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Research suggests that intolerance of uncertainty is a cognitive process involved in excessive worry and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Although previous studies indicate that intolerance of uncertainty and excessive worry are highly and specifically related, the question of how intolerance of uncertainty might lead to worry has yet to be empirically examined. This paper presents two studies investigating intolerance of uncertainty and information processing. Study 1 used an incidental learning task to examine the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and the recall of stimuli denoting uncertainty. The results showed that participants high in intolerance of uncertainty, relative to those low in intolerance of uncertainty, recalled a higher proportion of words denoting uncertainty. Study 2 investigated whether intolerance of uncertainty would be associated with threatening interpretations of ambiguous information. The results showed that participants high in intolerance of uncertainty reported more concern about ambiguous situations than did participants with low levels of intolerance of uncertainty. In addition, the tendency to make threatening interpretations of ambiguous situations was more highly related to intolerance of uncertainty than to worry, anxiety, or depression. Taken together, these findings suggest that intolerance of uncertainty is associated with information processing biases that may be involved in the etiology of excessive worry and GAD.KEY WORDS: generalized anxiety disorder; intolerance of uncertainty; information processing in anxiety.

This study investigated the influence of beliefs about uncertainty on interpretive biases and access to threat schemata, with the use of an experimental manipulation. Individuals from the community and undergraduate students (N = 74) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: positive beliefs about uncertainty (n = 37) and negative beliefs about uncertainty (n = 37). To manipulate beliefs about uncertainty, participants watched a presentation on problem solving that either contained information about the positive or the negative effects of uncertainty on problem solving. To assess interpretive biases, participants completed a modified version of the Ambiguous/Unambiguous Situations Diary. Participants read potentially threatening passages and rated their level of worry. Passages were then disambiguated either positively or negatively and participants rated the likelihood and the value (goodness or badness) of these events. To assess access to threat schemata, the Catastrophizing Interview was administered. The Catastrophizing Interview is a structured worry task that assesses various aspects of the worry process, using the downward arrow technique. The results indicated that, although many of the expected group differences were not observed, participants in the negative beliefs about uncertainty group did rate the positively disambiguated scenarios as less positive and the average likelihood of feared consequences to personal worries as more probable. This study provides partial support for the notion that beliefs about uncertainty may have a causal effect on interpretations of ambiguous situations as well as on ease of access to threat schemata.