College essay: Expectancy Violations Theory

Expectancy Violations Theory

Of Judee Burgoon

Review

Having a close reading of this chapter,  allowed to notice that in the beginning the author (professor) is criticizing Burgoon’s theory of “Expectancy Violation Theory” comparing to his students requests and how he responds to them, and also putting it on practice for confronting it by other theories such as “Proxemics” theory. The author tried hard to explain to us Burgoon’s use of the personal distance in claiming her theory and the effects of the personal space on our responses to others giving his own example as a professor and how his personal space interfere in his decisions to accept or refuse other’s requests. Burgoon defines the personal distance as the invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual defining his preferred distance from others.

In the following lines, Em enlightened us of how Edward Hall defines the personal space as a hidden dimension believing that most spatial or locative interpretation is outside our awareness. He also states that there are four proxemic zones: intimate distance, personal distance, social distance and public distance. Proxemics is the study of people’s use of space as a social elaboration of culture. The profeor starts comparing his responses to his student’s requests with Burgoon’s model. In this application of Burgoon’s theory on the distance of the four students proved that Burgoon’s claim is wrong, because whenever Burgoon is right about the expectations of the student’s behavior the professor’s responses don’t meet with the theory as the case of Dawn and Andre.

In the following sections the author pointed out that Burgoon has changed the concept of her theory due to the critics she received. She abandoned on the idea of “threat threshold” and stated that people felt physiologically aroused when their proxemic expectations were violated and softened the concept to “an orienting response” or a mental “alertness”. The author elucidates how Burgoon’s theory of the personal distance has been developed through time. In the mid-1980s, Burgoon has realized that proxemic behavior is part of an interconnected system of nonlinguistic cues.

Moreover, the expectancy violations theory has three corner stone which are illustrated by the author as followed: Expectancy which means what people predict will happen, rather than what they desire to happen, Violation Valence which stands for the perceived positive or negative value assigned to a breach of expectations, regardless of who the violator is, Communication Reward Valence which means the sum of positive and negative attributes brought to encounter plus the potential to reward on punish in the future.

In the end of this chapter the author talks about Burgoon’s interaction adaptation theory (IAT) as an extension and expansion of EVT, which stands for the systematic analysis of how people adjust their approach when another behavior doesn’t mesh with what’s needed, anticipated, or preferred. She sees this initial interaction position as made up of three factors: requirements, expectations and desires.