What is meant by uncertainty reduction?

The uncertainty reduction theory was developed by Charles ‘Chuck’ Berger. It states that people need to reduce uncertainty about other individuals by gaining information about them. For example, your friend, Sam, invites you to join her and her co-workers for dinner.

Which method is used for reducing uncertainty?

Strategies for reducing uncertainty People engage in passive, active, or interactive strategies to reduce uncertainty with others. Strategies as seeking information, focusing on primary goals, contingency planning, plan adaptation, accretive planning, and framing are often utilized by human communicators.

How does uncertainty reduction theory work?

The theory suggests that human beings are uncomfortable with uncertainty and seek the means to predict the trajectory of social interactions. In attempting to reduce that uncertainty, people tend to utilize passive, active, and interactive strategies to help predict and explain someone’s behavior during an interaction.

What are the three phases to the uncertainty reduction theory?

URT consists of three developmental stages—entry, personal, and exit—that explain how strangers communicate to reduce uncertainty about each other during initial encounters (Knobloch, 2015).

What is an assumption of uncertainty reduction theory?

The assumptions are that individuals feel uncertainty in interpersonal settings; uncertainty is an aversive state that produces cognitive stress; when individuals first meet their main concern is to reduce uncertainty or to increase predictability; interpersonal communication is a developmental process that happens in …

What are the 3 types of uncertainty?

We distinguish three basic forms of uncertainty—modal, empirical and normative—corresponding to the nature of the judgement that we can make about the prospects we face, or to the nature of the question we can ask about them.

How does information reduce uncertainty?

The greater the uncertainty, the greater the “Shannon entropy.” Shannon proposed that information reduces uncertainty and therefore reduces entropy. A typical example of this principle is flipping a two-sided coin. When tossing a coin, we are uncertain about the two possible outcomes.

What is nonverbal affiliative expressiveness?

Nonverbal affiliative expressiveness: A specific form of nonverbal communication in which people display positive feelings toward another person (for example, pleasant facial expressions, head nods, and hand and arm gestures).

What is Type A and Type B uncertainty?

Type A uncertainty is evaluated using statistical means. Type B uncertainty is evaluated using other than statistical means. It is all evaluated by statistical methods. Therefore, the difference is how the data is collected, not how it is evaluated. Type A uncertainty is collected from a series of observations.

What is first order uncertainty?

First Order Uncertainty: The uncertainty contributed by short-term instability of the process as viewed through the instrumentation. First Order Uncertainty includes both process instability and the random component of instrument error.

Why do we reduce uncertainty?

Uncertainty can make people avoid a situation or behavior (aversive state) and cause cognitive stress. Strangers want to reduce uncertainty/increase predictability in initial interaction.