The Uncertain Mind, Sorrentino & Roney Options Rating

[Jonny Cache]

Sorrentino, Richard M., and Roney, Christopher J.R. (2000), The Uncertain Mind : Individual Differences in Facing the Unknown, (Essays in Social Psychology, Miles Hewstone (ed.)), Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, PA.

This is a landmark publication in a stream of literature that is key to understanding the dynamics of inquiry in any human enterprise that is — at least, ostensibly — directed toward the development of information, knowledge, wisdom.

Jon Awbrey

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[Jonny Cache]

— Excerpt 1 —

Preface

What does uncertainty mean to people? How do we feel when confronted with novel situations in our lives or activities that have outcomes of which we are unsure? Are we energized by the exciting possibilities uncertainty presents? When we face the unknown, are we invigorated at the possibility of learning about ourselves and the world around us? Or perhaps the very prospect of uncertainty seems highly aversive to us. Do people generally prefer the relative comfort that comes with situations that are familiar, and those in which outcomes are predictable?

There seem to be many examples of human behavior that support either the idea that people are drawn to uncertain situations or that certainty is appealing to us. On the one hand, human history is virtually the story of approaching the unknown — exploring far-off lands, seeking to discover outer space, and striving to understand new things. On the other hand, ritual and routine seem to be important facets of the lives of many. One could argue either view — that essentially we are uncertainty seekers or are uncertainty avoiders. (Sorrentino and Roney 2000, vii).

Sorrentino, Richard M., and Roney, Christopher J.R. (2000), The Uncertain Mind : Individual Differences in Facing the Unknown, (Essays in Social Psychology, Miles Hewstone (ed.)), Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, PA.

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[Moulton]

Moving beyond familiar scenarios that flow according to a well-known script, one must advance to that stage of development where one is obliged to think and solve problems independently, without finding ready-made answers in the back of the book.

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[Jonny Cache]

Moving beyond familiar scenarios that flow according to a well-known script, one must advance to that stage of development where one is obliged to think and solve problems independently, without finding ready-made answers in the back of the book.

Exactly. This is a stream of thought that I trace back to Dewey's Quest for Certainty, and from that nexus back to the fountainhead of Charles Sanders Peirce's writings on the nature and nurture of inquiry. You have given graphic expression to one of the most paradoxical phenomena in this whole domain, the circumstance that our current state of knowledge, the very rock that we cannot help but try to build our future on, is very often the most momentous obstacle to getting on with that future.

Jon Awbrey

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[Moulton]

Those of us who have hazarded an attempt at graduate studies appreciate the challenge of making a meaningful and significant contribution to knowledge.

[Jonny Cache]

— Excerpt 2 —

Preface (cont.)

The primary thesis of this book is that this issue — whether we orient more to uncertainty or to certainty — is an extremely important dimension on which people differ. Because uncertainty or certainty can characterize any situation, we suggest that this personality dimension influences our choices and our behavior in virtually all facets of our lives. Perhaps because of the breadth of the issue, how one orients to uncertainty seems to have been overlooked as an influence on behaviors in specific domains. Instead, the focus seems to have been placed more on domain-specific attitudes, values, or motives. For example, if a research interest is with achievement behavior, the focus has been on feelings about achievement or on motives specific to that domain. Although these are important, in the chapters that follow, we suggest that the issue is much more complex than this. We argue that, in addition to feelings or motives, both the degree of certainty characterizing an achievement situation and the manner in which a given individual habitually deals with certainty or uncertainty must also be considered. (Sorrentino and Roney 2000, vii).

Sorrentino, Richard M., and Roney, Christopher J.R. (2000), The Uncertain Mind : Individual Differences in Facing the Unknown, (Essays in Social Psychology, Miles Hewstone (ed.)), Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, PA.

[Moulton]

It is said that boredom is the mother of adventure. Safety and certainty may be comforting to some, but to others, it's a recipe for unrelenting boredom. As Librarian of Congress, Daniel J. Boorstin wrote, the world is made richer by those who engage in the heroic adventures of discovery and creativity.

