Uncertainty Reduction Theory

The best example of Uncertainty Reduction Theory that I can think of is my first week as a student at Kent where I was forced to develop a relationship with someone I had never met before because I had a randomly assigned roommate. We both were very motivated to reduce uncertainty because we were going to be living together all year and wanted to be comfortable with each other quickly. We both had a high incentive value for one another because, again, we had to live together all year so it was important that we got along. We were forced to deal with the uncertainty interactively. Axioms one, three and six particularly applied to our situation because once we talked we were more certain that we could live together. At the beginning uncertainty was very high and so was our information seeking behavior, for the first week we did very little but ask questions about each other. Axiom six was especially accurate in our situation because once we realized that we both played sports and had a lot in common our uncertainty levels went way down and we were comfortable with each other.