How Decision-Makers Cope with Uncertainty

Abstract

We analyzed 112 self reports of decision-making under uncertainty to find how decision makers conceptualize uncertainty and cope with it in the real world. The results show that decision makers distinguish between three types of uncertainty, inadequate understanding, incomplete information and undifferentiated alternatives, to which they apply five strategies of coping, reducing uncertainty, assumption-based reasoning, weighing pros and cons of competing alternatives, suppressing uncertainty, and forestalling. The relationships between these types of uncertainty and tactics of coping suggest a R.A.W.F.S. (Reduction, Assumption based reasoning, Weighing pros and cons, Forestalling and Suppression) heuristic of contingent coping with uncertainty in naturalistic settings.