I'm talking today to Chuck Berger. Chuck is
Professor of Communication at University of
California-Davis and is the creator of Uncertainty
Reduction Theory, in my mind the first empirical
theory that came from someone trained in the
field of communication. Frame it for us. What
is Uncertainty Reduction Theory?
Uncertainty Reduction Theory talks about the
struggle in a sense that people have in their
everyday lives in adapting to an ever-changing
world. That is, we live in a physical world
that is in a constant state of change. We
live in a social world that is in a constant
state of change. The problem for all of us
is that, if we're going to act in ways that
will achieve our desired goals – that is,
we'll get what we want – we have to be able
to anticipate, to be able to predict what
the physical world is going to do and what
the people in it are going to do.
This is a social survival skill.
Absolutely. And it's something that's ongoing;
it's ongoing in the sense that, if you are
willing to buy the proposition – and I think
you have to be – that the physical and the
social worlds are in a constant state of change,
the culture is in a constant state of change,
then all of us have to track those changes,
and not just in society at large but with
people we may think we know well.
The picture I'm getting in my mind as you're
talking, Chuck, is either as a sort of amateur
sleuth or detective, or maybe putting together
a puzzle where some of the pieces are missing
and almost searching under the table for missing
pieces to find out what this person is like.
Now social constructionists would say, "no,
you don't find out what they're like; you
jointly create the relationship;" that it's
not a matter of finding something, but it's
a matter of constructing something.
Well, if you take argument seriously, it's
a total amnesia model. It means that, when
I come to a new relationship, I'm a tabula
rasa, right? And then I interact with this
person and we co-construct a relationship.
And that clearly can't be the case. That ignores
the fact that human beings have memory and
we're loaded up with experience. We like to
believe that experience teaches us something.
So, we're not neutral; and, so, that extreme
notion that somehow we "co-negotiate" some
kind of relation – I think that goes on,
but it goes on against a backdrop of a whole
lot of knowledge we have accumulated about
people, about how people relate to each other,
how people interact with each other, what's
appropriate, what's not appropriate, and so
on.
This theory came out in the mid-seventies,
and you stated it in terms of axioms. This
was a time in the field where we were trying
to be more scientific – or many of us were
– and axioms are self-evident truths. If
you were crafting a theory today, would you
put it in the form of axioms?
Sure. Here's the advantage of using a very
formally-stated theory like that. And that
is it makes it very clear what your predictions
are. In other words, if people want to do
research, test the theory out, they know exactly
what the relationships are that ...
There's no wiggle room.
There's no wiggle room. But I think part of
the use of ambiguity in theory – if you
want to say purposeful uncertainty creation,
and the creation of theory – is to hedge
against the potential of being wrong. And
you can't take that attitude and do social
science well, or any kind of science well.
You've got to be willing to risk being wrong.
You've crafted these theorems; they logically
follow from the axioms...
(Berger: Right.)
Some are fairly obvious. We like people that
are similar to us. As the similarity goes
up, so does attraction. The field has known
this for a long time.
But there are other theorems, you know, that
I think really suggested some unique kind
of relationships. Like, for example, with
you talk about information seeking and its
relationship to attraction or something like
that, I don't know of anybody yet, for example,
who's tested the theorem that talks about
the relationship between information seeking
on the one hand and attraction. But that would
be unique; that's something, as far as I know,
that no one's still looked at.
And the theorem said what relationship?
Well, as attraction goes up, you would tend
to, I believe, as fewer questions or seek
less information. We don't need to.
And, of course, people say, "no, that's not
right;" but you're saying, "go test it."
Go see it. But it could be wrong.
In the last decade or a little more you've
worked a lot with cognitive plans that we
have for strategic communication: persuasion,
information seeking, a variety of things.
In general, most people have thought, "hey,
we're going or Chuck has gone off in a different direction."
Chuck thought Chuck had gone off in a different
direction. At the start, in 1985-86, I thought
this was a totally new direction of research,
I mean for me. I didn't even think of it in
terms of uncertainty reduction. And, so, I
was talking with someone several years after
that, maybe in the early 1990s; and I said,
"yeah, that uncertainty reduction work, I
haven't done too much thinking about that."
And they looked at me very strangely and said,
"I don't think that's true. I think you have
done a lot of thinking about that. In fact,
I see that this idea of planning is really
strongly related to uncertainty reduction."
I said, "well, how so?" The argument is simply
something like this: We all have mental plans
for achieving goals. We have mental representations
of goals and we have mental representations
of plans to reach goals. And, in fact, some
linguists have suggested that we understand
other people – the way we comprehend people,
their language when they speak to us – is
by inferring, guessing what their goals are
and what plans they are following. It's like
an uncertainty reduction exercise. Then we
know how to respond to that. Now I know what
you're up to, all right? And now I know what
your plan is to accomplish those goals. Okay,
now I can respond to that. If we don't know
that, we're in some difficulty. We may not
understand what the other person is doing.
