Anxiety/uncertainty management

Anxiety/Uncertainty Management (AUM) theory was introduced by Dr. William B. Gudykunst to define how humans effectively communicate based on their balance of anxiety and uncertainty in social situations.^[1] Gudkykunst believed that in order for successful intercultural communication a reduction in anxiety/uncertainty must occur. This is assuming that one person within the intercultural encounter is a stranger. AUM is a theory based on the Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) which was introduced by Berger and Calabrese in 1974.^[2][3] 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.^[4] 
Anxiety for the purposes of anxiety/uncertainty management can be described as an apprehension based on the fear of negative consequences. It is more prevalent in intergroup relations because there is an added fear of appearing prejudiced when dealing with an outgroup. Similar to uncertainty, Gudykunst postulates that effective communication relies on managing anxiety between minimum and maximum thresholds. Once we reach our upper limit for anxiety, virtually all of our attention focuses on its source and not on effective communication. The concept of managing levels anxiety can be compared to managing eustress and distress to achieve optimum performance. The positive benefit of the optimum amount of anxiety is trust, or "confidence that one will find what is desired from another rather than what is feared" ^[10] The negative consequence is obviously avoidance. If we are overcome by anxiety we will simply choose not to communicate.From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia