Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory

The anxiety/uncertainty management (AUM) theory, developed by William B. Gudykunst, explains [Page 37]how strangers can practice communication effectiveness via the mindful management of anxiety and uncertainty levels of interaction. The root of the AUM theory was based on an integration of the uncertainty reduction theory of Charles Berger and the social identity theory of Henri Tajfel. AUM theory is one of the major intercultural communication theories that explains the antecedent, process, and outcome dimensions of intergroup (intercultural) and interpersonal communication effectiveness.

The fermentation stage of the AUM theory first appeared in 1985 with a strong emphasis on effective intergroup communication process. Several versions later, the first “official” version of the theory—labeled clearly as the AUM theory—appeared in 1993. The theory was intended to be a practical theory to improve the quality of intergroup and interpersonal relations. In a later rendition, in 1998, the AUM theory was extended to explain effective intercultural adjustment processes. The building-block concepts of the theory include strangers, anxiety, uncertainty, thresholds, mindfulness, cross-cultural variability, effective communication, and intercultural adjustment.

According to the basic premise of the AUM theory, when individuals encounter strangers or culturally dissimilar others, they often experience both anxiety and uncertainty. The concept of stranger is drawn from the sociological work of Georg Simmel, which held that a stranger can reflect both near and far qualities; nearness connotes physical closeness, and remoteness refers to dissimilar values, outlooks, or behaviors. From this stranger-in-group, figure-ground context, AUM theory emphasizes the notion that almost all initial interactions are both intergroup and interpersonal in nature and characterized by anxiety and uncertainty.

Anxiety refers to affective feelings such as uneasiness, awkwardness, confusion, stress, or apprehensiveness about what might occur in the encounter. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is a cognitive phenomenon and involves both predictive uncertainty and explanatory uncertainty. While predictive uncertainty refers to our inability to predict strangers' attitudes or behaviors, explanatory uncertainty refers to our inability to come up with a coherent explanation for strangers' unfamiliar behaviors. In addition, as individuals navigate across cultural boundaries, they have minimum and maximum thresholds for tolerating anxiety and uncertainty. Too much or too little anxiety or uncertainty hampers intercultural communication effectiveness.

For example, when emotional anxiety is too high, cultural strangers would tend to communicate on automatic pilot and interpret dissimilar others' behaviors using their own cultural frame of reference. However, when emotional anxiety is too low, they might act in a very indifferent or ethnocentric manner. Likewise, when cognitive uncertainty is too high, cultural strangers would not be able to accurately interpret each other's incoming verbal and nonverbal messages. When cognitive uncertainty is too low, cultural strangers might overrely on stereotypes to decode the intercultural interaction episode and make overgeneralized attributions.

The final version of the AUM-based effective communication theory has 47 axioms that deal with relationships among self-concept, motivation to interact, reaction to strangers, social categorization of strangers, situational processes, connections with strangers, ethical interactions, uncertainty management, anxiety management, mindfulness, and communication effectiveness. Two of the AUM axioms provide an illustration: