Levels Of Tolerance For Ambiguity Research Articles

Coping Behavior in Young People with Different Levels of Ambiguity Tolerance

In the modern world, the growing uncertainty becomes a challenge for coping behavior as the current global changes bring about adaptive transformations in people. One’s coping strategies depend on one’s attitude towards uncertainty, which expresses itself via the construct of tolerance / intolerance to ambiguity. Coping strategies, in their turn, define the way one’s psychological adaptation unfolds under stress. The research objective was to determine the relationship between the coping pattern and the level of ambiguity tolerance in young people. The study involved 81 people aged 17–39 (22.48 ± 5.34 y.o.). Such coping strategies as accepting responsibility, avoidance, planful problem solving, and positive reassessment demonstrated a correlation between the coping behavior pattern and the ambiguity tolerance. In some cases, the strategy of accepting responsibility lost its adaptive focus. Adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies were used to describe the relationships between the level of frustration and subjective well-being. The research revealed a strong connection between ambiguity tolerance and frustration, as well as between ambiguity tolerance and subjective well-being. The article also introduces an analysis of self-reports made by the respondents regarding their emotional and subjective assessment of ambiguity tolerance.

Investigating ESL students' perceptions of ambiguity tolerance-An Analytical case study at Jizan University KSA

The objective of this study is to elucidate the perspective of students' tolerance of ambiguity to enhance proficiency in English as a secondary language. The aptitude to tolerate ambiguity, commonly referred to as AT, plays a crucial role in the process of language acquisition. It pertains to an individual's aptitude to manage and adapt to unfamiliar and uncertain aspects of the target language being learned. This skill is precious in comprehending and interpreting new information more effectively and flexibly. By cultivating AT, language learners can augment their overall proficiency, ultimately achieving greater fluency and mastery of the language they are studying. The interpretation of an ambiguous piece of language reflects the level of tolerance or intolerance of a language learner, as well as their capacity to endure the structure of the language and its impact on their emotional perception of progress. To illuminate the concern, a group of 110 students, consisting of 26 at the preparatory level, 50 at the proficient level, and 34 at the master's level in the English department at Jizan University, responded to a questionnaire comprising 12 items. The questionnaire focused on the Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale (SLTAS), modified by Erten and Topkaya in 2009. To feature a circumstantial perspective, A comprehensive assessment was conducted on students across various levels to evaluate students' capacity to tolerate ambiguity. It is evident from the study results that students must acquire the necessary skills to navigate and comprehend language structures that may be unclear or open to interpretation because of their high ambiguity tolerance. Additionally, findings indicate no significant difference exists in levels of ambiguity tolerance among students categorized by proficiency as preparatory, proficient, or master. Furthermore, four open-ended questions were executed to limited introductory, proficient and master levels, each aiming to measure the coherence between the statistical findings and data interpretation. The outcomes derived from the open-ended inquiries aligned with the most recently scrutinized studies.

What influences individuals' tolerance for ambiguity? Exploring the role of social comparison orientation, tendency to maximize and feel regret

Situations marked with ambiguity can induce an aversion due to heightened fear of the unknown augmented by individual differences in ambiguity tolerance levels (Einhorn & Hogarth, 1985). Under such situations, an individual's ambiguity tolerance levels can be influenced based on the need to compare with others for ability-related or opinion-related social comparisons. Moreover, specific personality dispositions and emotions like the tendency to maximize and proneness to feel regret are prone to be sensitive towards social comparison effects. Hence, by employing two survey studies across different cultural backgrounds of the Indian context (N = 259) and US context (N = 284), this study aims to examine the under-researched relation between an individual's social comparison orientation (SCO) and tolerance for ambiguity (ToA), along with the emotional disposition traits of maximization and proneness to regret. The results show that the relationship is significant across both survey studies. However, only for ability-related social comparisons. While maximization tendency came as a significant predictor in the Indian context, in the US context, proneness to feel regret came as a significant predictor between the relation of SCO and ToA. The results show that comparing with others influences the tolerance for ambiguity. However, different personality traits reflective of collectivist vs individualistic cultural backgrounds also are a significant predictor of this relation.

