News Article:“Uncertainty Can Be More Stressful Than Clear Negative Feedback”
Original Article:“The Devil You Know: Neuroticism Predicts Neural Response to Uncertainty”
The article, “Uncertainty Can Be More Stressful Than Clear Negative Feedback” discusses the level of anxiety individuals suffer in a situation with three feedback outcomes. The article differentiates between the anxiety related to an uncertainty feedback and a complete negative feedback to a particular situation. The researchers administered a computerized time-estimation task, where the participants had to indicate when they thought one second had passed from the appearance of a symbol on the screen. After given a feedback (clear positive, clear negative, or uncertain feedback), the participants’ brain activity was measured. It was found that stronger responses were observed when given uncertain feedback compared to the negative feedback.
1) The most important claim that the news article claims about the study is the suggestion that neurotic individuals would rather receive clear negative feedback than uncertain feedback. This applies even when the outcome of the uncertainty can be positive. The original paper makes this claim; however more details of the findings are given in the original paper. The article glosses over the importance of the level of anxiety related to an individual’s personality profile. Specifically, the personality trait of Neuroticism and the anxiousness one would be when encountering an uncertain situation. Whereas the article skims over this point, the original paper focuses on this because it the basis to the researcher’s claims. The original paper makes a clear link that higher the neuroticism an individual has, the stronger the response to uncertainty.
2) In the conclusion section of the paper, the researchers make it key to set the point that as neuroticism increases, FRN amplitude following uncertain feedback is strong. As the relationship between neuroticism and uncertain feedback is made, the authors also make it vital to point out that they did not find a relationship between neuroticism and clearly negative feedback. This is a very important detail but it is left out of the article. As mentioned before, the article does not go in-depth to the importance of the neuroticism trait, thus, readers can be misguided into thinking that everybody is more stressed when there is an uncertain feedback rather than a negative feedback.
3) In the original paper, the authors make the claim that uncertainty plays a critical role in the relationship between neuroticism and the FRN amplitude. However because no such relationship neuroticism and the FRN amplitude can be made in relation to neutral feedback, the researchers suggest that further studies must be done. The article lacks to include this detail.
4) The news article suggests that the results of this study have important implications for human behavior. It suggest that individuals “prefer the devil they know over the devil they do not know.” The article, although also implying this, adds a level of specificity that individuals higher in neuroticism react more strongly to uncertainty. Thus, they claim that people would rather receive clear but negative information than endure the discomfort of uncertainty.
5) The purpose of the original is to find the response level to the unknown feedback, an area of research that has been overlooked. Past studies have focused on levels of anxiety in relation to negative feedback. This is mostly because it has found that individuals are more sensitive to threat when compared to positive feedback. The article does not mention past research and how this research the article is discussing differs from past studies in this area.
6) The news article does not discuss any alternate hypotheses that are not mentioned in the original paper. The article supports the claims of the original paper, and it treats it as facts