Usually, we might assume that feeling confident about the future would be a positive thing, but research from New York University explains that this was not always the case during the Covid pandemic. The study shows that people who were certain about the future during the pandemic were most likely to ignore medical advice.

Similarly, people who were confident about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election were equally likely to believe it had been rigged in some way.

“People sometimes feel certain about the future, but, as natural as this feeling of ‘future certainty’ is to many, our research finds that it may have serious consequences,” the researchers explain. “In fact, certainty regarding the future of societal events is linked to disregarding the facts and even endangering others through antisocial behaviors.”

Sense of certainty

The researchers conducted three surveys to gauge people’s sense of future certainty during both the early stages of the pandemic and the 2020 Presidential Election. The volunteers were also asked to complete various tasks that were designed to test their knowledge of the matters at hand.

The results showed that those who were most certain about the future were less inclined to seek knowledge. They also tended to ignore inputs from medical experts and veer more towards conspiracy theories, which undermined their ability to perform well on the quiz. Indeed, a second study found that those who were more certain about the future were also less likely to engage in preventative actions.

Similar findings emerged in a third study around the 2020 election. Participants were asked how certain they were that their candidate would win two days before the election. They were then asked again after the election whether they thought the election was rigged in some way. The results showed that those who were most confident in the outcome of the election were also most likely to believe it was rigged, with these people also most inclined to endorse violence if their candidate lost.