ABSTRACT
Social psychologist Albert Mehrabian conceptualized immediacy as communication behaviors that “enhance closeness to and nonverbal interaction with another” (Mehrabian, 1969, p. 213). Grounding the concept in approach-avoidance theory, Mehrabian (1981) suggested that “people approach what they like and avoid what they don’t like” (p. 22). The term immediacy describes the set of verbal and nonverbal behaviors (Mehrabian, 1969, 1971; Wiener & Mehrabian, 1968) that produce the perception of reduced physical or psychological distance between the communicators. In the first examination of immediacy and learning outcomes, Andersen (1978, 1979) examined the relationship between the nonverbal immediacy behaviors of teachers and learning outcomes of their students. After that work, communication education devoted an enormous research effort to
understanding the relationship between instructor immediacy behaviors and the various outcomes. The accumulation of research evidence is controversial as persons provided different interpretations of that relationship. This meta-analysis provides a systematic quantitative summarization of the studies of verbal and nonverbal immediacy of teachers in relation to students’ affective, cognitive, and perceived learning outcomes. The issue remains an important instructional consideration because if student learning is improved by increased levels of teacher immediacy, training and advice for instructors is affected. The ability to improve learning by changing communication behavior represents an exciting and intriguing possibility. The empirical question that must be answered is whether increased immediacy behavior is correlated with improved student learning.
