Introduction

Personally, being a young hormonal female whose frontal lobe hasn't fully developed I sometimes go through communication apprehension, I sometimes care about how people look at me or perceive me. I sometimes get nervous when I'm around a crowd of people I don’t know and sometimes you can get stuck in your thoughts about things that aren’t that serious or that don’t really matter. In the text of A component theory of communication apprehension, the author describes there being 4 components of CA, the first component is the nervous system sensitivity, during their research they have found that as the nervous system sensitivity increases, the experience CA increases. The second component is motivation, Zorn argued that motivation is a fundamental aspect of communication behavior in general, and communication apprehension in particular. Following Zorn it seems that whether you are disposed to engage in a communication activity is integrally related to whether you feel apprehensive about the activity. If you have no desire to communicate, you should not experience communication apprehension regardless of the factors in the situation. If you are motivated to accomplish something and communication is necessary to that accomplishment, then that potential for communication apprehension exists.Zorn(1993) What Zorn is basically trying to say from my perspective is that communication apprehension is necessary, because communication is necessary in order to get what you want or need in life you have to be able to communicate if you are not motivated to communicate than you wont experience CA. Two additional elements will influence the nature and severity of communication apprehension. The third component is that others will negatively evaluate communicative efforts negatively. If you anticipate that your communication will be positively received then you will have no problem with having communication apprehension. Now if you think negatively then the chances of you having CA will increase, you have to realize that it’s all about mindset and the way you think. When you have that fear of anxiety when talking to others that's when CA is heightened. The last component is self- perceived communication competence, for example to someone who has a sensitive nervous system and is motivated and expects to be negatively evaluated, perceptions of incompetence should increase CA. Whereas, Someone who has a less sensitive nervous system and is motivated and expects to be positively evaluated perceptions of competence would decrease CA. As I said before it’s all about mindset and the way you think, a lot of people can prevent CA from happening to them especially when meeting new people, or having conversations with other people, etc.

The experimental study was designed to determine if the changes in the state of CA predicted from communicators perceptions of their motivations. Their fear of negative evaluation and their self perceived communication competence would be greater among those with weak nervous systems than among those with strong nervous systems. Those who participated in this activity were undergraduate students who attended mid-sized western university. Mind you I am also an undergraduate student who attends husson university, and also described how I go through CA and  I worry about how others perceive me. I feel that when you are younger and you go out into the world on your own you start to have a little bit more anxiety when you are in a new environment. You are also around new people and are frogein to how they do things differently, how they talk, etc. So it can be a little scary when you are trying to figure yourself out and figure out where you fit in. These students at Western University represented a wide variety of majors because they were enrolled in a large general education course. The procedure was quite simple, the participants signed consent forms and were fitted in with headphones and a heart rate monitor. After they got comfortable they were then exposed to an unexpected loud noise, the change in heart rate from their base was taken as an indicator of NSS(nervous system sensitivity). A set of 8 scenarios were constructed and each scenario involved high or low motivation, positive or negative evaluation, and high and low competence. Study participants then responded to the set of questions after all the data had then been gathered. 90% to 100% of the students checked the appropriate responses to the item, this then concluded that the experimental conditions were effectively induced.

In conclusion, When being a little younger and in a different environment it can change a few things when it comes to your social habits or even just being around a big group of people. Eventually, everybody goes through some form of CA  and develops some type of anxiety when talking to new people you have never been around. It’s normal to feel this way especially when you are a college student and you are in a new environment and finding new friends. The more complex your nervous system is the more likely you are to develop CA because you have the motivation to negatively think that people are going to judge you during your conversations.