Psychological need to reduce ambiguity?

[firecat]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111221140627.htm

Excerpt:

In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel of Ghent University in Belgium look at what psychological scientists have learned about prejudice....

People who are prejudiced feel a much stronger need to make quick and firm judgments and decisions in order to reduce ambiguity. "Of course, everyone has to make decisions, but some people really hate uncertainty and therefore quickly rely on the most obvious information, often the first information they come across, to reduce it" Roets says....

It's virtually impossible to change the basic way that people think.

I'm very curious about that last statement. At what point does the "basic way" that a person thinks develop? Is it nature or nurture, and in what proportions? If it's true that some people need to reduce ambiguity more than others, do we know what contributes to that? Is it possible to teach people to tolerate more ambiguity, or to tolerate ambiguity in more situations?

I'm obviously assuming here that tolerating ambiguity would generally be a good skill to have (although I think it might lead to problems in situations where immediate action is required). I really dislike prejudice and the damage it causes, so if training in tolerating ambiguity might help diminish it, I would be in favor.

I think I've learned to tolerate ambiguity a lot better over the years, so my personal experience makes me doubt the assertion that it's impossible to change the way people think. It's possible that being on antidepressants is what made the difference for me, though.

Comments

[sqbr]

Heh. My first response is "Yay! My inability to make decisions helps me resist racism!" :)

[firecat]

Hee!

[lilacsigil]

I agree with you - this does sound like an interesting hypothesis but I have no idea why it would be so difficult to change this behaviour, or if it applies to people who are prejudiced about some things but not others.

[firecat]

or if it applies to people who are prejudiced about some things but not others.

Which would be most of us, it seems to me...

[redbird]

I wonder whether this is based in part on Stapel's publications about prejudice, which have been retracted on the grounds that he didn't collect real data. The papers got quite a bit of attention; I saw the retractions in the Retraction Warch blog, but I don't think that gets a lot of attention.

[jae]

Great questions!

-J

[elainegrey]

I'm tempted to dismiss your last quoted sentence as bias of the journalist, not as science fact. I think that science education, cognitive therapy, and various spiritual practices teach an acceptance of uncertainty and ambiguity that can be learned.

[firecat]

I'm tempted to dismiss your last quoted sentence as bias of the journalist, not as science fact.

It would dismay but not surprise me to learn that the journalist stuck zir own opinion in there rather than reporting on the paper.

[elf]

Link to the abstract of the paper is at the journal site; it mentions, in part, "Finally, we discuss recent evidence indicating that, in contrast to Allport’s pessimistic predictions, intergroup contact is especially effective in reducing prejudice among people high in NFC." (emphasis added.) Actual paper is behind an academic paywall.

So: they can learn to tolerate ambiguity when it's obviously necessary. (Like, they meet enough different people to know that stereotypes don't work to tell them how those people think and act.)

Makes me wonder if there's some essential difference between sexism and many other kinds of prejudice, many of which are aimed at "those OTHER people not part of my community." It's not like anyone lacks exposure to numerous people of both genders--but I suppose it's possible that some only encounter women in specific roles (housewife-and-mother) and assume they're incapable of doing anything else.

The paper seems to partially explain how privilege continues: in addition to reinforcing power (and usually money) for those who have it, it reduces ambiguity for the people who aren't directly benefiting from it. And, wow, why it's so hard to fight even among people who objectively recognize that everyone should have equal rights: eliminating unconscious prejudices ties into decision fatigue because they'd have to make new judgments and decisions all the time.

[firecat]

Thanks!

intergroup contact is especially effective in reducing prejudice

That's good to know.

Makes me wonder if there's some essential difference between sexism and many other kinds of prejudice

Indeed.

eliminating unconscious prejudices ties into decision fatigue because they'd have to make new judgments and decisions all the time.

Yes, that makes sense. Which says to me that education against prejudice should be a lifelong thing, so that the idea that other people are human isn't new.

[staranise]

*tiny psych wave*

The ability to withstand ambiguity is tied very closely to an the ability to emotionally self-regulate and self-soothe; it's about your personal ability to maintain a consistent, non-distressing internal world despite a sometimes stressful, confusing, or threatening outer environment. The healthiest people can do this at a very high level, able to maintain an essential feeling of self, wellbeing, and control even in very challenging circumstances. However, most people fall short, and maintain equilibrium by having set ways of dealing with the world--when someone calls you a total bitchcow, one might ponder, "Well, I feel that I am essentially good person who is kind to others, but perhaps there is some merit in the perception that I am too forthright and not sensitive enough to others." However, most people default to either, "Oh gosh, I am a total bitchcow, aaaah!" or "What a rude person! I will completely fail to see their point of view as true, because it obviously isn't!" Because ambiguity takes mental effort and sometimes emotional turmoil. Therefore, the less ambiguity you can tolerate, the more mental shortcuts you use--snap judgments, mental heuristics, stock answers--to keep from a constant, exhausting expenditure of mental energy.

