Speaking for the tongue tied

Fort Worth, TX

10/6/2008

Compliments of Endeavors, a research publication of the TCU Magazine

For many, one-on-one communication is a cakewalk compared to the prospect of addressing a crowd. Ralph Behnke says neither form of communication has to leave you tongue-tied and confused.

“Spread yourself a little thinner,” said Ralph Behnke to his class of young students. Many nod; some take notes; a few clutch their heads in their hands. The veteran professor of communication studies at TCU has just been asked how to keep a relationship from crashing and burning, ending in tears or limping to a boring halt. “Research has shown that over-exposure to each other is the worst thing for a relationship. Too much of a good thing is possible.”

Well-known throughout the country for his research on speaking anxiety, Behnke’s communication colleagues might be surprised to learn that he’s also an expert on romance. But TCU undergraduates who take his Communication in Lasting Relationships course know: Dr. Behnke has news you can use if you’re serious about staying in love.

Still teaching full time 10 years after retirement age, Behnke has been at TCU since 1974. When he received the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Research and Creativity in 2001, he thanked his students for providing the inspiration for his work. Always eager to try new things in the classroom, “I asked myself what the most important course I could imagine teaching might be,” Behnke said recently.

His answer: how to make relationships last. Romantic relationships, not surprisingly, are the most difficult to preserve. In Behnke’s class, there seems to be no shortage of real-world proof that this is the case. “Many students have a lot of experience in breaking up. Their lack of success, even short term, can teach the others something.”

Behnke finds that the students are very open and eager to share their failures. But they’re not just yakking: They really do want to know how to succeed. He offers the latest research in communication, which seems to prove that the best way to keep a relationship working is to remember the old adage: “absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

In other words, don’t make one person your whole life. “As you expand other important relationships, you improve the possibility that each will last.” Succeeding at important relationships is, after all, pretty hard work. Not just romantic relationships, but those with friends and family, too. In Behnke’s estimation it’s “the most important reason we’re alive.”

However, for many of us, one-on-one communication is a cakewalk compared to the prospect of addressing a crowd. While some folks get butterflies in their tummies before a speech, others feel like horseshoe crabs are doing headstands in there. Out of the classroom, Behnke is one of the foremost experts on the fear of public speaking. His recent research with TCU colleagues Paul L. Witt and Chris R. Sawyer was the first to compare speakers’ gastrointestinal responses to speech making.

In “Somatic Anxiety Patterns Before, During, and After Giving a Public Speech,” two groups of speakers had very different responses to the act of speaking itself. The 48 men and 48 women were undergraduates in an introductory public-speaking class. After making a five-minute speech, each student answered detailed questions about their anxiety levels and gastrointestinal sensations before, during, and after the speech.

Based on the speakers’ responses about gastrointestinal distress, the low-anxiety speakers felt stress at the podium. But stress began to decrease as soon as they spoke and continually declined until the end of the speech. The stress of the high-anxiety speakers didn’t decrease after speech began. In fact, stress grew and then peaked in the first minute, but then began to decline as the speakers continued to the end.

Think of the two types of speakers as “Nonchalant” (low-anxiety) and “Terrified” (high-anxiety). Terrified worries about his speech in advance. If worry were creative, he’d be a DaVinci. He worries from the day the assignment is given until the second he approaches the podium. And it doesn’t stop there.

Nonchalant, on the other hand, has never sweated the speech one bit. What’s all the fuss about? He proceeds to the podium with loose limbs and no fear. But as he stands there and gazes at the crowd, he’s suddenly smacked in the belly with a medicine ball of anxiety.

Terrified thinks it’s bad before he starts speaking, but then he opens his mouth. Those first few seconds are killers, with the horror peaking about a minute into his delivery. If he’s still living and breathing after that, it will all get easier. He’ll see that the audience isn’t throwing things. And wasn’t that someone actually laughing at his joke? His heart stops threatening to run off without him.

He survives.

If Nonchalant doesn’t get a grip right away on that medicine ball, he may not recover. Might as well just ferry him home right now. But as soon as he starts to speak, Nonchalant feels better. He does recover, warming to his subject and maybe even enjoying himself a bit, just about the same time that Terrified is having his peak moment of fear.

The excellent news for high-anxiety speakers is that a decline in stress occurred while speaking. This suggests that speech anxiety is not an unavoidable trait or necessarily part of one’s personality. With practice, one day those horseshoe crabs will turn into butterflies.

In fact, both Terrified and Nonchalant can take heart: Even during their darkest seconds (which felt like hours) nobody knew they were suffering. Only 11 percent of the anxiety felt by the speaker is apparent to the audience, according to Behnke. Whew. Remember that the next time you’re onstage sweating bullets. (Nobody suspects!)

But there are other things you can do to lessen anxiety, too. “It’s so important to be prepared,” said Behnke. If a memory meltdown is likely to happen it’s going to be when you first try and utter a word in front of the assembled crowd. So do your research, and know your material. Then make minimal notes to yourself. Practice by glancing at the notes and saying your speech over and over, before the big day.

“Make triggers for your memory. Don’t write the sentences out. Just do it as an extemporaneous presentation with a few notes: It will come back to you.”
Is that a promise?

Some people may be so afraid onstage that they forget who they are. Behnke says it’s OK in that case to write out the first or second sentence to get the speech going. Then, once you’ve heard yourself talking, your heart rate will begin to slow down, and the rest of the speech will arrive. It will come back to you.

When asked if a glass of wine might help, Behnke laughs. “As a college professor, I can’t recommend it.” For those past legal drinking age, he doesn’t recommend it either. As a tension-reliever, it often backfires. People drink too much without realizing it, and say something embarrassing or slur their words.

“It’s better to know that speaker state anxiety resolves itself into four key psychological moments called milestones.” These occur before we begin, the moment we first face the audience and begin to speak, as the speech ends and just after we complete it.

The second milestone, that first minute of the speech, is the toughest. “This is when we can make the most mistakes, as this is when there is the most anxiety,” said Behnke. “It’s a moment when we have the least information about how our performance will go. Once we get feedback from the audience, we have reason to calm down.”

Behnke is positive that speakers can “educate themselves out of anxiety.” Give a speech without fainting, stumbling or weeping and you’ll have more confidence next time.

“Successful outcomes produce the most positive effects on speakers.” Keep practicing, but not in front of your frat brothers or your rival. “Find an opportunity to practice in a supportive group.”

And here’s a tip for the Terrifieds of this world: Don’t go in for improv. “Impromptu assignments are likely to be unproductive. Give yourself the time you need to prepare.”

As a young man, Behnke was on the debate team and active in high school and community plays. He’s never anxious when he teaches, but when he presents papers at conferences, he’s a Nonchalant. “I am anxious when I first begin to speak. But I prepare very well. I’ve adapted. And I’ve been doing this for a very long time.”

More at www.communication.tcu.edu/faculty_behnke.asp

Ralph R. Behnke is the Burguières Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies at TCU. He is a specialist in the psychophysiology of communication, communication anxiety and communication education. He has published more than 155 communication research articles in peer-reviewed academic and professional journals, and presented more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers at national, regional and state conventions. He is a recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Research and Creativity, and is ranked No. 5 nationally in research productivity for publications in the Communication Studies academic journals. He holds a PhD from the University of Kansas in educational psychology, an MS in social psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a BA from the University of Missouri in general psychology.