The effect of teacher immediacy, affinity -seeking, and misbehaviors on instructional outcomes.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating effect of teacher immediacy and affinity-seeking on misbehaviors and credibility and affective learning. Participants were undergraduate students enrolled in large-lecture courses at a large mid-Atlantic university. Teacher immediacy, affinity-seeking, and misbehaviors were manipulated in scenarios. Participants were exposed to one scenario and asked to complete credibility and affective learning measures in relation to the teacher in the scenario. The results of the study revealed that significant main effects were present for teacher immediacy, affinity-seeking, and misbehaviors. The significance level was set at .05. While significant interaction effects were present, the variance accounted for by these interactions was less than three percent in all cases. Variance accounted for in teacher caring by immediacy and affinity-seeking was much higher than variance accounted for in trustworthiness and competence. However, teacher misbehaviors accounted for more variance in teacher competence. Finally, immediacy and affinity-seeking created more variance in the affective learning variables than did teacher misbehaviors. The results of this study indicate students perceive teachers more positively when teachers are high in both immediacy and affinity-seeking thus leading to the conclusion that studying the main effects of these variables is more important than studying the interactions