An Investigation Into the Interplay Between Chinese EFL Teachers' Emotional Intelligence, Ambiguity Tolerance, and Work Engagement.

Teachers' work engagement is regarded as a critical issue in educational contexts, so the emotional factors and personality traits, and their effects on teacher engagement have drawn the attention of investigators. This study seeks to investigate the relationship between teachers' emotional intelligence, ambiguity tolerance, and work engagement. Moreover, this study tries to investigate the contribution of emotional intelligence and ambiguity tolerance to teachers' work engagement. To do so, 322 teachers (96 males and 226 females) participated in this study. Schutte's Self Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT), Multiple Stimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance Scale-II (MSTAT-II), and Self-report engagement Questionnaire were used in this study. The statistical techniques used in this study are the Spearman Rho test and ANOVA. The findings showed that there are significant correlations between work engagement, emotional intelligence, and ambiguity tolerance. Comparing the predictability power, teachers' emotional intelligence (B = 0.611) proved to have a higher index compared to their index of ambiguity tolerance (B = 0.2). This study concluded that emotionally intelligent teachers and teachers with higher levels of ambiguity tolerance are more engaged in the EFL contexts. Moreover, the study has some pedagogical implications and suggestions for different teacher educators, policy-makers, and advisors. The ideas can improve their awareness of teachers' emotional intelligence, ambiguity tolerance, and work engagement in educational environments.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ТОЛЕРАНТНОСТИ К НЕОПРЕДЕЛЕННОСТИ У СТУДЕНТОВ СОЦИАЛЬНО-ГУМАНИТАРНЫХ НАПРАВЛЕНИЙ ПОДГОТОВКИ

The article presents the results of research on ambiguity tolerance in Social Sciences and Humanities students representing different years of study (freshmen, sophomore, junior), different programs (State and Municipal Administration, Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Employment Psychology, Law), and different levels of ambiguity tolerance (low, medium, high). The findings indicate differences in ambiguity tolerance across the different levels (years) of the education process. Freshmen are more tolerant toward ambiguity than sophomores. In turn, sophomores show more ambiguity tolerance than juniors. This can be attributed to the greater openness of students to new experiences at the initial stages of their education versus their preference for stability of the learning process and psychological comfort at the later stages. Students specializing in psychology showed the lowest levels of ambiguity tolerance. All respondents with a positive attitude toward uncertainty were found to demonstrate less prominent negativity of mood, less sensitivity, and less anxiety, all this observed alongside a greater positivity of mood, greater activity, greater initiative, greater sociability, more prominent desire to be in the center of attention, and greater readiness to solve problems in socially acceptable ways. Furthermore, higher levels of ambiguity tolerance correspond to lower neuroticism in State and Municipal Administration and Employment Psychology students, lower emotional sensitivity in Law students and Clinical Psychology students, and greater extraversion in Psychology and Clinical Psychology students. The most prominent joint contribution to the researched phenomenon is made by the generalized indicators (factors) of character accentuation, especially in the group of Clinical Psychology students. Thus, the paper reveals the characteristics of ambiguity tolerance in the students of Social Sciences and Humanities. This topic is of value to both science and practice, it follows the modern trends in the development of the professional sphere, yet remains understudied. This work expands the knowledge of ambiguity tolerance as a complex personal construct.

Ambiguity tolerance and confusion avoidance in the intent to purchase farmed fish

ABSTRACT Aquaculture products are presently becoming a crucial part of consumers’ diets. However, asymmetric information regarding farmed fish exposes consumers to ambiguity and often makes them confused. Therefore, this study aims to ascertain the levels of ambiguity tolerance (AT) and confusion avoidance (CA) related to farmed fish and to test if consumers’ AT and CA influence their purchase intent (PI) of such fish. The impact of demographics on consumers’ CA and AT is also explored. The data were obtained through a survey conducted on a randomly selected sample of 1053 households who either purchase and have purchased fish. The collected data were analyzed employing explorative factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and a simple regression model. The study demonstrates that AT had a positive and significant impact on the PI of farmed fish, and also reduced CA. However, the current high level of CA does not influence the PI of farmed fish.

