ArticleEmotion (Washington, D.C.)2011
Uncertainty is associated with biased expectancies and heightened responses to aversion.
Article in Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Correlates of illness uncertainty in cancer survivors and family caregivers: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2023Pooled it
- Exploring Alexithymia, Uncertainty, Anxious Arousal, and Social Anxiety as Mediators of the Relationship Between Sensory Processing Differences and Restricted and Repetitive Behaviors in Autistic Adults.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Psychological uncertainty in human experience and behavior: a systematic review on measurements, induction, and effects.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Scientific publications that use promotional language in the abstract receive more citations and public attention.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Neurophysiological evidence for emotional attention modulation depending on goal relevance.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The effect of slow breathing in regulating anxiety.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- No effect of partial reinforcement on fear extinction learning and memory in C57BL/6J mice.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Expressions of uncertainty in online science communication hinder information diffusion.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- The Impact of Continuous and Partial Reinforcement on the Acquisition and Generalization of Human-Conditioned Fear.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Article
- Contingency Reversal in Conditioned Fear Learning: The Moderated Mediation Model of Intolerance of Uncertainty and Instruction.Psychology research and behavior management · 2024Article
- Neuroplasticity Intervention, Amygdala and Insula Retraining (AIR), Significantly Improves Overall Health and Functioning Across Various Chronic Conditions.Integrative medicine (Encinitas, Calif.) · 2023Article
- Role of Cue Training, Context, and Stimulus Intensity on Fear Generalization in Humans.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex oscillations underlie learning alterations in trait anxiety in humans.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Shared and unique neural circuitry underlying temporally unpredictable threat and reward processing.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Article
- Sensory Sensitivity and Intolerance of Uncertainty Influence Anxiety in Autistic Adults.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Dealing with uncertainty: A high-density EEG investigation on how intolerance of uncertainty affects emotional predictions.PloS one · 2021Article
- Illness Uncertainty Longitudinally Predicts Distress Among Caregivers of Children Born With DSD.Journal of pediatric psychology · 2020Article
- Preparing for the Worst: Evidence that Older Adults Proactively Downregulate Negative Affect.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2020Article
- Cue Valence Influences the Effects of Cue Uncertainty on ERP Responses to Emotional Events.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Uncertainty is an omnipresent force in peoples' lives that has been shown to amplify the negative impact of aversive events. This amplified aversiveness, together with the negative attitudes that individuals can have toward uncertainty, suggests that a cue indicating uncertainty about future events might be associated with biased expectancies of negative outcomes or biased contingency estimates, similar to biases that have been observed for traditional fear-relevant cues, such as snakes or spiders. Participants in this study saw three different cues: one that indicated with certainty that an aversive picture would follow, one that indicated with certainty that a neutral picture would follow, and one that indicated uncertainty about whether an aversive or neutral picture would follow. Online self-report data revealed negatively biased expectancies of aversion after uncertain cues. The degree of this online expectancy bias predicted participants' estimates, at the conclusion of the experiment, of the relationship between uncertain cues and aversive pictures. Aversive pictures after the uncertain cue (relative to those after the certain cue) were accompanied by increased skin conductance responses and self-reported negative mood. These findings that uncertainty is accompanied by biased expectancies of aversion and heightened responses to aversion warrant extensions of this research in anxiety disorders, given evidence for intolerance of uncertainty and anticipatory dysfunction in the pathology of such disorders.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.