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Expectancy Violation Theory Essay

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Social norms are the fundamental framework for all interactions. So what happens when our expectations of how a person should behave are violated? Expectancy violation theory seeks to answer this question. The curator of this theory, Judee Burgoon, “hope[s] to show a link among surprising interpersonal behavior including attraction, credibility, influence, and involvement” (Griffin 86). I hope to highlight these objectives through the theory’s core concepts as well as through the application of a popular film. EVT has become increasingly precise over the years due to a gradual riddance of concepts that failed to regularly yield success. However, there are central ideas belonging to EVT that have stood the test of time, the first of these …show more content…

Our expectancy of a situation is created by analyzing the circumstances in which it occurs as well as our relation to the other party and their attributes. We perform this examination in our minds automatically so that we can determine the potential actions of people. Once we inspect the interaction, we can interpret the meaning of it through violation valence. Violation valence is the distinguished value we assign to a situation in which the actual outcome deviates from the expected. This value can be either positive or negative. There is generally a bit of a “grace region” allowed for people to act contrarily to what is expected of them, but once someone departs too extremely from standard operating procedures, we begin to evaluate how we feel about the violation. This is where communicator reward valence comes into play. Communicator reward valence is "the sum of positive and negative attributes brought to the encounter plus the potential to reward or punish in the future” (Griffin 88). …show more content…

The context of communication includes both cultural norms and the setting of the conversation. In Buddy’s case, he is completely uninformed of how to act in this new environment or how to go about conforming to societal standards; he puts syrup on anything that enters his mouth, chews discarded gum off of the street, and has complete disregard for the concept of personal space by engaging in activities such as whispering in Walter’s ear upon their first meeting. Secondly, when Buddy firsts meets Walter, it is in a professional setting. However, Buddy arrives at the office in a full elf costume, makes child-like exclamations while visiting, and engages in singing a song for Walter. Furthermore, from a relationship standpoint, which includes aspects such as likeness and familiarity, Buddy is essentially an alien to Walter who is claiming to be his son. Not only is he a stranger, but Walter fails to discover similarities between the two of them. Finally, Buddy’s physical characteristics and demographics do not coincide with what you would expect them to be. The fact that he is a tight-wearing, thirty-something-year-old man whose main food group is sugar proves that he is far from conventional. Upon evaluation of the above mentioned attributes, Walter concludes that his expectations have been violated. Through violation

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