This is the sort of thing someone with low tolerance for ambiguity might say.

Ambiguity is everywhere. It’s an unclear statement, task, or goal. When you encounter an ambiguous situation, you are unsure of how to proceed because the goal is vague or because you don’t have all the information you need/want. Many situations are ambiguous—unclear, uncertain, or open to different interpretations.

In 1949, Else Frenkel-Brunswik introduced ambiguity tolerance–intolerance as a psychological construct to describe the relationship individuals have with ambiguous stimuli or events. Ambiguity tolerant individuals view these stimuli in a neutral and open way; intolerant individuals as a threat. Some people are more inclined one way, and some the other.

Ambiguity Tolerance

Scientists also refer to this tolerance as the ability to “operate in the gray.” It reflects an ability to accept unclear, uncertain, or novel situations and still work effectively. Tolerant individuals are able to deal with ambiguous new stimuli without frustration.

What are the benefits of tolerance of ambiguity? Embracing the unknown allows people (and organizations) to seize new opportunities, take calculated risks, explore previously unchartered territories, and back themselves when they don’t have all the answers.

When there are high levels of uncertainty about a particular business venture, those people with higher levels of tolerance for ambiguity are more likely to succeed. The ability to tolerate conflicting information and deal with missing information makes the difference.

Skills that individuals need to thrive in ambiguous situations are stress-tolerance, good communication skills (verbal and written), problem-solving and critical thinking skills, and adaptability. While some people will naturally have one or some of these skills, anyone can and should learn them.

A study of college students’ tolerance for ambiguity found that students who were involved in the arts had higher scores than business students on ambiguity tolerance, from which the researchers conclude that creativity is linked to ambiguity tolerance.

And there is some evidence that the opposite is also true. A study by De Dreu, Baas, and Nijstad (2008) found that individuals exposed to ambiguous stimuli exhibited greater cognitive flexibility, leading to enhanced creativity and problem-solving skills.

Ambiguity Intolerance

On the other hand, intolerance of ambiguous situations is a cognitive vulnerability that can, in conjunction with stressful life events and negative rumination, lead to depression. Anderson and Schwartz hypothesized in 1992 that this is because ambiguity intolerant individuals tend to see the world as concrete and unchanging, and when an event occurs which disrupts this view these individuals struggle with the ambiguity of their future. Therefore, those who are intolerant of ambiguity begin to have negative beliefs about their situation, and soon view these beliefs as a certainty. This certainty can serve as a predictive measure of depression.

Bochner (1965) categorized attributes given by Frenkel-Brunswik’s theory of individuals who are intolerant to ambiguity as follows:

• Need for categorization
• Need for certainty
• Inability to allow good and bad traits to exist in the same person
• Acceptance of attitude statements representing a white-black view of life
• A preference for familiar over unfamiliar
• Rejection of the unusual or different
• Resistance to reversal of fluctuating stimuli
• Early selection and maintenance of one solution in an ambiguous situation
• Premature closure

The secondary characteristics that describe individuals who are intolerant of ambiguity include uncreative and anxious.

Ambiguity aversion affects behavior. For example, it leads people to avoid participating in the stock market, which has unknown risks (Easley & O’Hara, 2009), and to avoid certain medical treatments when the risks are less known (Berger, et al., 2013). Thus, avoiding ambiguity may make people miss out on a good thing.

Ambiguity aversion is an (irrational?) tendency to prefer the known over the unknown. A person displaying ambiguity aversion would favor taking the highway, even though it’s a tough drive and there’s a chance the unknown route could be better. My extrapolation is that people tend to behave habitually because it is not ambiguous, even when it isn’t the best.

In decision theory and economics, ambiguity aversion prefers known risks over unknown risks. People with this trait would rather choose an alternative where the probability distribution of the outcomes is known over one where the probabilities are unknown.

Walid Afifi, a Communications Professor at the University of California, suggests that for most of us, dealing with ambiguity causes stress and anxiety. This is supported by research indicting that as ambiguity increases, the amygdala (the gray matter deep inside the brain’s cerebral hemispheres) begins responding to a perceived threat. Anxiety and fear rise, while the ventral striatum (which helps respond to rewards) simply stops functioning.

Coping With Ambiguity

Thriving in ambiguous situations requires some special skills:

• Analytical thinking and innovation
• Creativity, originality and initiative
• Complex problem solving
• Reasoning, problem solving and ideation skills

Act incrementally when you are uncertain.

• Take small steps, get quick feedback, correct mistakes, and move forward. Starting small and getting quick feedback will help you make progress despite ambiguity. In uncertain situations, delve into what is causing the problem.

Prioritize your own self-care.

• When you’re sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, and under-exercised, you’re much less likely to be able to focus, manage your emotions, and make good decisions — all critical for navigating uncertain situations.

Notice and challenge negative thoughts around uncertainty as soon as they come to mind.

• Obsessing over potential catastrophes has a momentum all its own and can become a downward spiral that renders you anxious and unable to act.

Try to stay relaxed.

• Cognitive models of anxiety propose that anxious people exhibit biases for threat-related information and a propensity to interpret ambiguous stimuli as more threatening and negative outcomes as more likely to occur than less anxious individuals, which may in turn affect their ability to process non-threats.

Don’t fall prey to analysis paralysis.

• Look for information but don’t go into perpetual information-seeking mode in the name of learning “enough” to make the right decision. Set a limit on the information you gather, for example, a time limit.

Ambiguities Across Cultures

When exposed to/functioning in a foreign culture, tune in to the cultural norms concerning ambiguity.

Cultures with high uncertainty avoidance have a low tolerance for ambiguity and minimize the possibility of uncomfortable, unstructured situations by enforcing strict rules, safety measures and a belief in absolute truth. People from these cultures tend to become anxious when they are in unfamiliar situations or don’t have at least rough plans.

Cultures that are pretty high on ambiguity tolerance include the nations of the Caribbean and Southern Europe. In these regions, communication with both friends and strangers tends to be informal, time schedules are not always important, and uncertainty is a common feature of daily life.

Within a culture (the U.S.), Harington, Block, and Block (1978) assessed intolerance of ambiguity in children ranging from 3.5 to 4.5 years. The researchers then re-evaluated the children when they turned seven. Their data showed that male students who were high in ambiguity intolerance at the earlier age had more anxiety, required more structure, and had less effective cognitive structure than their female peers who had also tested high in ambiguity intolerance.

Research overall suggests that people don’t like ambiguity. For example, people prefer betting on events whose probabilities are known (objective) to betting on events whose probabilities are unknown to them (subjective).

To put it another way, research has established that, when given a choice between two options differing in their degree of ambiguity, people tend to prefer the less ambiguous option. I.e., most people exhibit ambiguity avoidance.

Bottom Line: Ambiguity cannot be avoided, so your best bet is to learn to handle it.