Connections With Strangers
The next five axioms are based on connections between people. What the axioms come to is the more connected people feel to strangers, the less anxiety and uncertainty they feel in communicating with them. These connections come from attraction, interdependence, levels of intimacy, and number of the same people both communicators know.
Axiom 27: An increase in our attraction to strangers will produce a decrease in our anxiety and an increase in our confidence in predicting their behavior. Boundary Conditions: This axiom holds only when our anxiety and uncertainty are between our minimum and maximum thresholds, and we are not mindful. (Gudykunst, 2005, p. 302)
Axiom 28: An increase in the quantity and quality of our contact with strangers and members of their groups will produce a decrease in our anxiety and an increase in our ability to predict their behavior accurately. Boundary Conditions: This axiom holds only when our anxiety and uncertainty are between our minimum and maximum thresholds, and we are not mindful. (Gudykunst, 2005, p. 302)
Axiom 29: An increase in our interdependence with strangers will produce a decrease in our anxiety and an increase in our ability to predict their behavior accurately. Boundary Conditions: This axiom holds only when our anxiety and uncertainty are between our minimum and maximum thresholds, and we are not mindful. (Gudykunst, 2005, p. 302)
Axiom 30: An increase in the intimacy of our relationships will produce a decrease in our anxiety and an increase in our ability to predict their behavior accurately. Boundary Conditions: This axiom applies only to broad trends across stages of relationship development. Within any stage of relationship development or within specific conversations, anxiety and uncertainty fluctuate (i.e. act as dialectics). The axiom holds only when we are not mindful. (Gudykunst, 2005, p. 302–303)
Axiom 31: An increase in the networks we share with strangers will produce a decrease in our anxiety and an increase in our ability to accurately predict their behavior. Boundary Conditions: This axiom holds only when our anxiety and uncertainty are between our minimum and maximum thresholds, and we are not mindful. (Gudykunst, 2005, p. 303)
Read more about this topic: Anxiety/uncertainty Management
Famous quotes containing the words connections and/or strangers:
“Our business being to colonize the country, there was only one way to do it—by spreading over it all the associations and connections of family life.”
—Henry Parkes (1815–1896)
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