Behavioral violations in interactions: The combined consequences of valence and change in uncertainty on interaction outcome.

Abstract

Unexpected behavior has been shown to influence the outcome of interactions across a wide variety of contexts. However, current research on expectation violations is limited by two flaws in axiomatic structure: First, scholars have assumed that violations are inherently uncertainty producing behaviors. Second, some researchers have accepted the traditionally held assumption that violations are intrinsically threatening (i.e, negatively valenced). This investigation aimed to extent past research on expectation violations by arguing that violations vary in both their valence and their influence on uncertainty, and that the combination of valence and uncertainty states conjointly produce interaction outcomes. In explaining the predicted variance in uncertainty following violations, a distinction was proposed between congruent violations (i.e., behaviors that are more intense instantiations of a previously displayed message) and incongruent violations (i.e., behaviors that are opposite in meaning from previously displayed messages). Furthermore, attributions for the violator's behavior were compared in congruent and incongruent violation conditions, and the violations' impact on general and interaction uncertainty was tested. Results (a) confirmed that violations differed in their impact on uncertainty, (b) supported the validity of the proposed distinction for explaining the differential impact of violations on uncertainty, (c) showed that violations were uniformly attributed to internal characteristics of the violator and (d) confirmed the utility of distinguishing between uncertainty types. On the other hand, the findings offered limited evidence for the influence of uncertainty states on violation outcomes and, instead, generally supported the predictions of Expectancy Violations Theory.