Why uncertainty is stressful, what a UCL electric shock study found, and research-backed ways to get through a wait without cancelling your plans.
We gave away an entire day of our London trip to dodge a flight delay, then took off at two in the morning anyway. The delay was never the hard part. The hard part was sitting on the couch refreshing an airline app with no idea when, or whether, we'd leave.
If a maybe wears you out faster than bad news, there's a reason. Why uncertainty is stressful comes down to how the body prepares for threat: a 2016 University College London study found stress peaked when people faced a fifty-fifty chance of an electric shock, higher than when the shock was a sure thing.
Below is the science of the maybe, and the small habits that make a wait easier to live through.
Why is uncertainty more stressful than bad news?
Uncertainty is more stressful than bad news because your body prepares for every possible outcome at once, and a possibility has no end point. A certain outcome, even an unpleasant one, gives the nervous system a single target. A maybe keeps it braced, then braced again.
Your stress response, the surge of adrenaline and cortisol that readies you for danger, evolved for short and clear threats. Ten days waiting on a biopsy result is a poor fit for it, and so is a text from your grown kid that says "call me when you get a sec" and nothing more.
Researchers call the trait underneath this intolerance of uncertainty, meaning how distressing a person finds not knowing. Psychologist R. Nicholas Carleton of the University of Regina argued in a 2016 review in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders that fear of the unknown may be the fundamental fear beneath anxiety. The waiting is its own stressor, separate from whatever you're waiting for.
What did the University College London shock study find?
The University College London study found people were most stressed when they had roughly a fifty-fifty chance of a mild electric shock. People who knew a shock was certain were calmer. Stress followed the uncertainty, not the shock.
In the experiment, led by neuroscientists Archy de Berker and Sven Bestmann, volunteers played a computer game in which turning over rocks sometimes delivered a shock. The team measured stress two ways, by asking participants and by tracking sweat on the skin and pupil size. The findings appeared in Nature Communications in 2016".
It's a small lab setup, and I'd rather say so plainly than dress it up. What makes it worth knowing is how closely it mirrors an ordinary midlife week, where the days between a mammogram callback and the follow-up often feel heavier than the appointment itself.
Certainty about a bad outcome was easier on people than the maybe.
Why do we make big decisions when we don't know what's coming?
We make early decisions under stress because deciding ends the uncertainty, and ending uncertainty feels like relief. That relief shows up on schedule whether the decision was a good one or a costly one.
Here's how it played out for us. We always book the 11:50 p.m. flight to London, because I sleep the whole way and land when my body thinks it's morning. At four in the afternoon the airline emailed to say we were delayed to 12:30 for unscheduled maintenance. We called, and the agent mentioned a broken window or door, which is not a sentence that settles a person down.
While she was still talking, a second email pushed us to one o'clock. So we moved the whole trip to the following night and went to bed with our bags by the door.
I woke at four to check. The plane had left at 12:23. We gave up a day for thirty-three minutes.
Does bracing for the worst protect you from bad news?
Bracing for the worst rarely softens the blow. Mostly it moves the distress earlier and stretches it out, so you feel the bad outcome through every day of the wait and then feel it again if it arrives.
There's a second cost that tends to get missed. When the news turns out fine, and much of the time it does, the rehearsal bought nothing at all. Those were real evenings spent on an outcome that never came.
The table below compares reacting to a maybe with waiting one round, meaning one more piece of real information before you act.
| Reacting to the maybe | Waiting one round | |
|---|---|---|
| How it feels | Instant relief | Brief discomfort |
| What it's based on | The first update | A second or third update |
| Cost if the problem sorts itself out | A lost day or a rearranged week | Nothing |
| Cost if the problem gets worse | About the same | About the same |
Waiting one round is free, and reacting early often isn't.
What helps while you're waiting on results you can't control?
Getting absorbed in a task helps most during an uncertain wait. Researchers in Kate Sweeny's lab at the University of California, Riverside found that people who experienced flow, the state where time disappears and you stop monitoring yourself, had fewer negative emotions while they waited.
