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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expectancy violations theory | 16/17 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectancy_violations_theory | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:06:53.972000+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Predictability and testability === EVT has undergone scrutiny for its attempt to provide a covering law for certain aspects of interpersonal communication. Some critics of EVT believe most interactions between individuals are extremely complex and there are many contingencies to consider within the theory. This makes the prediction of behavioral outcomes of a particular situation virtually impossible to consistently predict. Another critique of the theory is the assumption that expectancy violations are mostly highly consequential acts, negative in nature, and cause uncertainty to increase between communicators. In actuality, research shows expectancy violations vary in frequency, seriousness, and valence. While it is true that many expectancy violations carry a negative valence, numerous are positive and actually reduce uncertainty because they provide additional information within the parameters of the particular relationship, context, and communicators.
==== A First Look at Communication ==== Emory Griffin, the author of A First Look at Communication Theory, analyzed unpredictability in EVT. His test consisted in analyzing his interaction with four students who made various requests from him. The students were given the pseudonyms Andre, Belinda, Charlie and Dawn. They start with the letters A, B, C and D to represent the increasing distance between them and Griffin when making their requests.
Andre needed the author's endorsement for a graduate scholarship, and spoke to him from an intimate eyeball-to-eyeball distance. According to Burgoon's early model, Andre made a mistake when he crossed Griffin's threat threshold; the physical and psychological discomfort the lecturer might feel could have hurt his cause. However, later that day Griffin wrote the letter of recommendation. Belinda needed help with a term paper for a class with another professor, and asked for it from a 2-foot distance. Just as Burgoon predicted, the narrow gap between Belinda and Griffin determined him to focus his attention on their rocky relationship, and her request was declined. Charlie invited his lecturer to play water polo with other students, and he made the invitation from the right distance of 7 feet, just outside the range of interaction Griffin anticipated. However, his invitation was declined. Dawn launched an invitation to Griffin to eat lunch together the next day, and she did this from across the room. According to the nonverbal expectancy violations model, launching an invitation from across the room would guarantee a poor response, but this time, the invitation was successful. Griffin's attempt to apply Burgoon's original model to conversational distance between him and his students did not meet with much success. The theoretical scoreboard read:
Nonverbal expectancy violations model: 1 Unpredicted random behavior: 3 However, when Griffin applied the revised EVT standards on his responses to "the proxemic violations of Andre, Belinda, Charlie, and Dawn," the scorecard "shows four hits and no misses."
== Related theories == Because EVT is sociopsychological in nature and focuses on social codes in both intrapersonal and interpersonal communication, it is closely related to communication theories such as cognitive dissonance and uncertainty reduction theory. Recently, this theory has undergone some reconstitution by Burgoon and her colleagues and has resulted in a newly proposed theory known as interaction adaptation theory, which is a more comprehensive explanation of adaptation in interpersonal interaction. As mentioned above, EVT has strong roots in uncertainty reduction theory. The relationship between violation behavior and the level of uncertainty is under study. Research indicates that violations differ in their impact on uncertainty. To be more specific, incongruent negative violations heightened uncertainty, whereas congruent violations (both positive and negative) caused declines in uncertainty. The theory also borrows from social exchange theory in that people seek reward out of interaction with others. Two other theories share similar outlooks to EVT – discrepancy-arousal theory (DAT) and Patterson's social facilitation model (SFM). Like EVT, DAT explains that a receiver becomes aroused when a communicative behavior does not match the receiver's expectations. In DAT, these differences are called discrepancies instead of expectancy violations. Cognitive dissonance and EVT both try to explain why and how people react to unexpected information and adjust themselves during communication process. The social facilitation model has a similar outlook and labels these differences as unstable changes. A key difference between the theories lies in the receiver's arousal level. Both DAT and SFM maintain that the receiver experiences a physiological response whereas EVT focuses on the attention shift of the receiver. EVT posits that expectancy violations occur frequently and are not always as serious as perceived through the lenses of other theories. Anxiety/uncertainty management theory is the uncertainty and anxiety people have towards each other, relating to EVT this anxiety and uncertainty can differ between cultures. Causing a violation for example violating someones personal distance or communicating ineffectively can cause uncertainty and anxiety. The popularity of computer-mediated communication (CMC) as means of conducting task-oriented and socially oriented interactions is a part of the social information processing (SIP) theory. Coined by Joseph Walther, the theory explores CMC's ability to fulfill many of the same functions as the more traditional forms of interaction, especially face-to-face (FtF) interaction. SIP can be used in conjunction with EVT to examine interpersonal and hyperpersonal relationships established through CMC.