Uncertainty imposes both cognitive and affective demands. Situations characterized by unpredictability—such as economic instability, health threats, or rapid social change—require individuals to entertain multiple possible interpretations while accepting that none may be complete. This process is cognitively effortful and psychologically aversive, as it involves maintaining ambiguity without resolution.
A consistent finding across psychological research is that heightened uncertainty is associated with reduced cognitive flexibility, defined as the capacity to shift between perspectives, integrate competing evidence, and update beliefs in response to new information (Braem & Egner, 2018). Under such conditions, individuals are less likely to engage in effortful, integrative reasoning and more likely to rely on heuristic processing. This shift reflects not a breakdown of cognition, but an adaptive response to limited cognitive resources under strain.
From Reduced Flexibility to Simplified Representations
When cognitive flexibility declines, information processing becomes more selective and efficiency-oriented. Rather than sustaining multiple interpretations, individuals preferentially adopt simplified, coherent representations that minimize ambiguity and reduce cognitive load.
This tendency is grounded in principles of cognitive economy: the mind seeks to conserve effort by privileging representations that are easier to construct and maintain.
Empirically, this shift is reflected in a systematic preference for specific types of simplified information. Individuals under uncertainty are more likely to rely on:
• Binary categorizations, which compress complex continua into discrete distinctions (e.g., evaluating a technology as either safe or dangerous, rather than considering degrees of risk)
• Single-cause explanations, which attribute complex events to one dominant factor rather than multiple interacting causes (e.g., explaining an economic crisis solely by immigration, rather than a combination of economic, political, and global factors)
• Agent-based narratives, particularly those involving intentional actors, which are cognitively more tractable than abstract systemic explanations (e.g., interpreting societal changes as the result of elites deliberately controlling outcomes)
• Internally consistent stories, even when incomplete, over probabilistic or fragmented accounts (e.g., preferring a coherent narrative that links events into a single explanation over acknowledging that the situation remains uncertain or evolving)
• High-fluency information, meaning content that is easy to process linguistically or conceptually, and therefore more likely to be perceived as credible (e.g., simple, repeated claims such as “it’s all a hoax” being judged as more convincing than complex explanations; Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009)
These preferences reflect a shift from accuracy-oriented processing toward efficiency-oriented processing, where the primary goal becomes reducing uncertainty rather than fully representing complexity.
The Role of Cognitive Closure
Once a simplified explanation is adopted, it tends to persist. This tendency is captured by the concept of need for cognitive closure, defined as the motivation to reach a definite answer and avoid ambiguity (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Under conditions of uncertainty, this motivation becomes more salient.
The process typically unfolds in two stages. First, individuals engage in “seizing,” rapidly adopting an explanation that provides sufficient coherence. Second, they engage in “freezing,” maintaining this explanation and resisting subsequent revision. This stabilization reduces further cognitive effort but also constrains openness to alternative interpretations.
Importantly, this process extends to how individuals evaluate new information. Reduced flexibility is associated with selective exposure, confirmation biases, and the reinterpretation of ambiguous evidence in ways that reinforce prior beliefs. In this way, simplified explanations become self-reinforcing cognitive frameworks that shape subsequent judgment.
Scaling Up: Social and Informational Consequences
These individual-level processes scale to the collective level. During periods of widespread uncertainty, such as economic crises or public health emergencies, societies exhibit an increased demand for clear, structured narratives that provide order and predictability (van Prooijen & Douglas, 2018). These narratives typically emphasize identifiable causes, clearly defined agents, and unambiguous implications.
In contemporary information environments, this dynamic has important consequences. Simplified explanations are not only more cognitively appealing but also more communicable. Their clarity, coherence, and emotional resonance facilitate transmission across social networks, allowing them to spread more rapidly than complex, nuanced accounts.
This dynamic also helps explain increased susceptibility to conspiracy theories and pseudo-profound or “bullshit” statements under uncertainty. Both types of content share features that align with reduced cognitive flexibility: they offer simplified, agent-driven explanations and are often framed in ways that enhance processing fluency while bypassing analytic scrutiny (Pennycook et al., 2015; van Prooijen & Douglas, 2018). As a result, individuals experiencing uncertainty may be more likely to accept such content not because it is well-evidenced, but because it is cognitively undemanding and restores a sense of coherence.
A Functional Trade-Off
The observed shift toward simplification reflects a functional trade-off between epistemic accuracy and psychological stability. Whereas accurate representations of complex reality depend on cognitive flexibility, tolerance for ambiguity, and sustained mental effort, psychological stability is supported by clarity, coherence, and predictability.
Uncertainty disrupts this balance by increasing the cognitive and affective costs of processing complex or ambiguous information. In response, individuals rely more strongly on simplified representations that reduce processing demands and enhance interpretability. This shift is accompanied by a greater dependence on heuristic processing and epistemically efficient information sources, which can be accurate but also increase susceptibility to misinformation and fake news, particularly when such content provides clear causal structure and emotional certainty (Pennycook & Rand, 2019).
From this perspective, the appeal of simplified—and sometimes misleading—explanations lies in their ability to provide cognitive and affective closure rather than in their epistemic accuracy. Accordingly, the spread of simplified narratives during periods of uncertainty reflects not a failure of reasoning, but a predictable outcome of psychological mechanisms that prioritize coherence and reduced cognitive load under conditions of diminished perceived control.
References
Alter, A. L., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2009). Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(3), 219–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309341564
Braem, S., & Egner, T. (2018). Getting a grip on cognitive flexibility. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(6), 470–476. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418787475
Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103(2), 263–283. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263
Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Barr, N., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2015). On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit. Judgment and Decision Making, 10(6), 549–563. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1930297500006999
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning. Cognition, 188, 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011
van Prooijen, J. W., & Douglas, K. M. (2018). Belief in conspiracy theories: Basic principles of an emerging research domain. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(7), 897–908. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2530