Anxiety/Uncertainty Management (AUM) theory is known as the high levels of anxiety one may experience as they come in contact with those of another culture. This concept was first introduced by William B. Gudykunst to further define how humans effectively communicate based on their anxiety and uncertainty in social situations. Gudykunst believed that in order for successful intercultural communication a reduction in anxiety/uncertainty must occur. This is assuming that the individuals within the intercultural encounter are strangers. AUM is a theory based on the Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) which was introduced by Berger and Calabrese in 1974. URT provides much of the initial framework for AUM, and much like other theories in the communication field AUM is a constantly developing theory, based on the observations of human behaviour in social situations.
Differences between URT/AUM and the introduction of anxiety
URT is based on human thought processes and their approach to social situations in which they have uncertainty. URT suggests that uncertainty stems from human attempts to "[proactively predict] the other's attitudes, values, feelings, beliefs and behaviors" during social encounters. Humans attempt to reduce their uncertainty in social encounters when there is a motivation to do so. URT highlights three core motivations in reducing this uncertainty: the human anticipates other social interaction at another point in time, the recipient has something the human needs or wants as a form of reward, and/or the recipient is acting in a strange or deviant way which is unexpected.
Berger identified 7 axioms (evident truths) and 21 theorems within URT (theoretical statements which are generally accepted, but are used to observe behaviours in need of more proof.) Because of these theorems, we have seen significant growth to the theory, leading to research into AUM. AUM uses the foundations of URT to formulate 47 axioms, with AUM integrating human anxiety management within social situations as well as their uncertainty management. AUM builds on URT's focus on individual or one-on-one communication, as the axioms and theorems focus on intercultural and intergroup communications.
AUM incorporates both the URT and the works of Stephan and Stephan on anxiety to expand URT to incorporate intergroup communications. AUM focuses on both anxiety and uncertainty reduction, highlighting the major difference between URT and AUM. The intended outcome of URT is simply to reduce uncertainty, whereas AUM's outcome is for cultural adaptation and not solely the reduction of uncertainty. The inherent difference is that managing anxiety is to maintain it between minimum and maximum thresholds along a spectrum, while reducing anxiety is unidirectional. This realization, along with the introduction of mindfulness as a factor of effective communication, led Gudykunst to finally designate an appropriate name for his research: Anxiety/Uncertainty Management theory (AUM).
Gudykunst assumed that at least one person in an intercultural encounter is a stranger. He argues that strangers undergo both anxiety and uncertainty; they do not feel secure and they are not sure how to behave. Gudykunst noted that strangers and in-group members experience some degree of anxiety and uncertainty in any new interpersonal situation, but when the encounter takes place between people of different cultures, strangers are hyperaware of cultural differences. They then tend to overestimate the effect of cultural identity on the behavior of people in an alien society, while blurring individual distinctions.
The purpose of the first iteration of AUM was to be a practical application with a high degree of utility. The format of AUM includes numerous axioms, which in turn converge on one another, moving in the direction of effective communication. (See Figure X). The specific number of axioms has varied over the last fifteen years according to updated research in the field of cross-cultural communication.
Scope of AUM
Communication theories commonly focus on 4 levels: individual, interpersonal, intergroup, and cultural.
• The individual level is the motivation for human communication, influencing the ways humans create and interpret messages (for example the need for group inclusion and self-concept support).
• The interpersonal level is the way the message is exchanged when humans are communicating as an individual (for example one-on-one communication, intimate relationships and social networks).
• The intergroup level is the exchange of messages when humans are communicating as a collective (for example social identities, collective self-esteem).