You Make My Heart Beat Faster: A Quantitative Study of the Relationship Between Instructor Immediacy, Classroom Community, and Public Speaking Anxiety

A large percentage of the population has a severe anxiety when it comes to public speaking. However, the current research shows that there are ways both instructor factors and classroom factors can be altered to make an individual less anxious about public speaking scenarios. This study seeks to understand the effects of classroom community and instructor nonverbal immediacy on public speaking anxiety. The researcher surveyed 191 participants using Likert-scale type questions. These scales included the Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety (PRPSA), (McCroskey, 1970), Rovai (2002) Classroom Community Scale (CCS), and the Nonverbal Immediacy Scale – Observer Report (NIS-O) (Richmond, McCroskey, & Johnson, 2003). Results revealed that as instructor nonverbal immediacy increases, classroom community increases; as classroom community increases, public speaking anxiety decreases. Further studies are needed to expand on the effects of external environmental factors on public speaking anxiety.