Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
6-2017
Abstract
This study attempts to isolate the effects of experiencing uncertainty on people's cognitive processes. I argue that people can believe that their actions affect the outcome (i.e. outcome control), but still face uncertainty regarding the extent to which actions will make a difference (i.e. impact uncertainty). To this end, I introduce a novel experimental paradigm which isolates the effects of impact uncertainty from outcome control. The findings revealed that after experiencing impact uncertainty, participants demonstrated greater causal complexity (i.e. more likely to make situational attributions and judge outcomes as having a “ripple effect”), but did not make fewer effort attributions for the outcomes. These findings demonstrate how the experience of impact uncertainty can affect cognitive processing, without compromising outcome control. Implications of these findings for developing more nuanced theories on control and uncertainty are discussed.
Keywords
Uncertainty, perceived control, causal complexity, attributions
Discipline
Cognition and Perception | Cognitive Psychology | Psychology
Research Areas
Psychology
Publication
International Journal of Psychology
Volume
52
Issue
3
First Page
256
Last Page
260
ISSN
0020-7594
Identifier
10.1002/ijop.12224
Publisher
Taylor & Francis (Routledge): STM, Behavioural Science and Public Health Titles / Wiley: 24 months
Citation
AU, Evelyn W. M..(2017). Seeing the forest and not the trees: When impact uncertainty heightens causal complexity. International Journal of Psychology, 52(3), 256-260.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1955
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12224