Ambiguity Tolerance and Prospective Specialty Choice Among Third-Year Medical Students.

Poor tolerance of ambiguity is consequential in clinical practice, and has been linked to avoidance of family medicine, in which there is inherently more ambiguity. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and prospective specialty choice of medical students in their third year of medical school. This stage of medical training is of particular importance as students develop clinical reasoning skills and encounter clinical ambiguity. This was a cross-sectional study using an online survey. Sixty-one third-year medical students (62% response rate) from a large Canadian university completed the survey with a validated measure of ambiguity tolerance (the 29-item Tolerance of Ambiguity in Medical Students and Doctors scale) and their top three specialty choices. Specialty choices were subsequently grouped into two categories: family medicine (FM) and non-family medicine (non-FM) specialties. There was no significant mean difference in tolerance of ambiguity between students who reported interest in FM and students interested in non-FM specialties. Similarly, we observed no significant difference in tolerance of ambiguity between female and male students. Older students reported higher levels of ambiguity tolerance. Older students were also more likely to report FM as one of their top three specialty choices. Qualitative studies are needed to explore possible reasons for the observed results, including the effects of digital information resources and clinical decision-making tools on medical students' ambiguity tolerance. Medical educators should be aware that some students may require explicit training in how to respond to ambiguity.

Introducing WebQuests in Mathematics: A Study of Qatari Students’ Reactions and Emotions

There is a need to investigate didactic strategies that can enhance engagement in science and mathematics education. This paper reports on the introduction of WebQuests, as part of collaborative inquiry, to enhance students’ engagement in their mathematics lessons in Qatar. We present interview data gathered from eight student focus groups (grades 5 to 9) before and after the introduction of WebQuest lessons. Constant comparative analysis was used to examine students’ reactions to using WebQuests in developing student-directed learning and collaboration in relation to support for learning. The analysis identified prospective reactions that were often confirmed retrospectively following the WebQuest lessons. These reactions were further analysed as external expressions of affect encoded by trait-like emotions that were similar to Goldin et al.’s (2011) notion of engagement structures. We suggest that the confirmation of reactions and emotions was influenced by students’ levels of tolerance for ambiguity as a common element across engagement structures.

REALIZABILITY OF PERSONAL VALUES AT DIFFERENT LEVEL OF TOLERANCE FOR AMBIGUITY

Drawing on the idea of the need for a balance of external and internal ambiguity, we proposed a hypothesis that the difference in meaning types of values is defined by the degree of barrier-feasibility of meaning-formation processes in the context of the realization of personal values in life. This assumption was checked by comparing the contrasting groups on tolerance for ambiguity (n = 59 and n = 60). These groups were created on the basis of data from 227 respondents collected with D. McLain's Multiple Stimulus Types Ambiguity Tolerance Scale (MSTAT). The realizability and barrier indices for twelve terminal values (M. Rokich) and the individual realizability indices of the values of each participant were compared. Higher realizability of personal values was found in highly tolerant subjects. Among low-tolerance subjects levels of barrier values were higher. We identified values, the meaning types of which differ to the greatest and least degree in people with different levels of tolerance for ambiguity. The data obtained deepens the understanding of the cycles of human existential interaction with the world.

Ambiguity Tolerance Toward Nonbinary Sexuality Concepts: Evidence from British Newspapers

abstractHumans tend to construct their worldview via binaries, that is, two distinct, nonoverlapping elements, such as the juxtapositions of human–animal, human–machine, or male–female. Our research focuses on the binary categories of “heterosexuality–homosexuality” and explores how stable or malleable they are. For this, the authors analyze newspaper coverage of sexuality concepts in the United Kingdom from 1995 to 2010 and quantify if and how tolerance toward ambiguous concepts including “bisexuality” vary across time as well as with gender, political opinion, and expertise. Our findings indicate a distinct “millennial effect” of intolerance toward sexual ambiguity, suggesting that resistance against ambiguity rears up during periods of instability. Conversely, we found higher levels of ambiguity tolerance in left-wing newspapers, broadsheet publications, female journalists, and expert writers, as opposed to right-wing newspapers, tabloid publications, male journalists, and novice writers. Our results can help to better understand to what degree concepts related to human sexuality are relatively hard-wired or rather fluid social categories.

