D Lawrence Kincaid. Encyclopedia of Communication Theory. Editor: Stephen W Littlejohn & Karen A Foss. Sage Publications, 2009.
The convergence theory of communication was developed in 1979 by D. Lawrence Kincaid to provide a general model of communication that would overcome the criticisms and shortcomings of prevailing models, especially information transmission models such as the one used in Shannon and Weaver’s mathematical theory of communication. The model represented communication as (a) a process rather than a single action; (b) sharing or exchange of information rather than one-way transmission; (c) two or more participants in dialogue; (d) a means to clarify the confusion between information, knowledge, messages, symbols, and meaning; and (e) a self-correcting feedback process, defined dynamically as a diminishing series of corrections that enable communicators to converge on a goal. The theoretical implications of the convergence model became readily apparent, leading to theoretical propositions that could be tested empirically. It also became apparent that convergence, the general principle underlying the model, is central to many specific theories found in the field of communication.
Convergence is often mistakenly equated with consensus. Convergence is movement toward one point, toward another communicator, toward a common interest, and toward greater uniformity, never quite reaching that point. It is assumed, for example, that no two people can ever reach the same meaning for information, only a greater degree of similarity. In communication, the goal of this feedback process is mutual understanding, a reduction in the set of all possible individual understandings to a more limited one that is shared.
The Convergence Model
The latest version of the convergence model depicts a cyclical, iterative process involving at least two participants. Participants are connected by sharing the same information with one another. Information, lying at the central core of the model, is physical—something endowed with form. Sound waves created by the vocal chords, text messages on paper or sand, patterns on a television monitor, tone of voice, body language and position, and so forth are physical phenomena and hence potentially sources of information for communication. Limiting the concept of information to its physical manifestation makes it possible to treat it as the means by which thoughts and meaning are expressed and shared with others. Thoughts and meaning are defined purely as cognitive phenomena, which are psychological. The psychological realities toward which communicators converge consist of perceptions, interpretations, understandings, and beliefs. Emotional responses to information can affect each one of these cognitive processes. The relationship formed between participants by sharing information is social. Information is created and/or shared by the actions of two or more participants, groups, organizations, or cultures engaged in intergroup, inter-organizational, and intercultural communication. The collective action of individuals, including the coordinated actions required for communication itself, is also a source of information.
Power—the capacity to exercise control over others—is not an inherent part of communication per se but rather an attribute of the relationship between participants. To have an effect on communication, power must first be made apparent by means of information. Physical size, posture, tone of voice, clothing, titles, signs of wealth, and so forth provide information about the respective power of each participant. Power can also be communicated by overt threats of positive and negative sanctions, and ultimately by physical action (force) itself. Information that reflects power can also induce an emotional response, such as respect or fear, which in turn is expected to influence the communication process, increasing the likelihood that the position of the one with more power will be accepted.
In 2002, Kincaid introduced an extended model that allowed for divergence and conflict as well as convergence and cooperation. Communication as convergence or divergence consists of six phases: (1) a scene-setting phase that creates an informationally closed system for dialogue; (2) a buildup phase leading to final positions taken within a common frame of reference (mutual understanding); and (3) a resolution phase, in which participants mutually agree on a common position they trust each other to implement. Mutual understanding helps to ensure each participant’s trustworthiness, but if flaws are revealed in the resolution stage, mistrust can arise and throw participants back into a new buildup phase with an increased possibility of (4) a climax phase, when emotion and reason do not lead to changes in position and mutual understanding, leading to (5) a conflict phase, in which neither participant will change and hence must resort to their threatened fallback positions. In the final (6) resolution phase, either cooperation or conflict is implemented. If participants agree on a common position that they can trust each other to implement, then the outcome will be cooperation.
Following this new model, communication is defined as a process in which two or more participants share information and converge toward a state of greater mutual understanding and agreement leading to cooperation or, as explained later in this entry, diverge toward a state of incompatible viewpoints and disagreement, leading to conflict. Cooperation requires some minimal level of mutual understanding and agreement. Even when conflict occurs, communication has still created a state of greater mutual understanding of each participant’s point of view.
Convergence Theory at the Aggregate Level of Analysis
The most important principle of semantics is that there is no one-to-one correspondence between symbolic information and its meaning. If that were the case, a new symbol would be required for every different circumstance in which communication occurs. There are no perfectly equivalent circumstances, only variety. Meaning is possible because of variation, and that variation includes silence and the nonoccurrence of other symbols (e.g., “no” instead of “yes” or “maybe”). This semantic principle implies that information is a physical difference (pattern) that affects uncertainty in a situation in which a choice exists among a set of alternatives. When uncertainty is too high to permit one to decide (interpret or understand), then additional information is sought. This feedback process reduces the initial levels of uncertainty regarding each participant’s interpretation and understanding, leading to an increased level of mutual understanding.
