Theorizing communication one case study at a time
I created this blog for my final project in COML 595 A1 Summer Module 2019.
Suggested reading order for the blog posts:
A First Look at Communication Theory. (2014, January 29). Retrieved July 12, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kmnZIxiYHk
Burgoon, J. K. (2016). Expectancy Violations Theory (C. R. Berger & M. E. Roloff, Eds.). The International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication, First Edition, 1-9. doi:DOI:10.1002/9781118540190.wbeic0102
Griffin, E. A., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. G. (2015). A first look at communication theory. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Gong, Z. H., & Bucy, E. P. (2016). When style obscures substance: Visual attention to display appropriateness in the 2012 presidential debates. Communication Monographs, 83(3), 349-372. doi:10.1080/03637751.2015.1119868
Throughout my career interpersonal communication has been something I have challenged myself to improve in both professional and personal relationships. Through experience and time I have learned more about the boundaries to avoid crossing in the workplace as well as what my own boundaries and threat thresholds are. When applying the lens of expectancy violation theory, it becomes clear the times culture, age, gender, and setting have come into play. Below I list some examples from past work experiences for different organizations. I attempt to examine these interactions by applying EVT. You can find more examples listed in my other blog posts.
See more examples of real-life applications of EVT in my other blog posts.
Critiques of Burgoon’s expectancy violations theory noted by Em Griffin are that experiment test results have not always matched the EVT model, leading to mixed results over the years. Regardless, Burgoon’s EVT meets five out of six criteria of a good scientific theory outlined in the Griffin text (Griffin, et al., 2015, p.92).
The meaning of the word expected has been ambiguous, but Burgoon attempted to tighten the definition in the late 1990s. Expected is used for “what communicators predict others will do (predictive expectations) and applying the term ‘desired’ for what is considered socially appropriate (prescriptive expectations)” (Burgoon, Berger, & Roloff, 2016, p. 8).
Burgoon brings up the limitation of the lack of testing among non-Western cultures, but hypothesizes that the “potential for positive violations should be universal” (Burgoon, Berger, & Roloff, 2016, p. 8).
An important concept of expectations violations theory is understanding expectations. “Expectations are enduring cognitions about the behavior anticipated of others” (Burgoon, Berger, & Roloff, 2016, p. 2). Expectations come from social norms associated with particular situations and personal knowledge of the other person in the interaction.
A stranger will base their expectations off of the social norms associated with their gender, culture, relationship status, types of interactions as well as location and setting. In organizations I was fortunate to work with in Alaska I collaborated with a diverse group of constituents across many different cultures. People from some cultures will stand closer to you upon meeting for the first time compared to people from other cultures. Some cultures used more nonverbal cues such as head nodding or blinking to convey emotions such as acceptance.
Living in Alaska and growing up in more rural locales means I am no stranger to eating subsistence foods and interacting with Alaskan Native elders from various tribes. A few years ago while attending the annual statewide convention for the Alaska Federation of Natives for work, I was spoon fed pickled herring eggs by a Tlingit elder who had walked up to my organization’s booth and offered a bite out of her personally-canned stash. I was so honored and did not hesitate to accept. It is likely that she felt an affinity to me because we were at the same event and because I was representing my organization, a well-respected statewide nonprofit. The location and setting were factors in our interaction as well as culture and our age difference. In Alaska Native culture respecting elders is of the utmost importance.
Burgoon defines unmet expectations as “expectancy violations” whereas met expectations are “expectancy confirmations.” Expected distances, as explained in the post on proxemics, are a range of distances rather than specific points (Burgoon, Berger, & Roloff, 2016, p. 3). When someone passes the invisible threshold of the expected distance in an interaction, a violation has occurred. The reward valence, as described in the Historical Development post, is evaluated positively or negatively depending on whether the target feels that the violator crossed a threat threshold. Burgoon describes a threat threshold as “the point at which another’s proximity instills a sense of discomfort and possible threat” (Burgoon, Berger, & Roloff, 2016, p. 3).
Judee Burgoon’s expectancy violations theory (EVT) has an interesting origin story. Burgoon was a student given an assignment to make sense out of literature on proxemics. In the video below Em Griffin, author of the textbook used for this course: A First Look at Communication, interviews communication theorist Judee K. Burgoon about expectancy violations theory.
“…one of the reasons people come into communications trying to understand this endlessly fascinating area of human communication and there is nothing so practical as a good theory. Theories are helping us explain why people do what they do and try to predict what they do….because studying it is so fascinating, we’ve done so many studies and each study raises new questions and sends you off in new directions and that’s why one theory sort of spawns another theory.”
– Judee K. Burgoon
When thinking about how Expectancy Violations Theory applies to leadership, the 2012 presidential debate comes to mind. President Barack Obama was widely criticized in the news for his nonverbal cues during the debate. From grimacing to looking down often, he appeared disengaged and distracted. “In earlier televised debates, such dissonant nonverbal behaviors may have gone less noticed due to the use of a single camera shot that focused on one speaker at a time (albeit with some cutaways or reaction shots), yet the ubiquitous use by all the networks in 2012 of split-screen technology that features both candidates simultaneously made their expressive nonverbal reactions more prominent than usual” (Gong & Bucy, 2016, p. 350).
