Intolerance of uncertainty does not significantly predict decisions about delayed, probabilistic rewards: A failure to replicate Luhmann, C. C., Ishida, K., & Hajcak, G. (2011)

Abstract

Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) is thought to lead to maladaptive behaviours and dysfunctional decision making, both in the clinical and healthy population. The seminal study reported by Luhmann and collaborators in 2011 showed that IU was negatively associated with choosing a delayed, but more certain and valuable, reward over choosing an immediate, but less certain and valuable, reward. These findings have been widely disseminated across the field of personality and individual differences because of their relevance to understand the role of IU in maladaptive behaviours in anxiety-related disorders. We conducted a study to replicate and extend Luhmann et al.'s results with a sample of 313 participants, which exceeded the size necessary (N = 266) to largely improve the statistical power of the original study by using the small telescopes approach. The results of our well powered study strongly suggest that the relationship between IU and the tendency to prefer an immediate, but less certain and less valuable reward is virtually negligible. Consequently, although this relationship cannot be definitely discarded, we conclude that it cannot be detected with Luhmann et al.'s (2011) decision-making task.

Fig 1. Sequence of the decision-making task.

Left: Trial in which the immediate choice is selected, but no reward is won. Centre: Trial in which the delayed choice is selected, and the reward is won. Right: Check trial to monitor the participant’s engagement, in which an appropriate response is provided, and the reward is won.