A computational lens on the transdiagnostic nature of intolerance of uncertainty

People radically differ in how they cope with uncertainty. Clinical researchers describe a dispositional characteristic known as “intolerance of uncertainty”, a tendency to find uncertainty aversive. Recent research in computational psychiatry has leveraged theoretical advances in the cognitive sciences to understand more about the mechanisms underlying intolerance of uncertainty across psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. Under this framework, apparent difficulties in coping with the unknown can originate from alterations in how people estimate, represent, and respond to different forms of uncertainty. In this review, we first outline the concept of intolerance of uncertainty within its clinical context, and we argue that individual differences in the inferences about uncertainty may provide a holistic representation of this construct. We then review the evidence linking psychopathology to different computationally specified forms of uncertainty. We also discuss the implications of the computational approach for behavioural and pharmacological interventions, as well as the importance of different cognitive domains and subjective experiences in studying uncertainty processing.