The paper by Kyla Rankin, Lisa Walsh and Sweeny, published in [EXTERNAL LINK: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/25t752vx — "the journal Emotion in 2019"], followed law graduates waiting on bar exam results and doctoral students on the academic job market. In a third study, undergraduates played an adaptive game of Tetris while waiting, and it lifted their mood without reducing their worry.
I find that limit reassuring. A good wait doesn't require you to stop worrying, which none of us can do on command. The goal is making the hours more liveable while worry hums in the background, whether that's a novel that grabs you or making a pot of Marry Me Chicken soup.
Where does stress go after a tense phone call?
After a stressful call, the adrenaline and cortisol your body produced for a fight you never had keep circulating until you use them. A ten-minute walk right after you hang up gives that energy a place to go.
Forty minutes on hold with an airline takes a physical toll that doesn't look like one. You end the call, sit down on the couch, and the stress chemistry is still running with nothing to do.
Walk around the block or climb the stairs a few times, and do it straight away rather than saving it for the evening. When I'm wound up I pace without noticing, so my body figured this out long before I did. If a lap feels too small, time outdoors counts even without a forest nearby.
Move soon after the stressful moment, not hours later.
How do you stop a maybe from running your whole day?
Give the wait a shape. Choose set times to check for updates, and say the ridiculous part out loud to another person instead of replaying it silently in your head.
On night two, same flight, the email came again at 6:30 announcing a delay to 1:30. At seven, while we sat in the living room, a message confirmed our seat change to an 8:15 flight leaving in seventy-five minutes. One of us said, well, we're definitely not making that one, and the evening turned funny instead of frantic.
We took off at two in the morning, after giving up a day to avoid leaving at one. Thinking about a problem often wears on us more than handling it, as I wrote about in "why thinking about a task is harder than doing it"]. A checking window is also a good moment for a "six-minute stress meditation"].
FAQs: Why Uncertainty Is Stressful
Q: Is it normal to feel more anxious waiting for results than getting them? A: Yes. In a 2016 University College London study published in Nature Communications, stress peaked when an unpleasant outcome was about fifty-fifty, higher than when it was certain. Waiting carries its own cost, separate from the news, and most of us never count it.
Q: What is intolerance of uncertainty? A: Intolerance of uncertainty describes how distressing a person finds not knowing what will happen. Psychologist R. Nicholas Carleton of the University of Regina suggests fear of the unknown may be the fundamental fear behind anxiety. People high in this trait often seek reassurance or decide early to end the discomfort.
Q: Why do I make snap decisions when I'm stressed? A: A decision ends uncertainty, and that brings relief whether or not the choice is sound. If the urge to act arrives with relief instead of new information, treat it as a cue to wait for one more update before you change your plans.
Q: How can I cope while waiting for medical test results? A: Plan absorbing activities for the waiting days and walk soon after any stressful call. Research from UC Riverside links flow during waiting periods with fewer negative emotions. Setting specific times to check for news helps too, and if worry becomes overwhelming, talk with your doctor or a mental health professional.
Build the buffer before the next maybe
Uncertainty is stressful because your body prepares for every outcome at once, and deciding early mostly buys relief rather than results. A pause, an absorbing task and a short walk will carry you through more waits than a cancelled plan ever will.
The maybes will keep turning up. What helps is having a few tools ready before the next one does. My "Stress Resiliency Toolkit" holds the breathwork and outdoor movement practices I lean on, along with a morning ritual and a bedtime ritual, and most of it is short enough to do standing at an airport gate.
Stephanie Valentine, BA, CNP, MHWC, is a holistic nutritionist, clinical hypnotist and mental health wellness coach, and the author of the award-winning cookbook Love What's On Your Plate. She trained at the Institute of Holistic Nutrition in Toronto, completed Harvard Medical School executive education in women's health and wellness, and writes The Slice, a weekly newsletter for midlife women, at svliving.com.
