ABSTRACT
It is not at all unusual that communication proficiency suffers under conditions of anxiety and heightened emotion. Nervousness, anger, grief, and other affective states may severely impact message production and processing. This chapter addresses the nature of “affect,” “mood,” and “emotion,” and reviews research on their role in shaping social behavior. Five points of emphasis concerning emotion and communication behavior (e.g., facial displays of emotion, individual differences in emotional intensity) are developed. Additional attention is given to the relationship between physiological arousal and performance (i.e., the “Yerkes-Dodson Law”) and the controversies surrounding that idea. The causes and effects of “communication anxiety” are discussed. The chapter concludes with an integrative summary addressing the sources of performance deficits covered in Chapters 7 (ability and motivation), 8 (information retrieval and integration), and 9 (affect and arousal).