YDİ Öğrenenlerin Belirsizlik Toleransı Üzerine olan Algılarını Keşfetme: Sakarya Üniversitesi Örneği

This study aims to investigate the perceptions of learners’ tolerance of ambiguity in the process of learning a foreign language. One of the language learning variables is ambiguity tolerance (AT) which can be defined as an attitude to understand the target structure with insufficient knowledge and to what extent learners tolerate the unknown items in the target language. Reacting the “ambiguous” structure shows whether a language learner is tolerant or intolerant; or to what extent learner tolerates the structure and how the feelings of the learners affect and shape their achievement on the degree of tolerance. A total of 109 students (43 preparatory class and 66 first-year) in English Language Teaching (ELT) department have responded to a 12-item questionnaire of Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale (SLTAS) which was modified by Erten and Topkaya (2009) for the purpose of shedding light on this issue. In order to highlight a more detailed perception, the scale was implemented on different levels of students to see their levels of avoiding ambiguity tolerance. The results indicated that students do not appear to tolerate ambiguous language structures well because of their high level of ambiguity tolerance. In addition, results have revealed that there is no significant difference between preparatory classes and first-year students’ levels of ambiguity tolerance. A open-ended questions consisting of four open-ended questions was carried out with six preparatory class and five first-year students with the aim of measuring the consistency between the statistical results and the results of the content analysis. The data obtained from the open-ended questions on tolerance of ambiguity revealed parallel results with some of the the studies reviewed in the current study.

Are Turkish EFL pre-service teachers ready to manage intercultural challenges?

English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers, as the backbone of language teaching system, are expected to raise the awareness level of students’ intercultural communication competence by helping them relate their own culture to foreign cultures, empathise with foreign cultures’ perspectives and tolerate the ambiguities or differences. This study examines the relationship between certain personal factors such as age, gender, year of study, overseas experience and students’ preferences for Turkish movies over foreign ones and three predictors of intercultural communication competence namely, ambiguity tolerance, empathy and open-mindedness. The sample group of the study consisted of 145 prospective English teachers in the Educational Faculty of a state university in Turkey. The participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire consisting of two parts which investigated their background and perceived levels of ambiguity tolerance, open-mindedness and empathy in Turkish EFL context. The results indicated that half of pre-service EFL teachers had poor intercultural communication competence. In particular, males, the final-year students and those who had been abroad indicated higher levels of tolerance than their respective counterparts. Besides, age and students’ preferences for Turkish or foreign movies were not significant factors in any of the predictors of intercultural communication competence.

A Study of Interactions among Ambiguity Tolerance, Classroom Work Styles, and English Proficiency

<p>This article presents a preliminary investigation of the inter-relationships between English learners’ tolerance for ambiguity, their classroom work styles, and their level of English proficiency. The study population comprised 46 English as a foreign language (EFL) students attending a technical college in Taiwan. The findings indicated that a large percentage of these students had moderate to high levels of tolerance for ambiguity. In contrast to the findings of previous studies, our results showed no significant relationship between ambiguity tolerance and classroom work styles. The relationship between ambiguity tolerance and English proficiency in terms of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) scores was almost statistically significant. However, tolerance for ambiguity and classroom work styles showed a statistically significant association with English proficiency. Recommended extensions of the study are discussed, and general directions for future research are suggested. Teaching implementations are also proposed.<strong></strong></p>

Choosing creativity: the role of individual risk and ambiguity aversion on creative concept selection in engineering design