I’ve worked in varying positions for different nonprofit organizations with directors of all leadership experience levels. In one organization we held press training to avoid scenarios like the first 2012 presidential debate. We video-recorded our director relaying talking points while playing the part of the press asking questions. Seeing yourself on camera is a very effective method to see how often you inadvertently display nonverbal cues. In recordings of myself I was able to see that I have a tendency to look away from the camera, often downwards or off to the side. If I was on camera with someone else I noticed I tended to nod in agreement, which was obnoxious. I witnessed my leaders grow their communication skills and become more effective speakers with experience. In another organization my director was very soft spoken and tended to look down. If we had talking points, they would try memorizing them and would stumble and stutter over the words. From these experiences I learned that I needed to tighten my talking points into shorter, more to the point statements. With time, press interviews went more smoothly as well as speeches given at public gatherings.
Within another organization I worked from home and we didn’t utilize video conferencing; rather, we used internet chat and the phone or voice chat. I found it incredibly difficult to convey emotion while primarily using the chat function; for example remorse when making a mistake. Not being able to see or read the facial expressions and nonverbal cues of my colleagues and supervisors put me at a disadvantage.
Judee Burgoon wasn’t the first to define personal space. In the 1960s, Anthropologist Edward Hall coined the term proxemics to “refer to the study of people’s use of space as a special elaboration of culture” (Griffin, Ledbetter, & Sparks, 2015, p. 82).
In the image below, I’ve attempted to illustrate Edward Hall’s spatial interpretation. He believed that Americans have four proxemic zones.
Proxemic choices are influenced by culture, relationship status, gender, age, geographic location, and personality. Burgoon gives an example that people from Mediterranean cultures interact in closer proximity than those from Scandinavian cultures (Burgoon, Berger, & Roloff, 2016, p. 1).
Close proximity is reserved for private interactions and generally indicates closeness and attraction. “People also adopt closer distances when they wish to show approval or to ingratiate themselves with the target of the approach. Farther distances are reserved for more social, impersonal, formal, and public interactions (Burgoon, Berger, & Roloff, 2016, p. 2).
In one organization I’ve worked with I was hired around the same time as a new colleague. When our supervisor spoke to us from their cubicle I would tend to get up and walk over so I could see them face to face. My new colleague also did this. Looking at this through the lens of EVT, I was seeking approval and working to ingratiate myself to this supervisor.
“Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.”
— W.H. Auden
Expectancy violations theory (EVT), originally coined the nonverbal expectancy violations model, was first theorized by Judee K. Burgoon over three decades ago. The inspiration for the theory was proxemics, which I go into more detail in this post.
A large aspect of EVT is the concept of “personal space.” Burgoon defined personal space as the “invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines the individual’s preferred distance from others” (Griffin, Ledbetter, & Sparks, 2015, p. 82).
Burgoon adjusted the focus in the mid-1980s to include more nonverbal cues than only spatial violations when she concluded that proxemic behavior was related to these cues in an interconnected system. These nonverbal cues include facial expression, eye contact, touch, and body lean (Griffin, Ledbetter, & Sparks, 2015, p. 85). As Burgoon has evolved her theory over time, she now applies EVT to verbal communication as experienced in emotional, marital, and intercultural communication.
Perhaps Burgoon explains her own theory best:
“Expectancies exert significant influence on people’s interaction patterns, on their impressions of one another, and on the outcomes of their interactions. Violations of expectations in turn may arouse and distract their recipients, shifting greater attention to the violator and the meaning of the violation itself. People who can assume that they are well regarded by their audiences are safer engaging in violations and more likely to profit from doing so than are those who are poorly regarded” (Griffin, Ledbetter, & Sparks, 2015, p. 85).
EVT claims that “violations of expectations are sometimes preferable to confirmations of expectations” (Burgoon, Berger, & Roloff, 2016, p. 1).
There are three core concepts of EVT according to Griffin’s A First Look at Communication:
Expectancy, in this context meaning the predicted outcome, can be looked at with three factors:
Violation valence is the perceived positive or negative value we assign on a specific unexpected behavior, no matter the person responsible for the behavior (Griffin et al., 2015, p.83).
Communicator reward valence is the sum of the positive and negative attributes a person brings to an encounter plus the potential for that person has to reward or punish in the future (Griffin, et al., 2015, p. 85). According to Burgoon, EVT predicts that it is better to commit a violation than to do what is expected, as long as it is a positive violation (Griffin, et al., 2015, p. 85). Communicators with a lower reward value should conform to expectations whereas communicators with a higher reward value will more likely be able to commit a positive violation.
Expectancy Violations Theory