Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory
Inspired by Berger's Theory, the late California State, Fullerton, communication professor William Gudykunst began to apply some of the axioms and theorems of Uncertainty Reduction Theory to intercultural settings. Despite their common axiomatic format and parallel focus on the meeting of strangers, Gudykunst's Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory (AUM) differs from Berger's Uncertainty Reduction Theory in several significant ways. First, AUM asserts that people do not always try to reduce uncertainty. When uncertainty allows people to maintain positive predicted outcome values, they may choose to manage their information intake such that they balance their level of uncertainty. Second, AUM claims that people experience uncertainty differently in different situations. People must evaluate whether a particular instance of uncertainty is stressful, and if so, what resources are available.
Read more about this topic: Uncertainty Reduction Theory
Famous quotes containing the words anxiety, uncertainty, management and/or theory:
“To higher or lower ends, they [the majority of mankind] move too often with something of a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming, unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world, at its very sources.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“I think the worst thing this nation could do for humanity would be to leave any uncertainty as to our will, our purpose and our capacity to carry out our purpose.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
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—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)