ABSTRACT
Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) has served as a cross-disciplinary framework for understanding the adjustments individuals make to create, maintain, or decrease social distance in interactions. We provide a systematic review of CAT by examining 149 articles (1973–2010) to identify categories and trends in the contexts of inquiry, sample characteristics, and locus of assessment. Next, we summarize a meta-analysis of a subset of these articles (k = 76, N = 18,382) to identify effect sizes for specific behaviors (e.g., nonaccommodation, reluctant accommodation) and correlates of these behaviors (e.g., quality of contact, relational solidarity). Theoretical and methodological considerations are discussed.
