The role of intolerance of uncertainty in the acquisition and extinction of reward

Abstract

Individuals, who score high in self-reported intolerance of uncertainty (IU), tend to find uncertainty negative (i.e., stressful, distressing;Carleton, 2016aCarleton, , 2016b. IU is a transdiagnostic risk factor, as high levels of self-reported IU are observed in a number of mental health disorders (Kesby et al., 2017;McEvoy & Mahoney, 2012). Recent research has shown individuals high in IU, relative to individuals low in IU, to display heightened physiological and neural activity to uncertain threat and reward (for review, see .The majority of the literature has, so far, focused on how IU is involved in the processing of uncertain threat. Research suggests that IU may play a critical role in associative threat learning (for review see . During threat acquisition training with partial reinforcement, there is some evidence that individuals with high IU display greater startle blink to learned threat versus safety cues (Chin et al., 2016;

Effects of outcome uncertainty related to gain and loss, performance feedback, and individual differences during a cognitive control task

“…For instance, uncertain positive outcomes, compared to neutral outcomes, result in greater bodily arousal (e.g. skin conductance) and salience-related neural activation (Foti & Hajcak, 2012;Lin et al, 2015;Morriss et al, 2019;Morriss et al, 2021). Furthermore, a survey-based study revealed that uncertainty, in combination with positive outcomes, was found to elicit both negative and positive emotional states equally (Morriss et al, 2022).…”

“…reward, punishment) outcomes is associated with individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty (e.g. tendency to find uncertainty aversive, for review see Morriss et al, 2021;Sandhu et al, 2023;Tanovic et al, 2019) and anxiety/depressive symptomology (Pulcu & Browning, 2019;Brown et al, 2023). More specifically for example, under uncertain threat, even when mild, higher intolerance of uncertainty is associated with greater attentional deployment (Del Popolo Cristaldi et al, 2021), arousal (Morriss et al, 2016), and information seeking behaviour (Bartoszek et al, 2022;Wake et al, 2022).…”