The worst extreme of a lack of emotional regulation and inability to tolerate ambiguity is Borderline Personality Disorder, which can be treated. It's the only personality disorder we can reliably treat at this point in time, actually. However, the treatment for it is pretty arduous because it means teaching the very basic skills of self-soothing and identifying motivating emotions and thoughts, and I know therapists who refuse to treat BPD clients at all unless the insurance company can promise them at least two years of weekly sessions.

So no, it's not in the least impossible. In some cases, it's quite difficult--but not at all impossible. The brain is plastic.

[firecat]

The ability to withstand ambiguity is tied very closely to an the ability to emotionally self-regulate and self-soothe

Oh, that makes a lot of sense! And I'm glad to know that psychologists don't all think it's generally almost impossible to change these things.

[staranise]

*g* I think the journalist is overstating the case with "It's virtually impossible to change the basic way that people think" which is a kind of warped echo of the argh a lot of social psych researchers have. They've uncovered all these little mental shortcuts and stereotypes and heuristics people use to make snap judgments about the world. So, they say, if people KNOW about these things, why don't they stop DOING them? What do you MEAN, they haven't uncovered the magic cheat codes to make people think more rationally and accurately? WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL BEING STUPID?

(IMO, this is where it kind of where research psychologists aren't as served by their training as clinical psychologists: when you counsel, you learn that no, you can't make someone stop taking mental shortcuts, nor should you try; you just give them better shortcuts)

[firecat]

OK, so the journalist/soc psychs mean "We can't reprogram humans the way we can reprogram computers" not "humans can't shift unskillful thought patterns."

[staranise]

Yeah.

I mean, as someone who does computer programming, soc-psych computer metaphors make me laaaugh and laaaaugh. But yes.

[bibliofile]

"WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL BEING STUPID?"

Heh.

I would also suggest that you can give people better shortcuts, but they still won't be different people -- at least, not without medication, and actually not even with. I say this as a participant in an Adult Children 12-step group in my twenties plus someone who's been on antidepressants for years and is a MUCH nicer person for it.

(Sort of like saying that I want clothes that flatter me, then realizing that I want clothes that make me look sixty pounds thinner. But that's a whole OTHER set of conversations.)

[bibliofile]

context: that's how I read that particular line in the original post. Thanks so much for further elucidation & confirmation w/computery metaphor.

[evilawyer]

Excellent point about research (which is where I would have ended up if the dreaded law school hadn't beckoned) versus clinical psych (for which I know I lack the patience on the treatment end of things).

...when you counsel, you learn that no, you can't make someone stop taking mental shortcuts, nor should you try; you just give them better shortcuts

And keep reinforcing that it's a process, not a blinding flash "cure" (per my clinical psychologist S.O.).

[evilawyer]

At what point does the "basic way" that a person thinks develop? Is it nature or nurture, and in what proportions? If it's true that some people need to reduce ambiguity more than others, do we know what contributes to that? Is it possible to teach people to tolerate more ambiguity, or to tolerate ambiguity in more situations?

I think the trick would be to teach people to (1) reduce the amount of immediate threat people perceive in "the other" (or to put it another way, to feel less fear when faced with individuals that do not conform to the norm they have developed in and adapted to) and (2) not to tolerate ambiguity so much as to confine the dislike of ambiguity to elements of living that do not impact human and societal interaction (because you're right about wholesale increase in tolerance of all ambiguity would be stifling and probably even dangerous). Which might be difficult given that we humans aren't really as evolved as we like to think in terms of our hardwiring. Then again, I'm an ethologist at heart, so I tend to see a lot of the "uglier" aspects of human behavior (be more pessimistic about the ability to correct it, perhaps) in terms of that outlook.

I'd be interested to see a study of how infants react to exposure to people of different races, etc. Maybe --- and this is just a for-instance --- a white baby who squalls just because a person of color is bending over their crib is the kind of person for whom "fear-of-the-other" reduction training (or whatever) would be of benefit.

