Our brains continuously simulate possible futures and evaluate them. Your brain simulates plans for the immediate future, but it also simulates next year’s vacation, your life after graduation, your career, relationships, and other long-range plans. ~paraphrased from PBS Special, “The Brain with David Eagleman”
Your brain deals with the unknowable future in three different ways depending on the level of the “unknown.”:
- PLANNING – You expect to make dinner based on a rotisserie chicken you will pick up on your way home. You’ve done this before, and you know the steps, so your brain can plan, or predict, everything in advance with a high degree of probability. Yes, it’s possible the store has sold the last chicken, that your car will break down, or that your credit card will be declined, but those are unexpected, they have less probability of occurring.
- ANXIETY – While on vacation, you lose your day pack that contains your wallet, passport, and identification. You have not traveled much before, and you don’t speak the local language. While you expect things will eventually turn out all right, you don’t know if you can make the flight home in time for an important engagement. There are so many unknowns, most not under your control, that your brain’s amygdala goes into overdrive, pumping up your anxiety, while the ventral striatum (a reward center) shuts down. The result is that you can’t think clearly, and all creative thought that could really help you is shut down.
- SIMULATION – You’re thinking of moving to a new house, starting a new relationship, or finding a different job. You are in control of each of these decisions, but you’ve never done them before; there are too many unknowns for you to be confident of the outcome. Your brain unconsciously simulates the various possibilities, weighing the variables, trying to imagine the opportunities and the threats. Your brain’s simulations show up in your dreams whether you are aware of them or not. Eventually, unexpectedly, your brain will reveal some of the best choices to your conscious mind. You brain continually runs simulations of this kind, often not coming up with a firm plan, but perhaps the most favored direction and a second-most favored direction. This job if it’s offered, if not, then that job, otherwise I’ll keep my current job.
This SIMULATION approach is one of four ways your brain deals with the future. It’s a positive approach that acknowledges the complexity and that you can’t know everything you would like to know in advance, before you have to decide. This is a bit similar to the simulations that economists and climate scientists do to determine the most likely outcomes of certain actions (of the values of certain variables). In this sense, your brain is not just a PREDICTION machine, it is a SIMULATION machine, and it all happens unconsciously, all the time, without your awareness. How does your brain learn to do this? How do you learn to trust this unconscious process?
We know that reward systems in the brain change based on our experiences throughout life. Therefore, the environments we grow up in may play a critical role in reinforcing our aversion to ambiguity. For example, the fact that the educational system focuses predominantly on black or white and yes or no answers might be affecting how our brains’ reward systems develop. If the core motivation for students is to be “correct” rather than to acquire a thoughtful awareness of ambiguities, inconsistencies, and paradoxes, it is plausible that the brain’s reward systems might adapt to preferring certainty over ambiguity.
Today, the tables have turned and our aversion to ambiguity is often a hindrance rather than a help. And although our physical survival may not be at stake, the survival of our careers and organisations most certainly is. If we can not learn to embrace ambiguity, we are doomed to be left behind.
The way we deal with ambiguity has real consequences.
There are a number of ways in which our aversion to ambiguity can handicap us. One striking example is in the domain of creativity. Research has revealed that ambiguity aversion can lead many people to exhibit a distinct bias against creativity, whereby their ability to recognise a creative idea is considerably diminished. I recently observed this bias first hand when my extremely ambiguity averse friends failed to recognise the genius in my idea for “Party Portaloos” — portable toilets equipped with disco balls, strobe lights, and industrial rave music.
Those who are able to tolerate ambiguity often reap a host of benefits as a result. Research has shown that people who are more comfortable with ambiguity tend to have greater life satisfaction, experience more positive emotion, feel less threatened by the environment or others, experience less anxiety, be more entrepreneurial, be better managers, take more risks, have greater self confidence, and be more open to new experiences.