“In improv, we call it accept and build. So you accept your scene partner’s offer and you build upon it. And the worst thing of all to do is say no, but because no, but doesn’t get you anywhere.” – Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, University of Delaware psychologist
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No matter how carefully we control and organize our societies, companies and lives, reality is full of complex, emergent phenomena. People don’t do exactly what we expect them to. Plans don’t go as planned. As we solve one problem, we often find the solution has contributed to the emergence of a different problem. Sometimes we are surprised by unexpected good fortune.
Some of us are relatively comfortable with the emergent nature of reality, while some of us prefer to see everything go according to plan. Even those of us who are relatively open to uncertainty generally prefer that at least some elements of our lives be certain, and we sometimes go to great lengths to create the illusion of certainty, especially when things feel uncertain.
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Goldthwaite Young explains our reactions to uncertainty as movement along two continua, tolerance for ambiguity and need for cognition. Those with a high tolerance for ambiguity and a high need for cognition tend to welcome and may even magnify the uncertain elements in a relatively predictable situation; they find uncertainty inviting and exciting.
In contrast, those with a low tolerance for ambiguity and low need for cognition tend to prefer to know exactly what to expect; they find uncertainty stressful. They might even prefer a certain but negative outcome to an uncertain period followed by a positive outcome.
From the interview:
“People who have a high tolerance for ambiguity tend to be really comfortable with situations that are uncertain and unpredictable. They’re really okay with change. They don’t need a lot of routine in their world. They can be spontaneous and it doesn’t stress them out. And people who are high in need for closure are quite the opposite. They really prefer routine and order and structure and predictability in their lives, in their interactions, and in their sort of physical environments.”
“High need for cognition is something that comes to us from researchers named Cacioppo and Petty. And they introduced a theory of persuasion, and they thought, you know, some people, it’s not that they’re smarter, necessarily. It’s not that they have more knowledge, necessarily. It’s that they really just enjoy thinking for the sake of thinking. And people who enjoy thinking actually are less likely to be persuaded by more emotional or heuristic kind of appeals. They require evidence-based argumentation to be persuaded by information.”
(quotations from Hidden Brain interview – see link below)
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https://podcasts.apple.com/jp/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?i=1000671334611
According to Stanford GSB assistant professor of organizational behavior David Melnikoff, it is the reduction of uncertainty that induces the kind of deep focus frequently referred to as the “flow” state.
© Dana Cogan, 2024, all rights reserved.