[staranise]

Are you serious in the last paragraph? The studies have all been done. One just needs to trawl the psych databases for them.

[evilawyer]

Don't have time to do that, though I do recall reading papers way back when re: infant response to different facial expressions (no mention of different races or genders,, etc. in the ones I remember), but thanks for pointing it out to me. If you have any specific links ready to hand, I'd be interested in receiving them.

[staranise]

I can only link to the abstracts because I got to things behind a school login. (Seriously, someone could make a tidy sum selling access to academic databases for ordinary schmucks who don't want to pay an arm and a leg for journal articles.) Two I got fer ya: Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants and Similarity and difference in the processing of same- and other-race faces as revealed by eye tracking in 4- to 9-month-olds

[evilawyer]

Excellent! Thanks so much.

[bibliofile]

(For future reference, there's Google Scholar....)

[evilawyer]

Thanks! I'll bookmark it for future use. (Too bad it's google; I can't bring myself to trust them. My little hangup.)

[ljgeoff]

Another thing is that people who have difficulty with ambiguity also score low on creativity -- which is a sub-grouping of the Big Five Personality Inventory trait of Openness

There's been a lot of research that points to the Big Five traits as being hard wired. That is, Openness is a function of ones temperament, and temperament is hardwired.

So what we might be looking at here is an overlapping Venn diagram of a low Openness score with a poor skill set of self-soothing along with low levels of positive interactions with "others." I'd think that working on any of those might have an effect.

The basic way people think

[flarenut]

This one seems like a tautology to me. It all depends on how "basic" you think certain operations are, and how you frame the operations in question. "Tolerance for ambiguity" is itself a way ambiguous phrase -- for example, does it mean comfort with not knowing what class of entity something fits into, or does it mean comfort with knowing that something fits into a class one of who characteristics is ambiguity? (Same thing with racism and other prejudices -- does familiarity cause people to become in general more comfortable with people who are not like them, or "merely" to move a certain subset of people not like them into the "OK" category?)

I think that shortcut to reduce ambiguity are a basic operation, but the fact that we use those at all (the basic operation you can't change) may not say that much about the circumstances under which we use them (non-basic operation, at least in my taxonomy.)

[e4q.livejournal.com]

interestingly, to me, anyway, i have changed the way i think a LOT over the past decade. part of it has been about the experience of being forced not to 'have a life' in a 'normal' way, so self defining through work, play, education, even intelligence has had to go the way of all things. but HOW i have done it without going completely nuts has everything to do with mind training.

even in the early days of meditation when i didn't know what i was doing at all, or what you could do with it, or what it might really be for, i had a felt sense of change.

of course, mind training is a lot about letting ambiguity rest without jumping to a firm place, so in that sense this is exactly what you are talking about. i think meditation helps more than, say, CBT, but probably a combination would be the best starting ground.

[firecat]

Yes, meditation has had something to do with my learning to tolerate ambiguity better, although I'd be at a loss to say exactly how. Except that I do think the practice of deliberately moving attention around helps.

What I wonder is whether some people can tolerate meditation better than others. In the West at any rate, the people who practice it regularly are self-selecting.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

possibly. i have had some experience teaching it, and it's very weird seeing who ends up getting somewhere... like there are people who adapt quickly to it, and i suppose that is good because they get the positive feedback and feel like they are gaining something, then there are people who find it very hard, and it is amazing to see them going from really not there at all to just even knowing that they find it hard to be quiet. a much bigger leap.

also, the quality of teachers really varies. and i just don't think it's one of those things that is good to do entirely from a book - i did try! but live teaching, ideally in a group is best.

[pure-agnostic.livejournal.com]

I find that statement suspect as well. I've seen some people change the way they think - even push themselves to learn new social or communication skills. Of course, some people do that when they realize their current ways are ineffective.

Could you post something if you ever find any stories or articles online about ways to teach people to deal with ambiguity more? I'd be interested in that as well. Thanks!

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Toleration of ambiguity is a HUGE factor in the way I look at, and deal with, the universe. To the best of my memory, I have always been that way, and have IMHO benefited greatly from it. I say that I don't believe in anything; the furthest I go is "This is what I think right now, based on observation, information, and intellectual assessment to date."

Supposedly F. Scott Fitzgerald said that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.” My favorite biblical scholar, John Dominic Crossan, has written about the ability to believe wholly in one's own viewpoint and yet to maintain the realization that one may be wrong.