[Jonny Cache]

— Excerpt 3 —

Preface (cont.)

The main point of this book is to demonstrate the importance for psychologists to consider individual differences in peoples' tendencies to approach or avoid uncertainty. As readers shall see, there are two ways this dimension is of importance. One set of issues pertains to how people think about themselves and the world around them. This touches on how we seek out information and how we integrate information with which we are confronted. Again, because any information may be a source of either uncertainty or certainty, this is not specific to any given domain. The second set of issues involves how we behave in different situations. As noted above, in any facet of our lives we may find ourselves in situations that involve either relative uncertainty or certainty. In this book, we argue that behavior in these situations will be determined by both one's orientation to the uncertainty or certainty involved and how a person deals with that specific domain (such as achievement- or affiliation-related motives). (Sorrentino and Roney 2000, viii).

Sorrentino, Richard M., and Roney, Christopher J.R. (2000), The Uncertain Mind : Individual Differences in Facing the Unknown, (Essays in Social Psychology, Miles Hewstone (ed.)), Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, PA.

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[Nya]

Those of us who have hazarded an attempt at graduate studies appreciate the challenge of making a meaningful and significant contribution to knowledge.

That challenge is exactly what makes me think twice about graduate studies, especially considering the general lack of jobs in my field.

[Moulton]

Those of us who have hazarded an attempt at graduate studies appreciate the challenge of making a meaningful and significant contribution to knowledge.

That challenge is exactly what makes me think twice about graduate studies, especially considering the general lack of jobs in my field.

May I ask, what is your field?

[Saltimbanco]

Jonny, I have to say that I don't really like the language of the excerpts you have provided. With rare and generally only pathological exception, people prefer certainty over uncertainty. Full stop. We might like, within very confined aspects of our lives, the uncertainty of a card game or a lottery, but when the outcomes of such things become critical to how we will be able to live our lives, most people will have been reduced to a state of misery. (Professional card players are not an exception to this: for them, it is rather that they have the expectation of reliable winnings through the series of card games that they play, so it is that their card playing results are a matter more of certainty than of uncertainty, and not that they embrace uncertainty.)

What the authors seem to be meaning to address is rather the manner in which understanding, which underpins all certainty, is sought out: some people think it is great fun to throw themselves into a largely unknown situation, and to figure out its workings; for others, this is something to be avoided. But for the first group, this is more a matter of seeking certainty where previously there had been uncertainty rather than of seeking uncertainty.

I should mention that uncertainty is the focus of my intellectual inquiry, such as it is, albeit from I suspect a very different perspective than Sorrentino, Roney, or Awbrey.

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[Jonny Cache]

Jonny, I have to say that I don't really like the language of the excerpts you have provided. With rare and generally only pathological exception, people prefer certainty over uncertainty. Full stop. We might like, within very confined aspects of our lives, the uncertainty of a card game or a lottery, but when the outcomes of such things become critical to how we will be able to live our lives, most people will have been reduced to a state of misery. (Professional card players are not an exception to this: for them, it is rather that they have the expectation of reliable winnings through the series of card games that they play, so it is that their card playing results are a matter more of certainty than of uncertainty, and not that they embrace uncertainty.)

What the authors seem to be meaning to address is rather the manner in which understanding, which underpins all certainty, is sought out: some people think it is great fun to throw themselves into a largely unknown situation, and to figure out its workings; for others, this is something to be avoided. But for the first group, this is more a matter of seeking certainty where previously there had been uncertainty rather than of seeking uncertainty.

I should mention that uncertainty is the focus of my intellectual inquiry, such as it is, albeit from I suspect a very different perspective than Sorrentino, Roney, or Awbrey.

