Conversations With Able-Bodied and Visibly Disabled Strangers An Adversarial Test of Predicted Outcome Value and Uncertainty Reduction Theories

Conversations with visibly disabled strangers entail unequivocally higher uncertainty and relatively more negative predicted outcome values compared to conversations with able-bodied strangers. Contrasting derivations from uncertainty reduction and predicted outcome value theories were tested by comparing observations associated with respondents’ separate conversations with able-bodied and visibly disabled partners. Four hypotheses were cast to favor predicted outcome value interpretations with respect to information seeking, three global features of the respondent's awareness of the partner's behavior, and the association of information seeking with nonverbal affiliative expressiveness and amount of verbal communication. Statistically significant differences in information seeking and awareness of the partner's behavior favored the predicted outcome value interpretation. Implications for predicted outcome value theory and interaction with visibly disabled conversational partners are discussed.