Expectancy Violations Theory - Related Theories

Related Theories

As mentioned above, EVT has strong roots in Uncertainty Reduction Theory. The relationship between violation behavior and the level of uncertainty is under study. A research does indicates that violations differ in their impact on uncertainty. To be more specific, incongruent negative violations heightened uncertainty, whereas congruent violations (both positive and negative) caused declines in uncertainty. The theory also borrows from Social Exchange Theory in that people seek reward out of interaction with others. Two other theories share similar outlooks to EVT – Discrepancy-Arousal Theory and Patterson’s Social Facilitation Model. Like EVT, DAT explains that a receiver becomes aroused when a communicative behavior does not match the receiver’s expectations. In DAT, these differences are called discrepancies instead of expectancy violations. Cognitive Dissonance and EVT both try to explain why and how people react to unexpected information and adjust themselves during communication process. Social Facilitation Model has a similar outlook and labels these differences as unstable changes. A key difference between the theories lies in the receiver’s arousal level. Both DAT and SFM maintain that the receiver experiences a physiological response whereas EVT focuses on the attention shift of the receiver. EVT posits that expectancy violations occur frequently and are not always as serious as perceived through the lenses of other theories.