Citation

Kremer JF, Bringle RG, Cave P. Pers. Individ. Dif. 1980; 1(4): 355-361.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1980, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0191-8869(80)90019-7

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This experiment examined changes in anxiety and differences in aggression for high and low assertive women when different degrees of conflict were encountered. As predicted, low assertive women were intially more uneasy or anxious than high assertive women when they were placed in a conflictual situation. When the level of actual conflict was low, the level of anxiety of low assertive women decreased. However, when the actual level of conflict was high the anxiety level of low assertive women remained unchanged. These results were taken as support for the fear of conflict hypothesis which predicted that the reduction in anxiety for low assertive persons is contingent upon whether or not the anticipated conflict is actually encountered. The results also indicated that high assertive women were not significantly more aggressive than low assertive women. This finding provided support for Galassi's position that assertiveness and aggression are distinct concepts.