Are You Ambiguity Tolerant?

Ambiguity tolerance is the ability to perceive ambiguity in information and behavior in a neutral and open way. Ambiguity tolerance is an important issue in personality development and education.

In psychology and in management, levels of tolerance of ambiguity are correlated with creativity, risk aversion, psychological resilience, lifestyle, orientation towards diversity (cross-cultural communication, intercultural competence), and leadership style.

Wilkinson's Modes of Leadership is largely based on ambiguity tolerance. Mode one leaders have the least tolerance to ambiguity with mode four leaders enjoying and preferring to work in ambiguous situations. In part this is due to what Wilkinson calls 'emotional resilience.'

The converse, ambiguity intolerance, which was introduced in The Authoritarian Personality in 1950, was defined in 1975 as a “tendency to perceive or interpret information marked by vague, incomplete, fragmented, multiple, probable, unstructured, uncertain, inconsistent, contrary, contradictory, or unclear meanings as as actual or potential sources of psychological discomfort or threat."

-- to oversimplify for the education of the concrete and narrow minded: this is why progressive people have open minds and reactionary people have closed minds.

One type embraces new ideas and change while the other type cowers in fear and terror.

This is also why the ambiguity intolerant views a person who examines new evidence and changes their mind as a "flip flopper."

This is why the ambiguity intolerant desire a return to some fantasy past and can only endorse simplistic slogans that don't tax their brains and confuse them.

This is why the ambiguity intolerant HATE, yes HATE, different cultures and lifestyles, intellectuals, artists, higher education, and any form of abstract thought.

Just recently I was in a debate with an ambiguity intolerant person who defended their position by confessing that my communication was making them dizzy. This "keep it simple, stupid" person thought that the mere complexity of my conversation proved me wrong.

First of all, my communication wasn't that complex. Secondly, this person was admitting that it hurt for them to think. This person earnestly believed that their inability or lack of desire to think beyond the concrete and simple was a proof that my ideas were wrong.

I cannot tell you how many ambiguity intolerant people I have met in my life, particularly in my youthful religious years. Even in my religious youth, I didn't believe in the voodoo of religion. I didn't believe in creationism or Noah's Ark or the superiority of my religion over others. I was drawn to the ideals of social justice I saw in the "sacred texts."

As I grew in age, education, and experience I saw that the ideals of social justice in my religion were merely MASKS most (not all) followers wear to hide their petty, small-minded, selfish, greedy, control freak, backwards thinking minds. Once I found myself on the wrong side of history, I washed the dirt of ignorance off my feet and have never looked back.