Expectancy violations theory

Expectancy violations theory (EVT) is a theory of communication that analyzes how individuals respond to unanticipated violations of social norms and expectations.^[1] The theory was proposed by Judee K. Burgoon in the late 1970s and continued through the 1980s and 1990s as "nonverbal expectancy violations theory", based on Burgoon's research studying proxemics.^[2][3][4] Burgoon's work initially analyzed individuals' allowances and expectations of personal distance and how responses to personal distance violations were influenced by the level of liking and relationship to the violators.^[2] The theory was later changed to its current name when other researchers began to focus on violations of social behavior expectations beyond nonverbal communication.^[1][5]

This theory sees communication as an exchange of behaviors, where one individual's behavior can be used to violate the expectations of another. Participants in communication will perceive the exchange either positively or negatively, depending upon an existing personal relationship or how favorably the violation is perceived.^[3][6][1][7] Violations of expectancies cause arousal and compel the recipient to initiate a series of cognitive appraisals of the violation.^[8] The theory predicts that expectancies influence the outcome of the communication interaction as either positive or negative and predicts that positive violations increase the attraction of the violator and negative violations decrease the attraction of the violator.^[1]

Beyond proxemics and examining how people interpret violations in many given communicative contexts, EVT also makes specific predictions about individuals' reaction to given expectation violations: individuals reciprocate or match someone's unexpected behavior, and they also compensate or counteract by doing the opposite of the communicator's behavior.^[9][10]