Paradox of Uncertainty and Mental Health
Method Stream: Literature Review
ECs Only 14 EC (standard, no new/own data collection. Applicable in case of a clinical internship)
Description:
Uncertainty has been a defining characteristic of the recent decade, as different populations navigate polycrisis. Accordingly, there has been a recent increase in reviews and meta-analyses investigating the relationship between uncertainty and mental health. For example, we know now that there is no clear cut directional relationship between uncertainty and mental health, and that people employ a variety of ways to cope with uncertainty (Kienzler et al., 2025).
In this assignment, you would explore not the impact of one or the other, but the underlying mechanisms of the relationship between uncertainty in mental health. Therefore, it would be expected to map not only clinical but also social, cognitive and political psychological literature as well. The aim would be to contribute to a more robust theory of uncertainty paradox (Haas & Cunningham, 2013).
Reference:
Haas, I. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2013). The uncertainty paradox: perceived threat moderates the effect of uncertainty on political tolerance. Political Psychology, 35(2), 291–302. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12035
Kienzler, H., Massazza, A., Kuykendall, R., Tamimi, N., Hammoudeh, W., & Giacaman, R. (2025). Uncertainty and mental health: A qualitative scoping review. SSM - Qualitative Research in Health, 7, 100521. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2024.10052
What do we offer?
This project would be externally co-supervised with a researcher from the Center for Uncertainty Studies (CeUS).