URT

The the concept of Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) is very simple to understand, when stranger first meet; the main goal is to reduce the uncertainty between them, during the encounter. Basically it comes down to how we address the basic process of how we get to know other people. According to communications professors Charles Berger and Richard J. Calabrese’s “Reducing uncertainty is particularly important in relationship development, so it is typical to find more uncertainty reduction behavior among people when they expect or want to develop a relationship than among people who expect or know they will not develop a relationship” (Berger, Calabrese, 1975). URT, applies under certain assumptions about interpersonal communications, like the idea that people experience uncertainty during new interpersonal encounters or that when people first meet their main concern they try to reduce this uncertainty and increase the level of predictability (Wikibooks, 2013). URT can be divided into three stages, the entry stage, the second stage and the final stage. Several axioms link relationship development and uncertainty. Two such axioms would be that there is an inverse relation between intimacy and uncertainty and there is a positive relation between reciprocity and uncertainty, each feeds upon the other in the communication process. Another important axiom is one that is self-expletory, the idea that people who have are more likely to be able to reduce uncertainty then people have a lot of differences do (Wikibooks, 2013).

Developed in 1975 by Berger and Calabrese, various clinical and institutional studies on URT have been conducted for business, academic and governmental purposes. One such study is a recent one that tested a model...

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...interesting yet unclear, the researcher’s focus purely on a communication style of analysis, which left out the physiological aspect in the study. The ultimate results made clear that the types of betrayal did have a big part in whether URT can be reestablished and the survival of the relationship.

Works Cited

Antheunis, Marjolijn L., Patti M. Valkenburg, and Jochen Peter. "Getting Acquainted through Social Network Sites: Testing a Model of Online Uncertainty Reduction and Social Attraction." Computers in Human Behavior (2009): n. pag. Print.

"Communication Theory/Uncertainty Reduction." - Wikibooks, Open Books for an Open World. N.p., n.d. Mon. 01 Dec. 2013.

Levine, T. R., Sang-Yeon, K., & Ferrara, M. (2010). Social Exchange, Uncertainty, and Communication Content as Factors Impacting the Relational Outcomes of Betrayal. Human Communication, 13(4), 303-318.