Uncertainty Orientation and Trust in Close Relationships: Individual Differences in Cognitive Styles

Because coping with uncertainty is an important aspect of close relationships and is critical to issues of trust, the authors expected individual differences in uncertainty orientation to play a central role in shaping people's representations of their relationships. For a 3-week period, 77 couples completed a series of questionnaires and kept diaries on their interactions. As expected, certainty-oriented persons' need for cognitive closure …