Uncertainty as an anxiety cue at high and low levels of threat.

Background And Objectives: Intolerance of uncertainty and the overestimation of threat contribute to the maintenance of anxiety; however, the interaction between uncertainty and threat perception has not been examined empirically. The current study examined the extent to which explicitness of uncertainty is involved in perceptions of, and responses to, scenarios about threatening situations.

Methods: A series of systematically varied scenarios were used to examine whether manipulating uncertainty (implicit vs.