Universität zu Köln

van Horen, Femke ORCID: 0000-0001-8887-2695 and Mussweiler, Thomas (2015). Experimental Research Examining How People Can Cope with Uncertainty Through Soft Haptic Sensations. J. Vis. Exp. (103). CAMBRIDGE: JOURNAL OF VISUALIZED EXPERIMENTS. ISSN 1940-087X

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Abstract

Human beings are constantly surrounded by uncertainty and change. The question arises how people cope with such uncertainty. To date, most research has focused on the cognitive strategies people adopt to deal with uncertainty. However, especially when uncertainty is due to unpredictable societal events (e.g., economical crises, political revolutions, terrorism threats) of which one is unable to judge the impact on one's future live, cognitive strategies (like seeking additional information) is likely to fail to combat uncertainty. Instead, the current paper discusses a method demonstrating that people might deal with uncertainty experientially through soft haptic sensations. More specifically, because touching something soft creates a feeling of comfort and security, people prefer objects with softer as compared to harder properties when feeling uncertain. Seeking for softness is a highly efficient and effective tool to deal with uncertainty as our hands are available at all times. This protocol describes a set of methods demonstrating 1) how environmental (un)certainty can be situationally activated with an experiential priming procedure, 2) that the quality of the softness experience (what type of softness and how it is experienced) matters and 3) how uncertainty can be reduced using different methods.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code van Horen, Femke UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0001-8887-2695 UNSPECIFIED Mussweiler, Thomas UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-393696
DOI:	10.3791/53155
Journal or Publication Title:	J. Vis. Exp.
Number:	103
Date:	2015
Publisher:	JOURNAL OF VISUALIZED EXPERIMENTS
Place of Publication:	CAMBRIDGE
ISSN:	1940-087X
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language INTOLERANCE Multiple languages Multidisciplinary Sciences Multiple languages
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/39369