Navigating the Need for Cognitive Closure

Writing Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic

Even while most of us are shut at home, we’re stretching our ability to adapt to changing realities and fluid public health situations.

There’s so much we do not know yet about the virus or how to handle it. Advice that seemed solid four weeks ago now appears quaint or naïve.

The current situation is a perfect laboratory for communicating about topics for which accepted wisdom is in flux. The lessons we learn now can serve us going forward, when we tackle other situations that are similarly ambiguous, even if less deadly.

Here’s the challenge: people want certainty, not ambiguity.

We’re wired to find patterns, infer causes, and create comfortable working hypotheses about situations we don’t truly understand.

That’s all fine until we have to change our theories.

We find patterns in uncertainty

The other day, my husband and I took a long walk on an empty, foggy beach. The mist rolled off the waves and across the sand, obscuring the shoreline ahead. The lone runner that passed us dissolved eerily into the grey.