This is exactly the kind of problem ChatGPT is good at solving. Just ask it and you will get theories. I asked and it gave a list, I think he talked about uncertainty reduction theory since the other things ChatGPT listed didn't make sense in this context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_reduction_theory

Edit: Not sure if that response is really correct, but at least it is a tractable way to try to approach this. ChatGPT let you fuzzy match words or theories much better than Google, and then you have things you can Google.