Uncertainty is just what it sounds like: not knowing. It’s that state of limbo when you’re waiting to find out if you got the job, if the biopsy is negative, if you’re pregnant or not. It’s not knowing who’s the best candidate or which brand of car is likely to last the longest. It’s also not knowing the answers to those existential questions: Why am I here? How is everything going to turn out?
Most research on uncertainty has focused on its negative aspects, primarily anxiety. However, in the last couple of decades, researchers have begun to probe the potential benefits of uncertainty, explains Jessica Alquist, an experimental psychologist and researcher at Texas Tech University.
Alquist and Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Constructor University in Bremen, Germany, took a close look at the body of research in this area and found that learning to love uncertainty — or at least learning to deal with it better — can have some very important advantages. They published their findings this October in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.
