Verbal Aggressiveness and Leadership Style of Sports Instructors and Their Relationship with Athletes’ Intrisic Motivation

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine intrinsic motivation of athletes and its relation with instructors' verbal aggressiveness and leadership style. The sample of the study consisted of 168 athletes (95 boys and 73 girls), 15 -19 years old (M = 16.5, SD = 0.5), participating in different individual and team sports (basketball, volleyball, football, long jump, pole vault, 200 m). Every participant completed three questionnaires, the Verbal Aggressiveness Questionnaire, the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, and the Leadership Scale for Sports. The results revealed differences existing among variables of the instruments in terms of sex and type of sport (individual or team sport and contact or non contact sport). Pearson correlation revealed a significant positive relationship of coaches' verbal aggressiveness with anxiety, autocratic style, and a negative significant relationship concerning coaches' verbal aggression with enjoyment, ability, effort, and democratic style. Findings and implications for instructors' type of communication were discussed and future research suggestions were included.

Verbally Aggressive Instructors and Machiavellian Students: Is the Socio-Communicative Style an Over-Bridging?

“…Other analyses have shown that the appearance of Machiavellianism is related with the instructors' behavior (Martin, Myers, & Mottet, 2006), since the verbal aggressiveness seems to indicate trai-Psychology A. Bekiari nees' Machiavellian (Bekiari, 2016), as Machiavellians use dishonest and offensive means (Christie & Geis, 1970) and tend to practice divergent behaviors (Zagenczyk et al, 2014), cheating and dominating (Talwar & Lee, 2011), as Machiavellianism can be seen as a reaction to aggressive behavior by educators (McDonald, Donnellan, & Navarrete, 2012). Finally, results are in accordance with other studies supporting that verbal aggressiveness is negatively related with students' intrinsic motivation and instructors' responsiveness (Bekiari, 2012(Bekiari, , 2014Bekiari, Perkos, & Gerodimos, 2015;Hamilton & Hample, 2011) and positively related with assertiveness (Bekiari & Pylarinou, 2017). Additionally, it is revealed that instructors' personality plays a determinant role in students' behavior, emotions, tactics and attitudes (Horn, 2002;Infante & Rancer, 1996;Rancer & Avtgis, 2014).…”

“…In the present study, male students seem to regard their instructors as more verbally aggressive than female ones. This is confirmed by previous research which has supported that educators are more verbally aggressive against boys than against girls (Bekiari, 2014;. Consequently, male students perceive their instructors as more verbally aggressive, assertive and autocratic than female ones.…”

“…Apparently, instructors' verbal aggressiveness decreases students' participativeness (Myers, Edwards, Wahl, & Martin, 2007;Rocca, 2004), motivation and satisfaction or learning outcome (Bekiari, 2014;Bekiari & Hasanagas, 2016 a, b;Bekiari, Kokaridas, & Sakellariou, 2005;Bekiari, Koustelios, & Sakellariou, 2000;Manoli & Bekiari, 2015;Myers, 2002;Teven, 2007;Teven & McCroskey, 1997;Thweatt & McCroskey, 1998), affection in learning (Bekiari, 2012;Bekiari & Manoli, 2016;Bekiari & Tsaggopoulou, 2016;Myers et al, 2007;Schrodt, 2003;Wrench & Punyanunt-Carter, 2005), attractiveness (Bekiari & Petanidis, 2016;, communicative competence 2016 c;Bekiari & Sakellariou, 2003;Buford, 2010;Rocca & McCroskey, 1999), prosocial fairness (Hassandra, Bekiari, & Sakellariou, 2007), Machiavellianism (Bekiari, 2016(Bekiari, , 2017, intrinsic discipline Bekiari & Pylarinou, 2017;Bekiari & Tsiana, 2016), bullying (Bekiari, Pachi, & Hasanagas, 2017) and climate in class Myers & Rocca, 2000). In physical education, instructors' verbal aggressiveness is perceived as less favorable for the students and restricts sportsmanship (Kassing & Infante, 1999) and credibility (Mazer, Barnes, Grevious, & Boger, 2013) and feel less motivated (Bekiari, Perkos, & Gerodimos, 2015).…”

Instructors and Students Relations: Argumentativeness, Leadership and Goal Orientations

“…Moreover, teachers' encouragement is crucial for the outcome [59]. Training and instruction style is negatively correlated with anxiety [60], whereas autocratic style is positively correlated with anxiety, as well as with the use of verbally aggressive communication [61]. motives in relation to each person's goal achievement, depending on his activity field, where children perceive their ability in two different ways: ego-orientation (people evaluate their ability in relation to other people) and task-orientation (people evaluate their ability according to their personal improvement).…”

Examining Relations of Aggressive Communication in Social Networks

“…Verbal aggressiveness consists of attacks on the character, the ability, in appearance and in the background, contempt, ridicule, threats, profanity, curses, loud voices, teasing gestures [4] [8]- [14]. When students receive verbal aggressiveness from their instructors, they indicate lower levels of motivation, satisfaction, rapport with the instructors and a more hostile learning environment [15]- [28] that is not conducive to attendance and class climate [29] [30] and interpersonal communication between students and instructors [31]- [36]. Also, research has shown that instructors' verbal aggressiveness is negatively correlated with affective learning [37] [38], interpersonal attractiveness [39] [40], fair play behaviors [41] of students, as they avoid asking questions and do not try to maintain the communication outside of the classroom [30].…”