Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

sion-24 (PRCA-24). 75 If you have not done so already, please stop reading and complete the PRCA-24
before going further (http://www.jamescmccroskey.com/measures/prca24.htm).
The PRCA-24 evaluates four distinct types of communication apprehension (CA): interpersonal CA,
group CA, meeting CA, and public CA. Interpersonal CA is the one most important to us within this
textbook because it examines the extent to which individuals experience fear or anxiety when thinking
about or actually interacting with another person (For more on the topic of CA as a general area of
study, read Richmond, Wrench, and McCroskey’s book, Communication Apprehension, Avoidance, and
Effectiveness 76 ). Interpersonal CA impacts people’s relationship development almost immediately. In one
experimental study, researchers paired people and had them converse for 15 minutes. At the end of the
15-minute conversation, the researchers had both parties rate the other individual. The results indicated
that high-CAs (highly communicative apprehensive people) were perceived as less attractive, less
trustworthy, and less satisfied than low-CAs (people with low levels of communication apprehension). 77
Generally speaking, high-CAs don’t tend to fare well in most of the research in interpersonal
communication. Instead of going into too much detail at this point, we will periodically revisit CA as we
explore several different topics in this book.
Research Spotlight
In 2019, Jason Wrench, Narissra, Punyanunt-Carter, and Adolfo Garcia
examined the relationships between mindfulness and religious communication.
For our purposes, the researchers examined an individual’s religious CA, or the
degree to which people were anxious about communicating with another person
about their personally held religious beliefs. In this study, mindful describing and
nonreactivity to inner experience was found to be negatively related to religious
CA. As the authors note, “mindfulness can help people develop more confidence
to communicate their ideas and opinions about religion. Therefore, people would
be less apprehensive about communicating about religion” (pg. 13).
Wrench, J. S., Punyanunt-Carter, N. M., & Garcia, A. J. (2019).
Understanding college students’ perceptions regarding mindfulness: The
impact on intellectual humility, faith development, religious communication apprehension, and religious
communication. Journal of Religion and Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00861-3
Research
Willingness to Communicate
The final of our approach and avoidance traits is the willingness to communicate (WTC). James Mc-
Croskey and Virginia Richmond originally coined the WTC concept as an individual’s predisposition to
initiate communication with others. 78 examines an individual’s tendency
to initiate communicative interactions with other people. Take a minute and complete the WTC scale
available from James C. McCroskey’s website (http://www.jamescmccroskey.com/measures/WTC.htm).
People who have high WTC levels are going to be more likely to initiate interpersonal interactions
than those with low WTC levels. However, just because someone is not likely to initiate conversations
doesn’t mean that he or she is unable to actively and successfully engage in interpersonal interactions.
For this reason, we refer to WTC as an approach trait because it describes an individual’s likelihood of
approaching interactions with other people. As noted by Richmond et al., “People with a high WTC
attempt to communicate more often and work harder to make that communication effective than people
with a low WTC, who make far fewer attempts and often aren’t as effective at communicating.” 79
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