Expectancy violations theory EVT is a theory of communication that analyzes how individuals respond to unanticipated violations of social norms and expectations. Burgoon in the late s and continued through the s and s as "nonverbal expectancy violations theory", based on Burgoon's research studying proxemics. 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. 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.
The EVT examines three main components in interpersonal communication situations: Expectancies, communicator reward valence, and violation valence. Expectancy refers to what an individual anticipates will happen in a given situation. Expectancies are primarily based upon social norms and specific characteristics and idiosyncrasies of the communicators.
Burgoon notes that people do not view others' behaviors as random. Rather, they have various expectations of how others should think and behave. EVT proposes that observation and interaction with others leads to expectancies. The two types of expectancies noted are predictive and prescriptive. If he were to ignore the dirty dishes one night, this might be seen as a predictive discrepancy.
Prescriptive expectations, on the other hand, are based upon "beliefs about what behaviors should be performed" and "what is needed and desired" Houser, Judee Burgoon and Jerold Hale categorize existing expectations into two types based on the process of interaction: pre-interactional and interactional expectations.