Thanks for wading through the language so far. I haven't really said what my own take on all this is. And I come at it from more of a Peircean logical angle than a properly psycho-socio-logical tack, so that makes for a number of significant differences in perspective. But I think that this way of looking at things, surveying an ongoing research programme on the part of these authors that was already 15 years running in the year 2000, is well worth our consideration.

At any rate, I will have to copy out 2 or 3 more excerpts just to give the basics of what they are saying.

Jon Awbrey

[Moulton]

The FUD Factor

It's all about refactoring the FUD.

[Jonny Cache]

Looky Here!

In the process of searching for the Gary Larson cartoons that appear on pages 5 and 6 of our text, I lucked on the Google Book Search entry for The Uncertain Mind. I don't know why I didn't think of looking there first.

At any rate, there's enough of the book available on Preview that it will greatly facilitate the rest of our discussion.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache:

[Saltimbanco]

Hmmm.

They seem indeed to be concerned with degrees of inclination toward seeking new understanding and, disappointingly, they seem to view the "certainty-oriented" personality as a pathology. Too much of psychology, in my opinion, is concerned with pathology.

Anyway, Sorrentino and Roney seem to have contrived the individual who is not interested in additional information; perhaps the more appropriate Larson cartoon is the one of the australopithicene asking to be excused from a classroom full of more advanced hominids because his brain has become full. And why not accept such a motivation? Maybe some people have devoted as much of their attention to a particular matter as they want (maybe as much as they are able, as in the case of the australopithicine), and they really are not interested in more information. Is that pathology?

They hint also at social implications: we now live, they say, in a world of uncertainty - how do we deal with it? I'm not sure if I agree with the premise: when previously in history have people been as certain as we are of being able to eat, of having a low-humidity environment of 60-80 degrees Farenheit at all times, if we so choose?

What they probably mean to refer to is our rapidly changing social norms, but even in this, I question the premise: when previously in history have we had such a homogeneous culture stretching virtually around the globe? In times past, the next town over was a new and different world; today we have essentially the same Starbuck's and the same McDonald's in town after town. Possibly the person who never leaves his home town will be subject to more change today than he would have been 200 years ago, but I wouldn't take even that as given: we are probably more in control of our own social fates, at least in the liberal democracies, than humanity has ever been before.

My own inquiries on uncertainty deal, I think, less with matters of pathology. What concerns me is, given identical and uncertain information, one person will decide that the information is sufficient for planning and acting while another will decide that the uncertainty overwhelms the usefulness of any plans. I think we are genetically programmed to like to plan and to act, and it usually serves us well. But we probably plan and act at times in a manner that is sub-optimal in a certain sense.

Probably I am thinking of apples to Sorrentino and Roney's oranges.

Anyway, I presume this was intended eventually get around to implications for Wikipedia. It might be tempting to conclude that many of the individuals responsible for Wikipedia's pathology are S&R's imagined individuals who are not interested in additional information, but I don't think that really gets at the matter. I think that the abusive admins are either just authoritarian personality types or are polemicists who make a distinction between what they want in the encyclopedia and what they think is commonly accepted as true and unbiased. Other than a few of the polemicists, I doubt many of S&R's "certainty-oriented" individuals would even be interested in editing Wikipedia.

For the behavioral axis that I am concerned with, I don't think differences should generally be a matter of conflict: one person might think it sufficient to write "great danes are large dogs" while another might insist that actual average height and weight be given, without characterizing them, but who would care? If someone wants to spend the time to look up heights and weights of great danes, why stop him?

[Jonny Cache]

I'm glad we all agree that this is an important issue in general — however much it may or may not have to bear on Whatever Happened To Jimbo's Baby. For my part, I've been thinking on these matters, first in the context of information theory and later in the context of inquiry theory, for 2 or 3 decades at least, so I will eventually have 2 or 3 things to say about it all. Some of my pro-visions from the late 2nd millennium are cached in these subsummae:

• Introduction To Inquiry Driven Systems
• Prospects For Inquiry Driven Systems
• Inquiry Driven Systems : Inquiry Into Inquiry

But we'll have to be especially considerate of our discussants who are not here to defend their positions. And I will need to copy out a couple more excerpts from S & R, just for maximal ease of analysis, before we wade into the depths.

