Crazy or creative? How people respond in times of uncertainty, chaos, and confusion

Uncertainty is one of people’s greatest fears – but its worse when there is collective uncertainty – when groups or populations are unsure what is happening and what to do. After the magnitude 7.9 San Francisco earthquake in 1906, that killed 3,000 people, psychologists studied how people respond in times of uncertainty, chaos, and confusion. How did people respond? They responded by getting married.

An article in The Washington Post (Febuary 5, 2016) explained that in 10 days after the San Francisco earthquake, marriages surged to four times the normal rate in the region. In those uncertain times, and it times of chaos and confusion, couples found stability in each other. Families, colleagues, and communities also tended to bond closely with each other. 

Jamie Holmes, in his book, Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, outlines people’s experiences during major disasters. He states that in times of uncertainty, people either marry or divorce, or do crazy things in order to lessen confusion in their lives.

Psychologists think that while some people are uncomfortable with chaos and confusion, leading to hasty decisions, others will try to wait it out. But usually, at some time, both groups have a need for closure. They said, though, that a high need for closure might lead to precarious decision making, called the urgency effect (the tendency to jump to conclusions). There is also the permanence effect (a stubborn tendency not to change your mind even with contradictory evidence). People also remember past situations in which there was uncertainty and may feel less tolerant toward future uncertainty. People prefer clarity over ambiguity.

Jamie Holmes calls uncertainty an emotional amplifier – a term psychologists Tim Wilson and Daniel Gilbert used in their experiments. The experiments asked participants to watch pleasant or unpleasant films. Afterwards they were asked to repeat phrases related to certainty or uncertainty to induce certain emotions. The results showed that when participants felt uncertain they took more pleasure in an enjoyable film, and more displeasure during an unpleasant film. Their experiences – both pleasant and unpleasant – were heightened or amplified when uncertain.

Jamie Holmes said that feelings of uncertainty can be lowered through reading fiction, doing puzzles, eating new food, learning a new language, traveling abroad, remembering time spent abroad, or thinking about a musical experience. Why? Cultural events made people more open to uncertainty (less fearful of it) and it also made them more creative. Holmes said that the ability to face uncertainty was becoming more important in these fast paced, fast changing times.

So dealing with uncertainty is both an emotional and an intellectual experience. Because uncertainty is an emotional amplifier, people who are creative and innovative tend to experience very high highs and very low lows. Not harnessing the creativity while experiencing high highs and low lows can be exceptionally unsettling, disorientating, and dysfunctional. Expressing uncertainty through cultural activities can lead to either crazy outcomes or creative outcomes.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/your-reaction-to-this-confusing-headline-reveals-more-about-you-than-you-know.html

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).