When you enter a business, you have certain expectations of how the staff should communicate with you. You expect a friendly greeting, and if you’re at a Walmart or large grocery store, you might expect an announcement over the loudspeaker of any specials that day. But what if these businesses intentionally violated these expectations? How could these violations of expectation help make them more approachable?

For example, what if you were greeted overly enthusiastically with a much warmer welcoming than you’d expect like Jeremiah Murrill’s greetings when he’s working as a drive-thru greeter at his Chick-fil-A in Wilmington, North Carolina?

In this video Murrill gives his customer unbelievable service, paying attention to the minute details and ensuring the customers that he appreciates their presence. After getting over the paragon of humanity we see in Murrill, think about how you would feel being greeted that way on your next guilt trip to a fast-food place. Your expectations would be violated, and these violations would leave you pleasantly surprised. A violation of your expectations isn’t always positive though. I’m sure we’ve all had encounters where we’ve seen a person who is just not yet fit enough to do a job. These broken expectations of course lead to disappointment.

Judee Burgoon’s Expectancy Violations Theory (EVT) explains the phenomenon of how we behave when our expectations are violated. Our expectations strongly influence how we interact with others. If these expectations are violated, we become triggered with a reaction to this violation.

If a violation is positive, we tend to reward the violator. We praise Murrill for his upstanding customer service and want to inconvenience him as little as possible. This is what EVT essentially explains, and applying this theory in the real world can make you more likable. If you own a business, violating expectations could make the business more approachable.

How do I violate the expectations people have of me?

The answer seems simple. If you’re shy, stop being shy. If you’re loud, start appreciating silence a little more. But the answer is a bit more nuanced than that. People may start to think there’s something wrong with you if you were to pull a 180 out of nowhere. What you need is more of a 180, pause, and bring it back to a full 360 to get the positive feedback you’re seeking. Think about how we communicate. We communicate verbally, nonverbally, and I’ll add digitally to that list; you may have also heard that 93 percent of our communication is nonverbal. 

Nonverbal Expectancy Violations 

Nonverbal communication includes personal space (proxemics), artifacts, eye contact, body movement (kinesics), and touch, just to list a few. 

People generally don’t like their personal space breached, and the encroachment of personal space is influenced by the relationship one has with another. You’d give a loved one a lot more access to your personal space than a stranger. While we pull ahead through this pandemic, it’s hard to say how to violate expectations of personal space and touch to your advantage because people are more sensitive to their personal space as they should be. 

Artifactual communication is probably one of the most clever forms of communication you could use. An artifact is just a physical or digital tangible thing you own. What you own (or what you don’t own) is a direct representation of your values and beliefs. A jersey of a favorite football team says a lot about a person. The clothes and jewelry people put on themselves also communicate how they want people to perceive them. What makes artifactual communication so clever is that it can be subtle and requires little effort; just buy or create something that represents you and present it to the world as an artifact that’s yours.

So how could you positively violate the expectations people have of your artifactual communication? Think about what really represents who you are and have it communicated in an unexpected manner as part of the artifacts you own. If you love to cook, create a cooking social media account no one saw coming from you. Love animals? Adopt a dog from a local shelter. A great business example of an expectancy violation of artifactual communication is the changing of company logos to black in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. No one expected this of them, but it had the positive effect of spreading awareness of a movement so salient at the moment. 

Verbal Expectancy Violations

Verbal expectancy violations are less subtle than nonverbal ones. How would you react if someone started publicly screaming the lyrics of Justin Bieber’s Baby? Would you think it’s funny? Annoying? Odd? 

A perfect visual of verbal expectancy violation at work can be seen in QPark’s series of pranks where he goes out in public and starts screaming the lyrics of songs as if that were a normal thing to do. I find it hilarious, but you could see that the reactions on everyone’s faces vary from disgust to satisfying amusement. This is one of him singing those Justin Bieber lyrics.

How can you violate people’s expectations of what they expect you to say? Saying something out of character rarely goes unnoticed, so while you have people’s attention, be sure to direct it for a positive reaction. Murrill’s greeting is a great example of a verbal expectancy violation, but he’s already in character. The expectancy violation happens because people don’t expect such enthusiasm from someone greeting them at a fast-food place. They’re just ordering food — nothing special about that. 

But that is exactly what you could be doing when intentionally violating expectations; make every moment grand and special. What if instead of asking someone the mundane, “How are you?”, you ask them “How are you being?” It’s weird, but it gets their attention. You’ll get questioned, and some may take it oddly, but it’s a rather harmless example. Standing out is easy; the hard part is having the courage to add more nuance to your character.

Start slow; keep it simple.

Keep in mind that other than your communication style, there are other variables involved in how people perceive you. An individual’s perception can be influenced by culture, relationships, beliefs, and values. But if you understand what people expect, you can start to violate these expectations in a positive manner. These violations will follow a trigger response, and if it’s positive, the feedback will ultimately make you more influential as you will be rewarded for taking them out of their comfort zones. Nonverbal communication makes up 93 percent of our communication, so keep this in mind when violating expectations.

In any aspect of your life, you may want to stand out. If you’re being interviewed for a job, you want to tell those unique stories people wouldn’t expect of you. We all have those stories we tell that make us stand out. If you don’t think so, dig a little deeper or start creating those unexpected memories. I got my wife and myself stuck on a small sailboat in the middle of the ocean because I wasn’t paying attention to the lesson before taking off. (We were later rescued). It probably makes me look incompetent, but it stands out as an unexpected story, and admittedly we could laugh about it now. You too can practice violating people’s expectations for a positive response and make you or your business more approachable.