Interpersonal reactions to assertive and unassertive styles when handling social conflict situations.

Determining how persons perceive and evaluate social assertiveness is a particularly important topic, since assertive training is primarily intended to alter the behavior of individuals in the context of social interactions. In the present study, college students observed videotapes which showed a model handling several social conflict situations in either an assertive or an unassertive manner. Because race in individual may also influence the way assertiveness is viewed, both black and white models were used. Subjects then completed a 26-item adjective checklist to evaluate the personality of the model they observed. Results indicated that while assertive models were viewed as skilled and able in their handling of the portrayed social conflict situations, they were rated much less favorably than unassertive models on 14 adjectives assessing likeability. Race of model did not differentially affect this pattern. Implications of these findings are discussed.