When the convergence model is applied at the aggregate level of analysis to groups, organizations, and cultures, then theoretical propositions can be proposed that use formulas for statistical averages and variances. Here the theory predicts that when messages constructed with multiple concepts are shared, the average position of each concept will converge on the statistical center. Thus, the association of concepts in a message leads to the mutual convergence of all concepts toward one another. The average position of a set of measured concepts of two or more local subcultures that share information is expected to converge over time toward a global mean. This hypothesis was tested by measuring the average difference in the multidimensional space of Eastern and Western cultural values (e.g., individual freedom, saving face, happiness, success) of Korean immigrants who had lived in Hawaii from 1 to 15 years. During this period, a statistical measure of meaning of successive Korean immigrant cohorts converged toward that of the host culture in the form of damped harmonic motion, which is a statistical concept related to changes in variation. The results were also expressed mathematically as a convergence toward a state of greater uniformity (less diversity) of values, as measured by the reduction in the statistical variance.
This work led to the following two complementary convergence theorems for the aggregate level of analysis of communication in social networks, groups, organizations, and subcultures in a population:
Theorem 1: In a relatively closed social system in which communication among members is unrestricted, the system as a whole will tend to converge over time toward a state of greater cultural uniformity.
Theorem 2: In a relatively closed social system in which communication among members is restricted, the system as a whole will tend to diverge over time toward a state of greater cultural diversity.
Homogeneity of information leads to uniformity of belief and behavior; heterogeneity leads to diversity. For initially diverse subgroups who share information within a relatively bounded social system, the statistical variance around the mean of a continuous measure is expected to decrease over time, as the Korean immigrant case confirmed. If a boundary is imposed between two groups (restricting information sharing), then the variance of the system as a whole is expected to increase over time (toward greater diversity) and simultaneously decrease within each subculture around its local mean. Boundaries can be created by the lack of interpersonal contact (social network clustering), by lack of a common language, by the use of different channels of mass media, and by geographical barriers. Conversely, with less restricted information sharing, diversity decreases over time (hence, uniformity increases).
In 1983, before the theorems were formally proposed, Everett Rogers and Kincaid measured the diversity of contraceptive behavior among women in 24 Korean villages. Because contraceptive practice is a discrete behavior, it was possible to calculate the percentage of adoption of each contraceptive method within the relatively bounded social networks of each village and then compute the average degree of diversity-uniformity. Surprisingly, the most popular method of birth control varied across the 24 villages: Some were predominantly oral-pill villages, others IUD villages, others condom villages, and so forth. In other words, the distribution of behavior within each village’s social network appeared as if it had been a collective decision rather than the sum of many individual choices. The average uniformity-diversity was positively correlated with the degree of interconnectedness of the social networks within the village, a measure of the degree of restriction of information flow and absence of bounded clusters. Villages with less connected communication networks had a flatter, more diverse distribution of behavior; those with more densely connected networks had a narrower, more uniform distribution, which is characteristic of a prevailing social norm.
Bounded Normative Influence
The two convergence theorems are valid because of the nature of information processing and the role played by boundaries. When the boundary of a group expands to include new members with different points of view, diversity increases. When people who disagree leave, uniformity among those who remain automatically increases. At the same time, the group becomes more diverse with respect to outsiders. This convergence process is enhanced by bounded normative influence—the tendency of social norms to influence behavior within relatively bounded local subgroups of a social system rather than in the system as a whole. This cultural and social network principle resolves the paradox of how innovation (a new minority position) can survive the social pressure of the majority and eventually grow to become the new majority: subgroups insulate themselves by forming boundaries within which they are the majority, and they then expand by recruiting new members from the outside.
Bounded normative influence is evident in Gerry Mackie’s explanation of how the deeply embedded social norm of women’s foot binding in China was totally overcome in one generation at the beginning of the 19th century by the organization of cohesive, local societies in which families pledged to raise girls with natural feet and have their sons marry only girls with natural feet. In a recent network analysis of the 30-year decline of smoking in the United States, Nickolas Christakis and James Fowler discovered that while smoking declined overall, the size of clusters of those who continued to smoke remained the same across time (appearing progressively in the periphery of social networks), suggesting that clusters of connected people were quitting together. In their recent book The Big Sort, Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing described the profound ideological clustering and polarization that has been taking place in the United States over the past 30 years as a result of geographical mobility to places of like-minded people, a voluntary narrowing of exposure to cable television channels and Internet sites, and a growing unwillingness of people to be exposed to contrary points of view. All three societal changes can be explained by—and could have been predicted by—the two basic theorems of the convergence theory of communication.