Psychological Effects of Uncertainty Cover Image

Belirsizliğin Psikolojik Etkileri
Psychological Effects of Uncertainty

Author(s): Sanem Küçükkömürler
Subject(s): Social psychology and group interaction, Cognitive Psychology, Clinical psychology
Published by: Sanat ve Dil Araştırmaları Enstitüsü
Keywords: uncertainty; need to reduce uncertainty; uncertainty management; effects of uncertainty in Turkey;

Summary/Abstract: Uncertainty is defined in relation with concepts of incompatibility, unpredictability, misidentification, and dubiousness from different researchers in the literature. Also, need to reduce uncertainty is defined as a tendency to decrease uncertainties in order to gain certainty. The need to reduce uncertainty, which was proposed as a basic motivation from different researchers, is encountering frequently in daily life. In some cases, collective uncertainties follow daily uncertainties, which can be faced under normal conditions. Collective uncertainties include both cultural tendencies related with uncertainty and collectively experienced uncertainties. Turkey’s cultural tendency to avoid uncertainty and collective events including uncertainties experienced recently such as terrorist attacks and coup attempt increase impact of the topic for Turkey. In this paper, aim is to introduce psychology of uncertainty and examine uncertain events experienced in Turkey. It was emphasized that strategies to reduce uncertainty become unfunctional in some cases in our country. For this reason, new strategies which can be useful to reduce uncertainty in Turkey were suggested as (a) introducing uncertainty as manageable with respect to positive uncertainty experiences, (b) giving exact information under uncertain conditions, and (c) presenting peaceful speeches considering possible intergroup conflicts result from uncertainty management.

  • Issue Year: 5/2017
  • Issue No: 10
  • Page Range: 329-344
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Turkish