While creativity is often seen as an indispensable quality of engineering design, individuals often select conventional or previously successful options during the concept selection process due to the inherent risk associated with creative concepts and their inadvertent bias against creativity. However, little is actually known about what factors attribute to the promotion or filtering of these creative concepts during concept selection. To address this knowledge gap, an exploratory study was conducted with 38 undergraduate engineering students. This study was aimed at investigating the impact of individual risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, and student educational level on the selection and filtering of creative ideas during the concept selection process. The results from this study indicate that individuals’ ability to generate creative ideas is not significantly related to their preference for creative ideas during concept selection, but individual risk aversion and ambiguity aversion are significantly related to both creative concept selection and creative idea generation. Our results also revealed that first- and third-year students’ creative ability is affected differently by varying levels of tolerance for ambiguity. These results highlight the need for a more directed focus on creativity in engineering education in both concept creation and concept selection. These results also add to our understanding of creativity during concept selection and provide guidelines for enhancing the design process.

Ambiguity Tolerance of Students Matriculating to U.S. Medical Schools

To examine the psychometric adequacy of a tolerance for ambiguity (TFA) scale for use with medical students. Also, to examine the relationship of TFA to a variety of demographic and personal variables in a national sample of entering U.S. medical students. The authors used data from the 2013 Association of American Medical Colleges Matriculating Student Questionnaire in which questions on TFA were included for the first time that year. Data from 13,867 entering medical students were analyzed to examine the psychometric properties of the TFA scale. In addition, the relationships of TFA to sex, age, perceived stress, and desire to work in an underserved area were analyzed. Finally, the relationship of TFA to specialty preference was examined. The TFA scale was found to be psychometrically adequate for use in a medical student population. TFA was found to be higher in men and in older students. Lower TFA was associated with higher perceived stress levels. Students with higher TFA were more likely to express desire to work in an underserved area. Different levels of TFA may be associated with certain specialty preferences. These findings support the assessment of TFA to understand how this personal characteristic may interact with the medical school experience and with specialty choice. Longitudinal work in this area will be critical to increase this understanding.

Organizational and knowledge management related antecedents of knowledge use: the moderating effect of ambiguity tolerance

To leverage their knowledge resources, many organizations deploy knowledge management systems (KMS), which contain at their core a knowledge repository. Successful use of the knowledge/repository depends largely on knowledge workers who must contribute to the knowledge base as well as use those knowledge objects. We develop and validate an empirical model that explains mechanisms required to reduce knowledge gaps in a firm or business unit, through knowledge contribution and use or reuse. Using the theory of planned behavior and its derivative the technology acceptance model, we find that a feature rich user friendly KMS combined with extrinsic rewards (or incentives) and knowledge self-efficacy are critical to KM success. Tolerance of ambiguity (a personal trait) is a key influence in the causal relationship between incentives and knowledge gaps as well as knowledge self-efficacy and knowledge gaps. The main findings of this study are (1) for ambiguity intolerant individuals, incentives and self-efficacy are as important as the KMS as motivators for knowledge sharing and use, (2) for this group, it is necessary to stress the importance of KM as a means of social persuasion in building knowledge self-efficacy, (3) for the ambiguity tolerant, incentives are not required, and self efficacy is self-determined i.e., KM champions are not required to highlight the importance of KM; in fact the technology (KMS) is all important, a finding that negates conventional wisdom that technology is merely an enabler. In summary, a one-size fits all mindset is not effective, a firm must carefully consider the ambiguity tolerance levels of employees before forging ahead with KM efforts. This becomes all the more important to practitioners because of the recently highlighted differences in ambiguity tolerance between "Millennials" and" Generation Xers". In addition to theory testing in KM, this research also informs KM practice.

