Dealing with uncertainty : strategies and contexts
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Current global emergencies like economic crises, pandemics, environmental perils, and armed conflicts have brought uncertainty to the forefront as a key concept for understanding how human cognition and behavior function in response to environmental and social challenges. Nevertheless, interpretations of the concept vary, and its complexity poses theoretical and methodological challenges. Our project thus aims to unravel the intricate connections between uncertainty, its cognitive processing, experiential dimensions, and socio-cultural phenomena in three thematic domains: supernatural beliefs and related ritualized behaviors, conspiracy theories, and social conservatism. Some evolutionary approaches argue that several aspects of human cultures "exploit" particular psychological states (e.g., those created by uncertainty and existential threats) to disseminate themselves effectively. Hence, our central hypothesis states that the capacity of beliefs and behavioral patterns to saturate the needs arising from cognitive and emotional processing of uncertainty positively affects the social distribution of these beliefs and behavioral patterns. This effect is stronger in the context of the acute experience of uncertainty. We will combine ethnographic research, surveys, interviews, and experiments across multiple sites to test our hypotheses. By mapping and analyzing coping strategies in different contexts, we seek to identify more vs. less successful coping mechanisms that may have practical applications. |