Into the unknown: A review and synthesis of contemporary models involving uncertainty.

By R. Carleton. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 2016

942 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The current review and synthesis serves to define and contextualize fear of the unknown relative to related constructs, such as intolerance of uncertainty, and contemporary models of emotion, attachment, and neuroticism. The contemporary models appear to share a common core in underscoring the importance of responses to unknowns. A recent surge in published research has explored the transdiagnostic impact of not knowing on anxiety and related pathologies; as such, there appears to be mounting evidence for fear of the unknown as an important core transdiagnostic construct. The result is a robust foundation for transdiagnostic theoretical and empirical explorations into fearing the unknown and intolerance of uncertainty.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fafed67a25eabf871254d4269fbbdd33d1039293

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Intolerance of Uncertainty as a Transdiagnostic Mechanism of Psychological Difficulties: A Systematic Review of Evidence Pertaining to Causality and Temporal Precedence (2018, background): “…a symptom of difficulty, researchers have proposed IU to be a maintaining mechanism and suggested that the range of associated responses may illustrate IU’s transdiagnostic relevance to understanding and supporting a breadth of psychological difficulties (e.g., Carleton 2012, 2016; Einstein 2014).”
CBT at the Crossroads: The Rise of Transdiagnostic Treatments (2020, methodology): “Treatment model by Einstein (2014) Intolerance of uncertainty (Carleton 2016; Einstein 2014; Mahoney and McEvoy 2012; McEvoy and Erceg-Hurn 2016; Shihata et al. 2016)”
The panic buying behavior of consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining the influences of uncertainty, perceptions of severity, perceptions of scarcity, and anxiety (2021, background): “Since people dislike uncertainty (Carleton, 2016), they tend to avoid it at any cost (Anderson et al., 2019; Lovallo and Kahneman, 2000).”
Fear of the coronavirus (COVID-19): Predictors in an online study conducted in March 2020 (2020, positive): “…factor is intolerance of uncertainty, which can be defined as “an individual’s dispositional incapacity to endure the aversive response triggered by the perceived absence of salient, key, or sufficient information, and sustained by the associated perception of uncertainty” (Carleton, 2016, p. 31).”
Fear, Stress, Resilience and Coping Strategies during COVID-19 in Spanish University Students (2021, background): “When one experiences the fear of the unknown, there is, somehow, a sense that the perceived information is not sufficient for coping with the situation, at any point of processing or level of awareness [1,2].”