The Film Crash & Judee Burgoon's Expectancy Violations Theory

 Expectancy Violations Theory, (according to Judee Burgoon), sees communication as the exchange of information that is high in relational content and can be used to violate the expectations of another, who will perceive the exchange either positively or negatively depending on the liking between the two people. Expectancy Violations Theory attempts to explain people’s reactions to unexpected behavior. Expectancies are primarily based upon social norms and specific characteristics of the communicators. Violations of expectancies cause arousal and compel the recipient to initiate a series of cognitive appraisals of the violation. The theory proposes that expectancy will influence the outcome of the communication as positive or negative and predicts that positive violations increase the attraction of the violator and negative violations decrease the attraction of the violator. (1)

Crash is a 2004 American drama film co-written, produced, and directed by Paul Haggis. The film is about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles. A self-described "passion piece" for Haggis, Crash was inspired by a real life incident in which his Porsche was carjacked outside a video store on Wilshire Boulevard in 1991. It won three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing of 2005 at the78th Academy Awards. (2)

In this article I will look at a scene from the film Crash through the eyes of an Expectancy Violations Theorist. Specifically, looking at how violations of what the characters expected, or a violation of what was expected of them changed the outcome of the scene.   

Every person has certain things we expect (what we predict to occur not necessarily what is desired) from other people, in relation to our interactions with them. These expectations can be different with every person we interact with and even different between varying cultures we encounter. For example, if you see your significant other from across the room, what would you expect them to do? Now, what would you expect your best friend from high school to do in the same situation? What would you expect your mother to do? Some one you don’t like? What would you expect a stranger to do in that situation? With each different person we interact with, we expect different things from that interaction. It can be small expectations, such as the distance we foresee that person will stand from us when having a conversation, to big expectations of possible positive or negative physical interaction.  The Expectancy Violation Theory or EVT deals with those expectancies, where they come from, and the effect that takes place when a person deviates from them.

Set in Los Angeles, the film opens following a car accident involving detective, Graham Waters (Don Cheadle), Ria (Jennifer Esposito), his partner, and Kim Lee. As Ria and Kim Lee exchange racial insults, Waters gets out of the car and investigates the crime scene which had indirectly caused the accident after identifying himself as a detective to the officer in charge. Waters sees the victim's shoe lying on the ground and then stares at something off screen which horrifies him... (2)

The Chinese woman begins accusing the Hispanic woman (A detective), of speaking very poor English. She uses not only wrong structures and grammar, such as “you no see” or “she do this”, but also a strong Chinese accent with “the blake lights” for instance. The “crash” continues with the replies of the Hispanic inspector. Looking down on the Chinese lady, she exhibits her contempt by alternating a normal way of speaking with the police officer and addressing with a Chinese accent.

This scene is a subtle, but good example of Expectancy Violations. The first aspect I would like to point out is our personal space expectation. We all have a personal space expectation. Our “personal space” is the invisible, variable volume of space surrounding us that defines our preferred distance from others. The word “expectation” in the term comes into play because we all have a level of distance from one-another that we associate and expect particular people in particular situations to adhere too. The area people choose to locate themselves wiles interacting with us can ether confirm or deviate from that expected level of appropriate distance. 

According to proxemics, there are four levels of interpersonal distances.

Intimate distance: 0 to 18 inches

Personal distance: 18 inches to 4 feet

Social distance: 4 to 10 feet

Public distance: 10 feet to infinity

If someone locates themselves at a distance that is not appropriate to the relationship level we have associated with them, than that person will be deviating from our personal space expectations. As an example, Kim Lee (the Asian lady) deviated from Jennifer Esposito’s (the Hispanic lady) personal space expectations by encroaching on expected distance levels for the situation. If Kim Lee would have kept deviating further and moved herself to the hypothetical outer boundary of Jennifer Esposito’s Intimate distance, (number 1 in the four levels of distance, and the closest distance in relation to you) than Jennifer Esposito’s natural instinct of fight-or-fling would have kicked-in.

