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 with, connections and/or strangers:
“Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“... feminism is a political term and it must be recognized as such: it is political in women’s terms. What are these terms? Essentially it means making connections: between personal power and economic power, between domestic oppression and labor exploitation, between plants and chemicals, feelings and theories; it means making connections between our inside worlds and the outside world.”
—Anica Vesel Mander, U.S. author and feminist, and Anne Kent Rush (b. 1945)
“Our eyes
Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,
And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
And strangers to the plant and to the mine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)