COVID: UNCERTAINTY IN REAL TIME
When the pandemic hit, none of us knew from day to day
what would happen. No one knew how infections—or the
threat of them—would affect work, school or travel.
Nobody liked the unpredictability. Dozens of studies
worldwide showed that people high in IU were at great-
est risk of emotional problems.
A study published in January 2022 is especially note-
worthy. Two years before COVID emerged, a team at the
University of Illinois at Chicago used two methods to mea-
sure volunteers’ uncertainty intolerance during predict-
able and unpredictable shocks. The researchers adminis-
tered the IUS self-report questionnaire before the experi-
ment. And during it, they monitored subjects’ neural
response with functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Two years later, at the height of the pandemic, the
researchers asked these same volunteers detailed ques-
tions about their emotional reactions to the crisis. Hav-
ing higher self-reported IU or greater activity in a brain
area called the anterior insula during imaging indepen-
dently predicted an increase in anxiety, depression or
emotional distress.
Therapists have begun to target their patients’ uncer-
tainty intolerance to help them through the pandemic
because COVID’s unpredictability exacerbates classic IU
behaviors in some people. Some read everything they can
find on the Internet, wash their hands incessantly and
rarely leave home. Others refuse to alter their routines
even if they are putting themselves or others at risk.
There are endless permutations of dealing with this con-
tinuing state of just not knowing.
As Bredemeier says, “All of us like to feel certain. It’s
just a question of how much distress it causes us. Intoler-
ance of uncertainty is a matter of degree.” M
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