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Introduction

- Uncertainty is not great; it makes people angry, depressed, stressed, eat more, hoard supplies, and be less generous (David et al., 2021; Hamama-Raz et al., 2021; Rauwolf et al., 2021; Smith, 2015; Wu et al., 2021).

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- Trying to avoid uncertain situations is natural and common (Anselme, 2018; Noussair et al., 2013), but times of uncertainty are inevitable! What can we do?

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- Being transparent in uncertain times causes people to work harder

(Brandes & Darai, 2017).

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- Finding meaning in the uncertainty and focusing on what you can gain

(not lose) makes it less painful (Durodié, 2020; Molden & Higgins, 2004).

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- Clinging to your identity (“hanging tough”) and what you know is true

can help (Skakni et al., 2017).

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- Crowe and Higgins (1997) theorized two regulatory modes: assessing

(“do it right”) and locomoting (“just do it”). Locomotors have better control of time and are less afraid of decisions, better at forgiving themselves,

more mindful, and happier than assessors (Amato et al., 2014; Chen et al., 2018; Giacomantonio et al., 2020; Pierro et al., 2021).

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- Regulatory modes and uncertainty have yet to be researched together. Could locomoting help reduce the negative effects of uncertainty?

Method

Participants & Procedure

149 undergraduate students (from St. Mary’s College of Maryland) took an online study. Ages ranged from 16 to 36 years old (M=20.02, SD=2.20), and included 29 men, 90 women, and 19 non-binary individuals. The sample was 71.8% White, 6.7% Black, 6.7% Multiracial, and 5.4% Asian.

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Measures

- The Regulatory Mode Questionnaire (Kruglanski et al., 2000) measured locomotion and assessment levels by agreement with 30 statements.

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- The Uncertainty Response Scale (Greco & Roger, 2001) measured level of comfort with uncertainty by agreement with 48 statements.

(3 Subscales: Emotional, Cognitive, and Desire for Change)

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- Agreement with 13 researcher-made statements measured participant levels of current life uncertainty.

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- For the Scrambled Sentence Task for Future Time Orientation (Biondolillo & Epstein, 2021) participants formed sentences out of 25 scrambled sets of words to measure if they were present or future focused.

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- The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Hills & Argyle, 2002) measured current overall happiness by agreement with 29 statements.

Conclusions

- Although none of the moderation analyses were significant, there is still some evidence for locomoting as a method to help with uncertainty.

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- Happiness was negatively correlated with assessment and most

uncertainty variables, and the opposite was true with locomotion.

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- Locomotion may not change uncertainty’s effects, but if we are

happier to begin with, maybe it won’t matter as much!

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- When I categorized participants as either locomotors or assessors, this

dichotomous variable did significantly moderate the relationship

between emotional uncertainty and happiness (but no others).

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- Strengths: reliable measures that looked at uncertainty in many ways, adequate sample size

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- Limitations: generalizability of sample, long online study (roughly 18 minutes), some participants were confused by scrambled sentence task

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- Future research should be an experiment! Do locomotors handle small-

stakes uncertainty better than assessors? Maybe locomoting interventions (“it’s good enough”) could help people too.

Not Sure Yet: Regulatory Modes & Dealing with Uncertainty

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Drew Sonnenberg, B.S., & Jennifer J. Tickle, Ph.D.

Department of Psychology, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

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Amato, C., Pierro, A., Chirumbolo, A., & Pica, G. (2014). Regulatory modes and time management: How locomotors and assessors plan and perceive time. International Journal of Psychology, 49(3), 192–199. doi:10.1002/ijop.12047

Anselme, P. (2018). Uncertainty processing in bees exposed to free choices: Lessons from vertebrates. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(6), 2024–2036. https://doi-org.proxy-sm.researchport.umd.edu/10.3758/s13423-018-1441-x

Biondolillo, M. & Epstein, L. (2021). Constructing a performance measure of future time orientation. Journal of Personality Assessment, 103(2), 278-288. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2019.1705843 

Brandes, L., & Darai, D. (2017). The value and motivating mechanism of transparency in organizations. European Economic Review, 98, 189-198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2017.06.014.

