Intolerance of Ambiguity and Depression: A Cognitive Vulnerability Factor Linked to Hopelessness

A short-term (10-week) prospective study examined cognitive-vulnerability predictions concerning the onset of depression in a sample of “normal” college students, based on the notion that depression involves hopelessness about the future, i.e., the tendency to regard continued suffering as inevitable or certain. Individuals who are intolerant of ambiguity are hypothesized to be motivated to rapidly resolve uncertainties introduced by rumination about negative life events and yet to find themselves unable to escape the negative implications of this rumination; hence, to attain resolution, they adopt negative expectancies that they hold with certainty, that is, they ultimately come to experience depressive predictive certainty and depression (Andersen & Lyon, 1987; Andersen, 1990). These primary longitudinal hypotheses were supported by the data. That is, the interaction between ambiguity intolerance (at Time 1) and negative life events (occurring between Times 1 and 2) predicted both depressive predictive certainty (at Time 2) and depression over time (at Time 2), even when Time-1 depression was controlled. Moreover, depressive certainty also bore a highly significant relationship to depression when other variables were controlled. Hence, ambiguity intolerance appears to serve as a vulnerability factor both for the certainty of future suffering (hopelessness) and for depression. The findings are discussed in terms of cognitive models of depression.