing global tasks into smaller,incremental components with strict sequential due dates. The smaller tasks may be lessoverwhelming and, therefore, show a greater tendency to be completed on time. For example,a very general outline for a public speech may be due shortly after the presentation is as-signed followed somewhat later by an intermediate outline and then the final version dueseveral days before speaking. A similar successive approximations tactic to assure timelyoral practice might be to require students to hand in audio tapes of their practice sessions.Such "anti-procrastination" pedagogical strategies make it far more difficult for students towait until there is no longer enough time left to complete the global task, a speech perfor-mance, with its manifold components such as finding sources, building outlines, and prac-tice speaking.

Clearly, procrastination disadvantages speech communication students in a number ofways. First, by allowing inadequate time to complete various components of the complextask of public speaking, the quality of many of those components is diminished resulting inpoor overall quality of the final product. Second, dissatisfaction with the inferior quality ofthat product is related to emotional upset (Milgram, 1991), in this case by way of increasedlevels of public speaking communication apprehension. Third, perceptions of inadequatespeaking competence, combined with high trait anxiety levels, manifest themselves in stu-dents who put off taking speech communication courses designed to remediate substandardskills and to increase speaker confidence. Overall, negative experiences resulting from pro-crastination are likely to reduce students' positive affect about public speaking, the basicspeech course of which it is a part and, possibly, speech communication as the selectedmajor field of study.

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