Chapter 6: Expectancy Violations Theory

Expectancy Violations Theory deals with the ideas people have about how other people are supposed to behave in certain situations, and how they evaluate and deal with people who break those social norms. How people deal with these violations is based on the context of the violation, the relationship of the person making the violation to the person receiving the violation, and the individual characteristics of the person making the violation. A real-world example of this theory would be if a person were sitting in an empty movie theater, waiting for the show to begin, when a stranger enters the theater and immediately sits down in the seat right next to him or her. Our expectations of behavior tell us that, with so many other seats available, the stranger should not intrude upon our space unnecessarily by sitting down right next to us, and so the first person in this example would definitely feel violated. The person would then try to evaluate what this violation means, and try to determine if it is good or bad. This can be influenced by the individual characteristics of the stranger - if the stranger is someone the first person finds attractive, for instance, he or she might be more likely to interpret the violation more positively, or at least be more tolerant of it than if the stranger were someone the first person found unattractive or even dangerous-looking.