On uncertainty, stress, emotion regulation, and carpe diem

Ros­ale­da at Par­que del Oeste in Madrid, Spain

Ever since it began, the pan­dem­ic has been a crash course in uncer­tain­ty. Safe behav­iors, school open­ings, vac­ci­na­tion time­lines, the job mar­ket, new variants—these have all seemed to change on a week­ly basis, threat­en­ing our sense of secu­ri­ty and stability.

Uncer­tain­ty is stress­ful and per­haps even harm­ful to our health, research sug­gests, and it can dri­ve us to cling to our social groups to the exclu­sion of oth­ers. But a new study has uncov­ered a sur­pris­ing upside to feel­ing uncer­tain: It might dri­ve us to appre­ci­ate the lit­tle things in life.

In one exper­i­ment, researchers sta­tioned on a side­walk hand­ed out fly­ers that said one of two things: “Life is unpre­dictable: Stop and smell the ros­es” or “Life is con­stant: Stop and smell the ros­es.” A short dis­tance away was a table with a dozen red ros­es on it and a sign match­ing the fly­er they’d just received.

Research assis­tants hid behind a bush to see who stopped and who didn’t—and it was the peo­ple who read that life is unpre­dictable who buried their noses in the fra­grant flow­ers, 2.5 times more often than the others.

Why? Savor­ing and appre­ci­at­ing the small things in life may be a cop­ing response that our minds acti­vate when we feel over­whelmed by the ambi­gu­i­ty of it all. Savor­ing pulls us out of fears and wor­ries about a fuzzy future and into the clear, plea­sur­able sen­sa­tions of right now.

“If the world is uncer­tain, it makes sense to take advan­tage of what you have now because it may not exist short­ly,” explains Andrew L. Gre­go­ry, the lead author of the study.

The researchers found sim­i­lar results in anoth­er exper­i­ment, where, instead of hand­ing out fly­ers, they recruit­ed near­ly 400 peo­ple to watch videos. Some saw a video pur­port­ed­ly describ­ing the con­clu­sions from a sci­en­tif­ic con­fer­ence about how unpre­dictable and ran­dom our lives are, accom­pa­nied by chaot­ic graphs and rolling dice. Oth­ers saw a sim­i­lar video, but with the oppo­site mes­sage, about life’s under­ly­ing order and struc­ture. A final group saw a video about the his­to­ry of trains.

Com­pared to the oth­er two groups, those who watched the chaos video report­ed more inten­tions to savor life. They said that they should enjoy the present and appre­ci­ate sim­ple things, and would linger on good feel­ings if some­thing won­der­ful hap­pened to them or a friend.

A final set of find­ings sug­gests that this effect does trans­late to every­day life, even if you don’t hap­pen to come across a video or fly­er about uncer­tain­ty. Here, researchers recruit­ed over 6,000 peo­ple and pinged them up to a dozen times a day, ask­ing how chaot­ic and unpre­dictable the world felt in that moment and whether they were savor­ing the present.

It turned out that when the world felt messy, peo­ple were more like­ly to be savor­ing their lives a few hours lat­er, at the next ping.

Of course, the relent­less uncer­tain­ty of the pan­dem­ic doesn’t lend itself to feel­ing mind­ful and appre­cia­tive all the time. But Gre­go­ry sus­pects that this pat­tern still holds.

Indeed, many peo­ple report­ed feel­ing grate­ful ear­ly on in the pan­dem­ic. One of our Thnx4 mem­bers, for exam­ple, jour­naled about miss­ing out on her dai­ly social­iz­ing at the neigh­bor­hood café and instead mak­ing small talk with strangers on her morn­ing walk. “It remind­ed me not only to appre­ci­ate but to seek pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence,” she wrote.

While savor­ing may hap­pen nat­u­ral­ly, it’s also some­thing we can prac­tice delib­er­ate­ly when life feels unset­tling. For exam­ple, you might share your good news or grat­i­tude with oth­ers, or tune into the enjoy­able sights, sounds, and smells around you. When you work on con­trol­ling your atten­tion this way, Gre­go­ry says, you may feel like you have more con­trol over your life in general.

– Kira M. New­man is the man­ag­ing edi­tor of Greater Good. Based at UC-Berke­ley, Greater Good high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tif­ic research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. Copy­right Greater Good.

The Study:

Be here now: Per­cep­tions of uncer­tain­ty enhance savor­ing (Emo­tion). From the Abstract:

• Savoring—an emo­tion-reg­u­la­tion strat­e­gy that involves delib­er­ate­ly upreg­u­lat­ing pos­i­tive affect—has many ben­e­fits, but what enhances savor­ing in the present moment? Draw­ing from life-his­to­ry the­o­ry, affec­tive and devel­op­men­tal sci­ence, and social-psy­cho­log­i­cal frame­works, we exam­ined the idea that per­cep­tions of uncertainty––perceiving the world as ran­dom and unpredictable—enhance sub­se­quent savor­ing. In a large expe­ri­ence-sam­pling study (Study 1, N = 6,680), we found that indi­vid­u­als who per­ceived more uncer­tain­ty showed increas­es in sub­se­quent savor­ing in their dai­ly lives. In a pre­reg­is­tered exper­i­ment (Study 2, N = 397), indi­vid­u­als who watched a film that induced uncer­tain­ty (vs. order or a con­trol con­di­tion) sub­se­quent­ly report­ed high­er savor­ing inten­tions. Final­ly, in a field exper­i­ment on a busy urban street (Study 3, N = 201), we found that passers­by who received fliers that induced uncer­tain­ty (vs. order) sub­se­quent­ly engaged in more savor­ing behav­ior by stop­ping to smell a bou­quet of ros­es. These find­ings from three stud­ies with diverse sam­ples and method­olo­gies under­score an upside to the specter of uncer­tain­ty: it can cause peo­ple to savor the pos­i­tives of the present.

The Study in Context:

• New book on how to prac­tice mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion with humor and playfulness
• To low­er stress lev­els and improve prob­lem-solv­ing, prac­tice cog­ni­tive refram­ing instead of venting
• Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress
• Study: A com­bined teach­ing + app grat­i­tude pro­gram helps ado­les­cents address anx­i­ety and improve men­tal health
• Test your stress lev­el with this quick brain teaser