An uncertainty tolerance test for brands?

Grappling with uncertainty is an inherent part of everyday human life. Every single day of our existence, we face ambiguity of one sort or another — ranging in seriousness from a tough decision over what to wear in the morning to the terrifying feeling of having a potentially life-altering health situation hanging over our heads. Uncertainty is everywhere. And there is an Uncertainty Tolerance Test all of us can self-administer.  

To a certain extent, none of us likes being kept on our toes, but some of us are much more comfortable with limbo states than others. And researchers have found that this one psychological characteristic — how well you handle states of uncertainty and ambiguity — explains a great deal about you as an individual: It can often predict your politics, your views on the economy, your openness to making friends, and your ability to think creatively and make smart decisions under pressure. Much the same is really true of brands: Not all brands and their handlers are adept at taking uncertainty in their stride. And nothing exposed that more than the pandemic.

In 1990, social psychologist Arie Kruglanski first introduced the concept of “need for cognitive closure,” or “need for closure”, as an attempt to capture this tendency to minimise uncertainty. Need for closure measures an individual’s need for “an answer on a given topic, any answer,” as Dr Kruglanski put it, as “compared to confusion and ambiguity.” Dr Kruglanski, working with fellow psychologist Donna Webster, developed a so-called “need for closure” scale, the goal being to provide a standardised way to measure natural human variation in the need for closure or certainty. The basic idea is that someone who is high in need for closure is more likely to enjoy black-and-white stories with simple morals; to develop quick, hard-to-dislodge judgements about other people and other groups of people; and to feel more uncomfortable with being “left hanging” over some important issue. People lower in need for closure seem to have an easier time seeing in shades of grey — to understand that good people can do bad things (and vice versa), and to appreciate ambiguous endings or plotlines in film or books.

Which brings me back to brands. And the need for some managers to be “sure” about everything — “sure” about what the consumer really wants; “sure” about competition; “sure” about pricing; “sure” about distribution…  which is why many of them don’t move a muscle without research at every step. Which is both good, and bad. Research can aid and abet decisions but when it becomes a daily crutch for every “yes” or “no”, it becomes a liability.

What can an individual’s level of need for closure tell us? On its own, no one can say anything for sure about anyone based on this measure, but over the decades during which researchers have studied the need for closure, certain interesting tendencies have been noticed. Researchers are of the view that people with a high need for closure “tend to prefer an autocratic leadership and hierarchical group decision structure, while derogating group members with deviant opinions.” The higher the need for closure, the more important it is for the individual to have everyone know their proper place in a group. Relatedly, if anyone has a high level of need for closure, they’re more likely to hold conservative political and religious views. Basically, anything that seems to provide quick and definite closure can be appealing to people with a high need for closure; most commonly these are things they know and are familiar with (traditions, the majority perspective) or things that are very clear (e.g., what authorities state, but sometimes also extremist views, for these are usually very unambiguous).

A low level of need for closure makes it easier for brands to understand complicated situations and make decisions in the face of confusion and uncertainty: Which is an everyday occurrence in real life and in the marketplace.  Brands that are higher in need for closure might “snap” on to a decision — possibly not the ideal one — simply to resolve all of that uncertainty, because the brand managers don’t like grappling with shades of grey.

There is a flip side too to ambiguity. Ambiguity doesn’t always lead to negative or uncomfortable feelings; there’s research that shows that if we’re uncertain about whether someone is romantically interested in us, or if we’re uncertain about whether something good or really good might happen to us, then those experiences are even more pleasurable than they usually are. That is, if uncertainty about an outcome makes one feel really uncomfortable, but then things work out, one will feel even better than one would have if one hadn’t felt all that uncomfortable while one was waiting for the outcome.

Many brands today are still guessing if the worst is behind us. To them, my best advice is that the more you can anticipate your reaction to a complicated, fast-moving situation, the better you’ll be able to handle it.

The writer is managing director of Rediffusion