EMOTIONAL REACTIONS OF STUDENTS TO NONVERBAL TEACHER BEHAVIOR
The purpose of this experiment was to determine the differential emotional reactions of students to positive, neutral, and negative affect in nonverbal teacher behavior. Responses were studied across two grade levels and across race. A stratified random sample of 120 students was selected and randomly assigned to experimental conditions. Emotional reactions were measured by a semantic differential. Analysis of variance and Tukey post hoc tests showed that black second graders evaluated the neutral teacher most positively, while white second graders and sixth graders of both races tended to evaluate the positive teacher most positively.