Ch. 7 -- Expectancy violations theory of Judee Burgoon

Personal space expectations: conform or deviate?

- Burgoon defined personal space as the "invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines that individual's preferred distance from others." -she claimed that the size and shape of our personal space depend on our cultural norms and individual preferences, but our shape reflects a compromise between the conflicting approach-avoidance needs that we as humans have for affiliation and privacy

Judee Burgoon

- a comm scholar at the university of arizona, wrote the journal article that stimulated my thinking -the article was a follow-up piece on the nonverbal expectancy violations model she had introduced in HCR two years earlier

IAT

-according to IAT, the pattern of response would therefore be one of reciprocity or convergence

Communicator reward valence

-burgoon's term -the sum of positive and negative attributes brought to the encounter plus the potential to reward or punish in the future -the resulting perception is usually a mix of good and bad and falls somewhere on a scale between those two poles

Edward hall's book

-filled with examples of "ugly Americans" who were insensitive to the spatial customs of other cultures -he recommended that in order to be effective, we learn to adjust our nonverbal behavior to conform to the communication rules of our partner -we shouldn't cross a distance boundary uninvited

EVT

-offers a "soft determinism" rather than hard-core universal laws -the terms may, more likely, can be, and relatively reflect her belief that too many factors affect comm to ever allow us to discover simple cause-and-effect relationships

What is Burgoon convinced of

-that all cultures have a similar structure of expected communication behavior, but that the content of those expectations can differ markedly from culture to culture

Ambiguous violation

Embedded in a host of relationally warm signals takes on a positive cast

Three core concepts of EVT

Expectancy, violation valence, and communicator reward valence

Relationship

Factors include similarity, familiarity, liking and relative status -Burgoon discovered that people of all ages and stations in life anticipate the lower-status people will keep their distance

Equivocal violation

From a punishing communication stiffens our resistance

Burgoon's retreat from arousal as an explanatory mechanism

Has been more gradual -she originally stated that people felt physiologically aroused when their proxemic expectations were violated -later she softened the concept to an orienting response or a mental alertness that focuses attention on the violator -she now views arousal as a side effect of a partner's deviation and no longer considers it a necessary link between expectancy violation and comm outcomes such as attraction, credibility, persuasion, and involvement

Communication characteristics

Include all of the age/sex/place-of-birth demographics requested on applications, but they also include personal features that may affect expectation even more -physical appearance, personality and communication style

Touch

Is fraught with meaning in every society, but the who, when, where, and how of touching are a matter of culture-specific standards and customs

Burgoon's nonverbal expectancy violations model

Offered a counterpoint to hall's advice -she didn't argue with the idea that people have definite expectations about how close others should come

In the 1960s, Illinois institute of technology anthropologists Edward hall coined what term?

Proxemics to refer to the study of people's use of space as a special elaboration of culture -he entitled his book The Hidden Dimension because he was convinced that most spatial interpretation is outside our awareness -he claimed Americans have four proxemics zones

What does she hope to do?

She hopes to show a link among surprising interpersonal behavior and attraction, credibility, influence and involvement

Social penetration theory

Suggests that we live in an interpersonal economy in which we all "take stock" of the relational value of others we meet

Burgoon has recognized what

That EVT does not fully account for the overwhelming prevalence of reciprocity that has been found in interpersonal interactions

Threat threshold

The hypothetical outer boundary of intimate space; a breach by an uninvited other occasions fight or flight

Personal space

The invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines that individual's preferred distance from others.

With all things equal what does burgoon sau

The nature of the violation will influence the response it triggers more than the reward potential of the one who did it

Violation valence

The perceived positive or negative value assigned to a break of expectations, regardless of who the violator is

Questions that cross our minds

What can you do for me? What can you do to me?

Expectancy

What people predict will happen, rather than what they desire

Requirements (R)

Are the outcome that fulfill our basic needs to survive, be safe, belong, and have a sense of self-worth. These are the pan human motivations that Abraham Maslow outlined in his famous hierarchy of needs

Why does Burgoon think the expectancy violator's power to reward or punish is so crucial?

Because puzzling violations force victims to search the social context for clues to their meaning

The idea of personal space wasn't original with

Burgoon

How has she produced a complete theory

By extending its scope

How has Burgoon streamlined her model

By removing extraneous features

RED factors

Coalesce or meld into our interaction position of what's needed, anticipated, and preferred

What begins with cultural norms

Context -also included the setting of the conversation

Arousal, relational

A heightened state of awareness, orienting response, or mental alertness that stimulates a review of the relationship

Interaction position

A person's initial stance toward an interaction as determined by a blend of personal requirements, expectations, and desires (RED)

Reciprocity

A strong human tendency to respond to another's a to with similar behavior

Interaction adaptation theory

A systematic analysis of how people adjust their approach when another's behavior doesn't align with what's needed, anticipated, or preferred -this theory is an extensions and expansion of EVT

Desires (D)

What we personally would like to see happen

Expectations (E)

What we think really will happen

The term elegant

When applied to theories, the term suggests "gracefully concise and simple; admirably succinct."