This research was supported by the Gottfried Wilhelm-Leibniz Grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) awarded to Thomas Mussweiler.

The following methods were all tested in the laboratory of the University of Cologne, in which humans (students) voluntarily participate. In line with the ethical guidelines published by the American Psychological Association and the general rules of institutional review boards for ethical issues, all participants were informed in advance about the nature of the study (i.e., informed consent). This informed consent explained the nature of the research project and all potential risks and benefits to the participa...

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This article describes a set of measures on how people can cope with and can reduce uncertainty via an experiential instead of a cognitive route. Furthermore, it demonstrates a method to experimentally activate environmental uncertainty enabling researchers to examine how this type of uncertainty, besides choice uncertainty, affects decision-making and choice. Third, it discusses three different methods (both direct and indirect) measuring whether softness seeking can reduce uncertainty.
The p...

Uncertainty, its antecedents and consequences, is a highly investigated topic in economics, psychology, and marketing. Understandably so, as in modern society people are constantly confronted with uncertainty: In their daily shopping decisions, their careers, and their family dynamics. Learning to negotiate and cope with uncertainty has thus become a requirement of modern life.
Uncertainty is generally defined as a lack of knowledge. To date, most research in marketing and decision-making has focused on uncertainty due to choice alternatives. Because of incomplete information, people feel uncertain about the alternatives available and the utility of these alternatives 1,2. In order to reduce such uncertainty, people often try to increase their knowledge base and seek additional information2-4.
However, besides feeling uncertain because of missing information, people are also subjected to uncertainty due to unpredictable and uncontrollable external events of which the impact is difficult to judge on one&#8217;s future life5,6. Such environmental uncertainty arises when one does not know how the environment might be changing and thus cannot assign probabilities to the likelihood of future events. Examples of this type of uncertainty are for instance economic fluctuations, threats of terrorist attacks, and political changes. Under such uncertainty evoking circumstances, simply searching for information will fail to combat uncertainty. Especially because environmental uncertainty is ever more prevalent in modern society and there is very little known about how such uncertainty affects decision-making and choice, it is of paramount importance to develop a new experimental method to situationally activate environmental uncertainty. The present protocol caters to these needs.
Furthermore, traditionally the focus has been on the cognitive strategies people use when facing uncertainty. Research has for instance demonstrated that &#8211; besides seeking additional information &#8211; people become more close-minded about their attitudes7, emphasize fairness and fair procedures8, and perceive illusionary patterns in random stimuli when facing uncertainty 9. However, people are not always able to cognitively cope with uncertainty, for instance when they lack time or when they have limited cognitive capacity to do so. In which case they may use an alternate, experiential route and seek soft haptic sensations to efficiently cope with and reduce uncertainty.
Human judgment can be influenced by bodily experiences that are transmitted by the sensory systems making contact with the external world (i.e., visual, acoustic or haptic). These feelings can influence our judgments without a semantic, cognitive interpretation of the sensory input10. Touching something soft may be such a bodily experience people search for when having to deal with uncertainty. In childhood, feelings of discomfort are often alleviated through physical touch such as holding or patting by caregivers or by feeling soft cuddly toys. Through such early experiences with touch, softness becomes strongly associated with comfort and security and can therefore be an effective tool to battle uncertainty. But what type of soft haptic sensation will help in dealing with uncertainty? Any type? And should softness be experienced or is it enough when the soft properties of an object are merely seen on a computer screen? This protocol addresses these issues.
Besides the strategies people use to cope with uncertainty, it is of importance to know whether a particular strategy is functional. The functionality of softness seeking can for instance be measured subjectively by establishing one&#8217;s level of uncertainty before and after holding something soft (level of uncertainty over time). Another way to assess uncertainty reduction more indirectly is by using an ambiguous task, such as the Snowy Picture Task (SPT)11. This task consists of a set of pictures in which objects are embedded in visual snow. Participants have to indicate which object they think is hidden behind the snow and their uncertainty with regard to their answer. Last, a personality questionnaire (Uncertainty Intolerance Scale12) can be used to measure whether softness can also increase a person&#8217;s general tolerance towards uncertainty in daily life.

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			<td>Empirisoft</td>
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			<td>Qualtrics</td>
			<td>Qualtrics.com</td>
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			<td>Online survey program</td>
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			<td>SPSS Version 21</td>
			<td>IBM</td>
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experimental research examining how people can cope with uncertainty through soft haptic sensations

Human beings are constantly surrounded by uncertainty and change. The question arises how people cope with such uncertainty. To date, most research has focused on the cognitive strategies people adopt to deal with uncertainty. However, especially when uncertainty is due to unpredictable societal events (e.g., economical crises, political revolutions, terrorism threats) of which one is unable to judge the impact on one&#8217;s future live, cognitive strategies (like seeking additional information) is likely to fail to combat uncertainty. Instead, the current paper discusses a method demonstrating that people might deal with uncertainty experientially through soft haptic sensations. More specifically, because touching something soft creates a feeling of comfort and security, people prefer objects with softer as compared to harder properties when feeling uncertain. Seeking for softness is a highly efficient and effective tool to deal with uncertainty as our hands are available at all times. This protocol describes a set of methods demonstrating 1) how environmental (un)certainty can be situationally activated with an experiential priming procedure, 2) that the quality of the softness experience (what type of softness and how it is experienced) matters and 3) how uncertainty can be reduced using different methods.

These studies were used to investigate 1) whether people prefer objects with soft properties when facing uncertainty and 2) whether searching for softness when facing uncertainty is functional, i.e., whether it reduces uncertainty. A priming procedure (described above) was used to experimentally manipulate environmental (un)certainty. The manipulation checks across the three studies confirmed the effectiveness of the newly developed experiential priming of (un)certainty (p = .06; p = .04; p...

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Experimental Research Examining How People Can Cope with Uncertainty Through Soft Haptic Sensations

To date research has focused on cognitive strategies people adopt to cope with uncertainty. This research examines instead an experiential way of dealing with uncertainty and introduces a set of experimental methods showing how the experience of haptic softness can serve as a tool to deal with uncertainty.

Human beings are constantly surrounded by uncertainty and change. The question arises how people cope with such uncertainty. To date, most research has ...

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8.9K Views.  VU University. To date research has focused on cognitive strategies people adopt to cope with uncertainty. This research examines instead an experiential way of dealing with uncertainty and introduces a set of experimental methods showing how the experience of haptic softness can serve as a tool to deal with uncertainty.