It is easy to acknowledge the existence of expectancies in our interactions with others. The simple scenario at the beginning of this text identified that. However, we must ask ourselves a harder question, how did these expectancies arise?

Judee Burgoon believes the reason we develop our expectancies is so we can gauge what a person will do, and she believes we do this by using three tools; Context, Relationship factors, and Communicator characteristics.  

           

            1. Context begins with cultural norms. Distances that are appropriate in some countries are not appropriate in others. Context also includes the setting of the conversation. Intuitively, a classroom environment dictates a greater speaking distance than would be appropriate for a private chat. You would not need to be three inches from my face if we were in a football field. (Unless the football field was full of screaming fans)

            

            2. Relationship factors include similarity, familiarity, liking, and relative status. For example, a police officer has a higher relative status when in uniform, as a teacher has I higher relative status when in the classroom. 

            3. Communicator characteristics include all of the age/sex/place-of-birth demographic facts asked for on application forms, but they also include personal features that may affect expectation even more—physical appearance, personality, and communication style.

The following is an excerpt from the Crash script, involving the aforementioned scene between Kim Lee, Jennifer Esposito and a Motorcycle Cop. (3)

     ↓

-MOTORCYCLE COP

Calm down, ma’am!

-KIM LEE

I am calm!

-MOTORCYCLE COP

I need to see your      registration and

insurance.

-KIM LEE

Why? Not my fault! Her fault!

She do this!

-RIA

(Approaching)

I do this?

-MOTORCYCLE COP

Ma'am, wait in your vehicle.

-KIM LEE

Stop in middle of street! Mexicans!

No know how to drive! She blake

too fast!

-RIA

I "blake" too fast?? Oh, sorry,

you no see my "blake lights?"

-MOTORCYCLE COP

Ma-am--

(CONTINUED)

-RIA

(To Kim Lee)

I blake when I see long line cars

stop in front of me. You see over

steering wheel, maybe you blake,

too.

-MOTORCYCLE COP

(To Ria)

Ma'am--

-KIM LEE

Crazy Mexican! I call immigration

on you! Look you do my car!

-RIA

(To cop)

Can you just write in your report

how shocked I am to have been hit

by an Asian driver?

-MOTORCYCLE COP

Ma'am--

-RIA

(Flashing badge)

It's not Ma'am, it's Detective.

-MOTORCYCLE COP

Oh, Christ.

If you notice, each woman has pre-conceived notions and expectancies about the other. We can deduce this because nether Kim or Ria (Jennifer Esposito) has actually inquired about the other or exchanged information through dialogue, yet both have an arsenal of insults being deployed. For example, Kim says something about Mexicans not knowing how to drive; she also threatens to call immigration on Ria, implying that Ria is in this country illegally. On the other hand Ria makes a comment about Kim not being able to see over the steering wheel, and a sarcastic statement about how shocked she was about being hit by an Asian driver, playing to the stereotype that Asians are short and cant drive. Even the motorcycle cop, judging by his final remark, seemed to have possible expectancies deviated about women being detectives.

Now, we are able to identify the certain expectations we have assigned to those around us and we even know the tools we use to develop those expectancies. But, what happens when a person does not conform, but deviates from our expectancies and to what extent do they deviate? Do we find that deviation pleasing or distressing? Regardless who does it; we have a positive or negative value we place on the deviation of our expectancies. That value is called the Violation Valence. Moreover, we attach a degree to which we like or dislike the violation valence. For example, do I like that the person deviated from what I was expecting them to do? Or do I really like that the person deviated from what I was expecting them to do? In contrast, do I hate it? Or do I really hate it?   

Ok, now that we have a term for the positive and negative value we place on expectancy violation, we need to know what it is called when we adjust our actions to meet their violation. This is called interaction adaptation; we do this, as a reaction, when another behavior doesn’t mesh with what’s needed, anticipated, or preferred. As an example, If Kim pointed a gun on Ria, than Ria would have to utilize interaction adaptation. Kim changed the scenario by changing her interaction, therefore, Ria has to adapt to that change.

Reciprocity is a strong human tendency to respond to another’s action with similar behavior. Using the same “gun” analogy, reciprocity would dictate that Ria would have a strong tendency to respond to Kim by pointing a gun back at Kim. However, what would happen if we go-against our tendency to respond to an action with similar behavior. Let’s say, instead of Ria pointing a gun back at Kim, she have Kim a hug. Would that change the dynamics of the situation?  I think it would. That is an example of Ria violating Kim’s expectancies to achieve a different outcome.  

Would Kim still shoot Ria? Could you shoot someone that was giving you a hug? I don’t know. However, I do know that expectancy violations theory, if used strategically, can be used to your benefit. Is it a law? No. It can not be predicted what someone will do or how someone will react to what you do to an exact science. But, if you know guidelines, or a general idea, than you can map-out a more developed plan going into a situation, and that is a lot better than going into a situation blindly.  

1.         ^ Burgoon, 1978; 1983; Burgoon & Hale, 1988; Burgoon & Jones, 1976

2.         ^Wikipedia contributors. "Crash (2004 film)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.     Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 21 Nov. 2010. Web. 26 Nov. 2010.

3.         ^CRASHstory byPaul Haggisscreenplay byPaul Haggis & Bobby Moresco Directed by Paul Haggis Excerpt from Final Production Draft Property of Bull's Eye Productions, all rights reserved. Producers: Cathy Schulman Bob Yari Don Cheadle Paul Haggis Mark Harris Bobby Moresco

The Matrix & Media Ecology

The pages that follow are an in-depth student analysis of the movie, The Matrix, and how that movie shows us concepts of communication and theory. Specifically, I would like to evaluate postmodernism and the ecology of media, pertaining to The Matrix.   

Media ecology was introduced in the 1960s by University of Toronto English professor Marshall McLuhan. The term, “Media” is generic for all human-invented technology that extends the range, speed, or channels of communication. McLuhan's most widely known work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), is a pioneering study in media theory. In it McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study—popularly quoted as "the medium is the message". (1)  

Neil Postman, (An American author, media theorist and cultural critic) looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival.

The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people.

An environment is, after all, a complex message system which imposes on human beings certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

It structures what we can see and say and, therefore, do. It assigns roles to us and insists on our playing them. It specifies what we are permitted to do and what we are not. Sometimes, as in the case of a courtroom, or classroom, or business office, the specifications are explicit and formal.

In the case of media environments (e.g., books, radio, film, television, etc.), the specifications are more often implicit and informal, half concealed by our assumption that what we are dealing with is not an environment but merely a machine.

Media ecology tries to make these specifications explicit.

It tries to find out what roles media force us to play, how media structure what we are seeing, why media make us feel and act as we do. (2)

By these two men’s definition, The Matrix is a great example of media ecology. Its message being the interaction we have with the machines (i.e. media) we have created and our concepts of control. Do we control our machines, or do they control us? Of course we control them, or do we? The following lines are dialog from a scene in The Matrix Reloaded. Every time you see the word, “machine” replace it with, “media” and when you see the words, “light, heat and air” replace them with “information, news and networking.”

Councillor Harmann: Down here, sometimes I think about all those people still plugged into the Matrix and when I look at these machines I... I can't help thinking that in a way... we are plugged into them.  Neo: But we control these machines; they don't control us.  Councillor Harmann: Of course not. How could they? The idea is pure nonsense. But... it does make one wonder... just... what is control?  Neo: If we wanted, we could shut these machines down.  Councillor Harmann: [Of] course. That's it. You hit it. That's control, isn't it? If we wanted we could smash them to bits. Although, if we did, we'd have to consider what would happen to our lights, our heat, our air...  Neo: So we need machines and they need us, is that your point, Councilor?  Councillor Harmann: No. No point. Old men like me don't bother with making points. There's no point.  Neo: Is that why there are no young men on the council?  Councillor Harmann: Good point. 

Neo: “Why don't you tell me what's on your mind, Councilor?”
Councilor Harmann: “There is so much in this world that I do not understand. See that machine? It has something to do with recycling our water supply. I have absolutely no idea how it works. But I do understand the reason for it to work. I have absolutely no idea how you are able to do some of the things you do, but I believe there's a reason for that as well. I only hope we understand that reason before it's too late.

The Matrix Reloaded is a 2003 American science fiction film and the second installment in The Matrix trilogy, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. The trilogy stared, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving. It was general release by Warner Bros.

I believe McLuhan and Postman would agree with Councilor Harmann. Resulting from media ecologies vast intertwining (or matrix) with our everyday life, it is near impossible to understand exactly how it works. From the moment we wake up, to the time we close our eyes at night, we are bombarded with media and its effect. Making it hard to distinguish where media stops and humanity starts. However, it is easy to understand the reason for it to work.

 Information, good or bad, is the message of the medium. From speech to written text to wire communication, radio, television, cell phones, and the internet-in-our-hand, our ways of communicating with each other is constantly changing, therefore; so is our environment and so are we. Postman expressed concerns about the coming age of computer technology. He questioned if we were yielding too easily to the “authority” of computation and the values of efficiency and quantification. He pondered whether the quest for technological progress was becoming increasingly more important than being humane.

According to Postman, a new technology always presents us with Faustian bargain—a potential deal with the devil. As Postman was fond of saying, “Technology giveth and technology taketh away… A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided.”

Postman’s media ecology approach asks, “What are the moral implications of this bargain?”

If the founders of The Matrix would have asked this question, I wonder if they would have gotten themselves into as much trouble. If they were to simply evaluate new technology on the scales of moral implications instead of on the scales of profit, would their world still be taken from them? If they would have asked, “What is the best thing this can bring us? What is the worst that can come of it?” Would they still have made the same mistakes?

Although, this is only a futuristic-movie, its fundamental and ethical questions still apply to us in modern day America. With each passing day technology is getting more-and-more advanced and so the moral evaluation and implications of this technology must become more-and-more prevalent. 

Works Cited

1.----1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; 1st Ed. McGraw Hill, NY; reissued MIT Press, 1994, with introduction by Lewis H. Lapham; reissued by Gingko Press, 2003 ISBN 1-58423-073-8

2.. —Neil Postman, “The Reformed English Curriculum.” in A.C. Eurich, ed., High School 1980: The Shape of the Future in American Secondary Education (1970).

Social Penetration Theory: The Graduate

Daniel Holland

Comm3300

Dr. Long.

Social Penetration Theory and, The Graduate

Mr. Braddock: What's the matter? The guests are all downstairs, Ben, waiting to see you.
Benjamin: Look, Dad, could you explain to them that I have to be alone for a while?
Mr. Braddock: These are all our good friends, Ben. Most of them have known you since, well, practically since you were born. What is it, Ben?
Benjamin: I'm just...
Mr. Braddock: Worried?                                      
Benjamin: Well...
Mr. Braddock: About what?
Benjamin: I guess about my future.
Mr. Braddock: What about it?
Benjamin: I don't know... I want it to be...
Mr. Braddock: To be what?
Benjamin: [looks at his father] ... Different.

This is an excerpt from one of the first scenes in The Graduate a 1967 American comedy-drama film directed by Mike Nichols, cinematography by Robert Surtees and starring Dustin Hoffman(as Ben Braddock) Among the cast are actors Anne Bancroft (as Mrs. Robinson) and Katharine Ross (as Elaine). I feel that this scene is a key example of one of  the movies recurring themes, Isolation, and how that relates to communication.

Social Penetration is the process of developing deeper intimacy with another person through mutual self-disclosure and other forms of vulnerability. I look at Benjamin in the beginning of this film, just back from college, crowded by people at his graduation party, and yet, it is clear that he feels isolated and alone. I wonder how the situation at the party would be different if he would simply communicate differently. I wonder how the situation at the house would look if he used the process of Social Penetration. I wounder how all of Benjamins relationships would have changed.  

Psychogists, Irwin Altman, and Dalmas Taylor, might have the answer to Benjamins problem through a social penetration process that explains how relational closeness develops. “They proposed that closeness occurs through a gradual process of self-disclosure, and closeness develops if the participants proceed in a gradual and orderly fashion from superficial to intimate levels of exchange as a function of both immediate and forecast outcomes. This psychological theory, as with many others, is applied in the context of interpersonal relationships such as communications.

Self-disclosure is the act of revealing more about ourselves, on both a conscious and an unconscious level. Altman and Taylor believe that only through opening one's self to the main route to social penetration - self-disclosure - by becoming vulnerable to another person can a close relationship develop. Vulnerability can be expressed in a variety of ways, including the giving of anything which is considered to be a personal possession.”1

According to Altman and Taylor, Benjamin feels alone because he is only exposing the bare minimum of himself. Altman and Taylor state, “Self-disclosure is referred to in terms of breadth and depth, the latter of which is described in units of layers. This analogy is used to describe the multilayer nature of personality. When one peels the outer skin from an onion, another skin is uncovered. When the second layer is removed, a third is exposed, and so forth.”1

Altman and Taylor compare people, their emotions, and self-image to an onion. Like an onion people have multiple layers. The outer layers in this analogy, which is accessible to anyone who wants to look, are the more superficial layers, containing the public self. “The public self revels things like preferences in clothes, food, and music”2. As you move inward, more vulnerable aspects of a person start to become exposed. Aspects like fears, fantasies, and goals. Until you reach the core of the onion analogy, ones concept of self. Griffin says this about the inner core, “The inner core is the unique private domain of individuals, which, although invisible to the rest of the world, has a profound impact on the areas of life which lie closer to the surface. The amount revealed can vary according to culture. ^2”

            There are 4 important stages to social penetration.

1. Orientation stage. Here, we play safe with small talk and simple, harmless clichés like ‘Life’s like that’, following standards of social desirability and norms of appropriateness.

2. Exploratory affective stage. We now start to reveal ourselves, expressing personal attitudes about moderate topics such as government and education. This may not be the whole truth as we are not yet comfortable to lay ourselves bare. We are still feeling our way forward. This is the stage of casual friendship, and many relationships do not go past this stage.

3. Affective stage. Now we start to talk about private and personal matters. We may use personal idioms. Criticism and arguments may arise. In romantic-type relationships there may be intimate touching and kissing at this stage.

4. Stable stage. The relationship now reaches a plateau in which personal things are shared and each can predict the emotional reactions of the other person.3.

 There are 5 key points of self disclosure. These help move along social penetration.

• Peripheral items are exchanged more frequently and sooner than private information.
• Self-disclosure is reciprocal, especially in the early stages of relationship development.
• Penetration is rapid at the start but slows down quickly as the tightly wrapped inner layers are reached.
• De-penetration is a gradual process of layer-by-layer withdrawal.
• Social Penetration draws heavily from Thibaut and Kelley's Social Exchange Theory

However, as they say, it takes two to tango.  Benjamin, and his family, must give a little, they both have to allow themselves to become more transparent, more vulnerable. Thereby gaining more trust and insight into where the other is coming from, what the other is feeling. They will have become closer through self-disclosure.

Although Benjamin and his family may never fully disclose every aspect of their lives to one another, or even agree on every issue, they will at least be more able to understand one-another.

Work Cited.

1.                           Taylor, D. & Altman, I. (1987). Communication in interpersonal relationships: Social penetration processes. Interpersonal processes: New directions in communication research. p.257-277.

2.                           Griffin, E. (2006). A first look at communication theory. (6th edition). New York: McGraw-Hill.

3.                            Petronio, S. (2002). boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure. SUNY