Ambiguity tolerance

Ambiguity tolerance–intolerance is a construct that was first introduced in 1949 through the work of Else Frenkel-Brunswik while researching ethnocentrism in children and was perpetuated by her research of ambiguity intolerance in connection to authoritarian personality. It serves to define and measure how well an individual responds when presented with an event that results in an ambiguous stimuli or situation. In her study, she tested the notion that children who are ethnically prejudiced also tend to reject ambiguity more so than their peers. She studied children who ranked high and low on prejudice in a story recall test and then studied their responses to an ambiguous disc shaped figure. The children who scored high in prejudice were expected to take longer to give a response to the shape, less likely to make changes on their response, and less likely to change their perspectives. A study by Kenny and Ginsberg (1958) retesting Frenkel-Brunswik's original connection of ambiguity intolerance to ethnocentrism and authoritarian personality found that the results were unreplicable. However, it was discussed that this may be due to the fact that at the time the study was done incorrect methodology was used and that there lacked a concrete definition as to what the construct was. Most of the research on this subject was completed in the two decades after the publication of 'The Authoritarian Personality', however the construct is still studied in psychological research today. Budner gives three examples as to what could be considered ambiguous situations: a situation with no familiar cues, a situation in which there are many cues to be taken into consideration, and a situation in which cues suggest the existence of different structures to be adhered to.