Uncertainty as an anxiety cue at high and low levels of threat

Background and objectives: Intolerance of uncertainty and the overestimation of threat contribute to the maintenance of anxiety; however, the interaction between uncertainty and threat perception has not been examined empirically. The current study examined the extent to which explicitness of uncertainty is involved in perceptions of, and responses to, scenarios about threatening situations.

Methods: A series of systematically varied scenarios were used to examine whether manipulating uncertainty (implicit vs. explicit) and threat level (high vs. low) altered the perception of a situation as anxiety-inducing. Undergraduate participants (n = 373) responded to vignettes about common situations (e.g., taking an elevator) with ratings of anxiety and desire to perform a safety behavior.

Results: Results revealed that higher threat situations, and those in which uncertainty was made explicit, provoked higher ratings of anxiety and urge to perform a safety behavior. In addition, explicit uncertainty significantly increased anxiety and urge to perform a safety behavior at low, but not at high, levels of threat.

Limitations: Participants rated (via self-report) their hypothetical feelings as induced by vignettes, rather than actually experiencing these situations in vivo.

Conclusions: We found evidence for "uncertainty-based reasoning," in which an individual perceives a situation as more anxiety-provoking (and is more likely to have the urge to perform a safety behavior) when the uncertain aspects of a situation are obvious or explicit, than when such uncertainty is merely implied or tacit. Implications for the understanding of "uncertainty-based reasoning" are discussed.