Prospective and inhibitory intolerance of uncertainty, and certainty-seeking behaviours across adulthood in a Chinese sample.

Young adults had higher self-reported prospective intolerance of uncertainty (IU) than older adults on the IUS-12.

• A total of 300 community-recruited participants aged 20-79 years completed the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS-12).
• The IUS-12 measures both prospective IU (anxiety about future uncertain events) and inhibitory IU (being paralyzed by uncertainty).
• No differences on IUS-12 scores were found between middle-aged versus young or older adults.
• The finding suggests that self-reported ability to manage uncertainty in daily life increases with age.

Older adults demonstrated higher certainty-prone behaviours on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) than both young and middle-aged adults.

• Older adults showed fewer pumps and fewer bursts on the BART compared to young and middle-aged adults.
• The BART was used as a behavioural measure of decisions made under uncertainty.
• This pattern reflects greater behavioural conservatism in older adults when facing novel, uncertain situations.
• The behavioural findings contrast with the self-report IU findings, suggesting a dissociation between subjective beliefs about uncertainty tolerance and actual behavioural responses.

Young adults showed both lower loss aversion and lower sensitivity to risk changes in the environment on the BART.

• These findings emerged from exploratory computational modelling analysis of BART responses.
• Lower loss aversion in young adults indicates less weighting of potential losses in decision-making under uncertainty.
• Lower sensitivity to risk changes suggests young adults were less responsive to environmental feedback about risk during the task.
• This pattern is consistent with known developmental differences in risk-taking behaviour across adulthood.

The study identified a dissociation between self-reported intolerance of uncertainty and behavioural certainty-seeking across adulthood.

• Self-reported prospective IU decreased with age (older adults reporting lower IU than young adults), while behavioural conservatism increased with age (older adults making fewer risky decisions on the BART).
• No age differences were found for inhibitory IU on the IUS-12.
• The authors interpret this as older adults believing they can better manage uncertainty in daily life, while simultaneously showing more conservative behaviour in novel uncertain contexts.
• The findings suggest that conceptualisation of IU based primarily on self-report data from younger populations may be incomplete.

The study sample comprised 300 community-recruited Chinese adults spanning a wide age range across three adult age groups.

• Participants were aged 20-79 years and recruited from the community.
• The sample was divided into young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults for comparison.
• The study was conducted with a Chinese sample, which the authors note as relevant to the generalisability of existing IU conceptualisations primarily derived from younger, Western populations.
• Both self-report (IUS-12) and behavioural (BART) measures were used to capture different aspects of uncertainty intolerance.

The results have practical implications for tailoring uncertainty management and emotion regulation interventions to the developmental stage of the individual.

• The authors note the findings are relevant for working with adults of various ages.
• Uncertainty management and emotion regulation strategies may need to differ based on whether self-reported IU or behavioural conservatism is the primary clinical concern.
• The divergence between self-report and behavioural measures across age groups underscores the importance of using multiple assessment methods in clinical and research contexts.
• The study is informed by theories on both anxiety and aging.