Analysing anaphoric ambiguity in natural language requirements

Many requirements documents are written in natural language (NL). However, with the flexibility of NL comes the risk of introducing unwanted ambiguities in the requirements and misunderstandings between stakeholders. In this paper, we describe an automated approach to identify potentially nocuous ambiguity, which occurs when text is interpreted differently by different readers. We concentrate on anaphoric ambiguity, which occurs when readers may disagree on how pronouns should be interpreted. We describe a number of heuristics, each of which captures information that may lead a reader to favor a particular interpretation of the text. We use these heuristics to build a classifier, which in turn predicts the degree to which particular interpretations are preferred. We collected multiple human judgements on the interpretation of requirements exhibiting anaphoric ambiguity and showed how the distribution of these judgements can be used to assess whether a particular instance of ambiguity is nocuous. Given a requirements document written in natural language, our approach can identify sentences that contain anaphoric ambiguity, and use the classifier to alert the requirements writer of text that runs the risk of misinterpretation. We report on a series of experiments that we conducted to evaluate the performance of the automated system we developed to support our approach. The results show that the system achieves high recall with a consistent improvement on baseline precision subject to some ambiguity tolerance levels, allowing us to explore and highlight realistic and potentially problematic ambiguities in actual requirements documents.

Ambiguity tolerance levels in spanish accounting students: a comparative study

Background- Ambiguity is the perception of inadequate information arising from certain characteristics of a situation. In a situation that demands evaluation or choice, the perception of ambiguity is threatening and presents a cognitive challenge. Research has examined AT (Ambiguity Tolerance) levels and their influence on decision making in business and financial scenarios. Aims- This paper aims to investigate the AT levels of a sample of accounting students and to compare them with the AT levels of students on other social sciences degree courses. Instrument and Sample- The instrument used is the Spanish version of MSTAT-II (McLain, 2008). The sample is composed of students enrolled on various degree courses at a Spanish University (Universidad de Huelva). Results and implications- The results of the questionnaire present high levels of internal consistency with the sample. Accounting students are shown to present lower levels of AT than students enrolled on other social sciences degree courses. The implications for universities and education are discussed.

The impact of differences in ambiguity tolerance on accounting standard interpretation: implications and responses

Motivated by both the pervasiveness of ambiguity in accounting and the desire to achieve comparability in financial reporting, this study investigates the relationship between different levels of ambiguity tolerance, provisions of accounting standards that might reduce ambiguity and accounting judgements. We propose that different levels of ambiguity tolerance lead to different judgements being made in the face of similar circumstances. We further propose, contrary to what might be expected, that the provision of guidance in accounting standards will exacerbate the differences in judgement rather than reduce them. While we find only weak support for the belief that different levels of ambiguity tolerance will lead to different judgements, the provision of guidance differentially affected the judgements made by those exhibiting high versus low levels of ambiguity tolerance. Our results suggest that comparability may be best served by not providing guidance relating to ambiguous accounting standard requirements.

The importance in accounting of ambiguity tolerance at the national level

PurposeThe aim of the research is to examine potential differences in the levels of ambiguity tolerance between Australian and Chinese accountants at the national, rather than individual, level.Design/methodology/approachAmbiguity tolerance levels of final year accounting students (proxying for entry level accountants) and first year accounting students from Australia and China were measured using the MacDonald AT‐20 Ambiguity Tolerance Index. Comparisons were made across the four subject pools with a view to identifying national level differences suggested by the cultural, sociological, historical, and contemporary issues impacting on the accounting profession in the two countries.FindingsEntry level accountants in China are less tolerant of ambiguity than their Australian counterparts. There are, however, no statistically significant differences in the levels of ambiguity tolerance between first year accounting students in China and Australia.Research limitations/implicationsThe research employed final year accounting students as surrogates for entry level accountants. Future research could usefully extend this research to practicing accountants at different ranks.Practical implicationsGiven the central role of ambiguity in contemporary accounting practice, the potential implications are broad. This is particularly the case with regard to the harmonization of accounting practices in that accountants with different tolerances for ambiguity might make different decisions in the face of similar accounting standards and circumstances. Interestingly, the results from the research suggest that differences in ambiguity tolerance are attributable to events occurring while students are studying.Originality/valueThis research examines ambiguity tolerance at the national level (rather than the individual level), thereby allowing practical implications to be prescribed.