Chen, C. Y., Rossignac-Milon, M., & Higgins, E. T. (2018). Feeling distressed from making decisions: Assessors’ need to be right. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(4), 743–761. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000181.supp

Crowe, E., & Higgins, E. T. (1997). Regulatory focus and strategic inclinations: Promotion and prevention in decision-making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 69(2), 117–132. https://doi-org.proxy-sm.researchport.umd.edu/10.1006/obhd.1996.2675

David, J., Visvalingam, S., & Norberg, M. M. (2021). Why did all the toilet paper disappear? Distinguishing between panic buying and hoarding during COVID-19. Psychiatry Research, 303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114062

Durodié, B. (2020). Handling uncertainty and ambiguity in the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(S1), S61–S62. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000713

Giacomantonio, M., De Cristofaro, V., Panno, A., Pellegrini, V., Salvati, M., & Leone, L. (2020). The mindful way out of materialism: Mindfulness mediates the association between regulatory modes and materialism. Current Psychology: A Journal for Diverse Perspectives on Diverse Psychological Issues. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00850-w

Greco, V., & Roger, D. (2001). Coping with uncertainty: The construction and validation of a new measure. Personality and Individual Differences, 31(4), 519–534. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(00)00156-2

Hamama-Raz, Y., Goodwin, R., Leshem, E., & Ben-Ezra, M. (2021). Intolerance of uncertainty and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of anger as a moderator. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 138, 50–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.03.032

Hayes, A. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. Guilford Press.

Hills, P., & Argyle, M. (2002). The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire: A compact scale for the measurement of psychological well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 33(7), 1071-1082. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(01)00213-6

Kruglanski, A. W., Thompson, E. P., Higgins, E. T., Atash, M. N., Pierro, A., Shah, J. Y., et al. (2000). To "do the right thing" or to "just do it": Locomotion and assessment as distinct self-regulatory imperatives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 793-815. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.793

Molden, D. C., & Higgins, E. T. (2004). Categorization under uncertainty: Resolving vagueness and ambiguity with eager versus vigilant strategies. Social Cognition, 22(2), 248–277. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.22.2.248.35461

Noussair, C. N., Trautmann, S. T., van de Kuilen, G., & Vellekoop, N. (2013). Risk aversion and religion. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 47(2), 165–183. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-013-9174-8

Pierro, A., Pica, G., Dentale, F., Gelfand, M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2021). The unique role of regulatory mode orientations in implicit and explicit self-forgiveness. Social Psychology, 52(1), 36–50. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000433

Rauwolf, P., Millard, S. K., Wong, N., Witt, A., Davies, T. J., Cahill, A. M., Madden, G. J., Parkinson, J. A., & Rogers, R. D. (2021). “Just not knowing” can make life sweeter (and saltier): Reward uncertainty alters the sensory experience and consumption of palatable food and drinks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://doi-org.proxy-sm.researchport.umd.edu/10.1037/xge0001029.supp 

Skakni, I., Calatrava Moreno, M. del C., Seuba, M. C., & McAlpine, L. (2019). Hanging tough: Post-PhD researchers dealing with career uncertainty. Higher Education Research & Development, 38(7), 1489–1503. https://doi-org.proxy-sm.researchport.umd.edu/10.1080/07294360.2019.1657806

Smith, P. B. (2015). To lend helping hands: In-group favoritism, uncertainty avoidance, and the national frequency of pro-social behaviors. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 46(6), 759–771. https://doi-org.proxy-sm.researchport.umd.edu/10.1177/0022022115585141

Wu, D., Yang, T., Hall, D. L., Jiao, G., Huang, L., & Jiao, C. (2021). COVID-19 uncertainty and sleep: The roles of perceived stress and intolerance of uncertainty during the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak. BMC Psychiatry, 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03310-2�

References

Hypotheses

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Uncertainty will negatively predict happiness, and one’s regulatory mode level will moderate the relationship, such that locomoting makes the effect weaker and assessing makes it stronger. (Note: desire for change will be positive since it is the opposite of avoiding uncertainty.) Also, locomotion will positively correlate with future thinking.

Results

To test my first hypothesis,

I ran 8 moderation analyses

using the PROCESS macro

for SPSS (Hayes, 2013).

That is, two for each of

the uncertainty variables,

one testing the moderating

effect of locomotion and the other with assessment. Uncertainty, assessing, and locomoting were often significantly associated with the outcomes, but there were no significant moderations (see Table 1).�

As I hypothesized, there was a significant, positive correlation between locomotion level and future thinking, r(139)=.261, p=.002. As exploratory research, I also examined the correlations between all the variables (see Table 2). Many indicated relationships between assessing and unhappiness, and unhappiness and uncertainty.

Table 1

Results of the Moderation Analyses

Note. For both tables: * indicates p<.05 and ** indicates p<.005

Table 2

Correlations of all Variables

As my research suggests, uncertainty is the worst. And the true solution:

to have Dr. Jennifer Tickle as your mentor. I’d like to thank her for her constant support, guidance, patience, and kindness during this research project and throughout my entire college career. I’d be lost without her.

Acknowledgement

B) Regulatory Mode Level

A) Uncertainty

C) Happiness