The world has always been a pretty uncertain place, but it feels like it’s even more uncertain now than ever before. With COVID-19 outbreaks happening unpredictably and restrictions changing rapidly, we’re all struggling to keep up, and uncertainty is making life more stressful for everyone.
However, uncertainty can affect people in different ways. Some people are happy to fly by the seat of their pants, while others need to have every event for the next month noted in their calendar. Unsurprisingly, people who have a high need for certainty tend to have poorer mental health, experiencing more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress than those with a low need for certainty. But why is certainty so important to some people and not others?
Recently minted UON PhD graduate Dr Monica Gendi considered this question during her PhD studies, supervised by A/Prof Mark Rubin. Monica found that the way that adults respond to uncertainty seems to be related to the way their caregivers responded to their needs as babies.
Ideally, caregivers respond to children’s needs consistently and appropriately, providing comfort and care when the baby signals that they need it (e.g., by crying!). However, some caregivers consistently disregard or ignore their baby’s needs, while others respond appropriately sometimes but ignore their baby at other times.
Monica’s research suggested that people whose needs were not consistently met when they were children have a high need for certainty as adults. This might be because their early experiences taught them that the world is not a safe place, and those around them can’t be trusted to help if they are in trouble. This lack of confidence in the world and in others translates to a desire for the world to be predictable and unambiguous so that they can plan for how to deal with it.
As life becomes less predictable and more ambiguous, the negative consequences of being unable to deal well with uncertainty are likely to be exacerbated. This research highlights the importance of parenting in creating children’s basic beliefs about the world, the consequences of which echo throughout their adult lives.
To know more about (just PhD awardee) Dr Monica Gendi’s research: monica.gendi@uon.edu.au