Jon Awbrey

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[Saltimbanco]

Jonny, just quickly following my own path of interest, I checked your links for references to Claude Shannon, given your mention of information theory. I found in your second link "(Shannon & McCarthy, 1956)," which was however not end noted.

Anything I write about Sorrentino and Roney should be understood as coming from an Individual Distantly Interested in the Original Theory (IDIOT), and should not be taken as a criticism of the worth of their work to its intended field. I would hope that no one would waste the energy of being offended by my comments.

[Jonny Cache]

Jonny, just quickly following my own path of interest, I checked your links for references to Claude Shannon, given your mention of information theory. I found in your second link "(Shannon & McCarthy, 1956)", which was however not end noted.

Anything I write about Sorrentino and Roney should be understood as coming from an Individual Distantly Interested in the Original Theory (IDIOT), and should not be taken as a criticism of the worth of their work to its intended field. I would hope that no one would waste the energy of being offended by my comments.

Yeah, all of those documents are still in the process of being wikified, and there was a 20 page Bibliography that got lost in some platform transition that I will have to retype as I get time.

Here's the S & M —

Shannon, C.E., and McCarthy, J. (eds., 1956), Automata Studies, Annals of Mathematics Studies, No. 34, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

I once responded to one of those {{Too Technical : Please Construct Access Ramp For General Reader}} types of tags that was once pasted on Wikipedia's article on Information Theory, and because I was interested in making the subject accessible to students of philosophy I tried to write a gentler, kinder introduction. Yes, I was so much younger and naiver then. Anyway, here is what I came up with:

Semiotic Information

Jon Awbrey

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[Jonny Cache]

— Excerpt 4 —

The Uncertainty-Oriented Person

Figure 1.1 is a caricature of an uncertainty-oriented (UO) person. In this cartoon, the two scientists are excited by a new discovery — the meaning of the universe. Although they have proven mathematically that the universe is meaningless (i.e., = 0), they are nonetheless thrilled that they have resolved the ultimate uncertainty. What is important to them is not how this information makes then feel (referred to as affective value of information); all they care about is that they have resolved the uncertainty. This caricature captures the essence of the UO because UOs are driven by what there is to be learned from a situation. To the extent that a situation provides new information or resolves uncertainty about their ability, opinions, and understanding of the world, UOs are motivated to think effortfully and to act vigorously. This means that UOs have a positive orientation toward novel or uncertain situations; to them these situations can be seen as an opportunity to learn something new about themselves or about the world. (Sorrentino and Roney 2000, 4).

Sorrentino, Richard M., and Roney, Christopher J.R. (2000), The Uncertain Mind : Individual Differences in Facing the Unknown, (Essays in Social Psychology, Miles Hewstone (ed.)), Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, PA.

[Jonny Cache]

— Excerpt 5 —

The Certainty-Oriented Person

Figure 1.2 is a caricature of the certainty-oriented person (CO). In this cartoon, the detective is telling the police officer that "curiosity killed these cats." The expression curiosity killed the cat, which appears to be unique to North America, is similar to the Northern Europe, "If you put your nose too close to the pot it could get burned." Both of these sayings suggest that curiosity or inquisitiveness is bad. It does not matter what the affective value of the information is likely to be. Whether one could feel good or bad about some information she or he might discover, all this person cares about is that she or he should not look in the first place. In other words, one should not try to resolve or deal with uncertainty. (Sorrentino and Roney 2000, 6).

Sorrentino, Richard M., and Roney, Christopher J.R. (2000), The Uncertain Mind : Individual Differences in Facing the Unknown, (Essays in Social Psychology, Miles Hewstone (ed.)), Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, PA.

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: