A considerable body of economic folk wisdom (backed by some efforts at formal modeling, though this turns out to be tricky to characterize definitively) views “increased uncertainty” as associated with a decline in investment. The presumption here is that business investors are uncertainty averse. One somewhat contrary result comes from the field of romance, where people appear to find uncertainty as such attractive:
This research qualifies a social psychological truism: that people like others who like them (the reciprocity principle). College women viewed the Facebook profiles of four male students who had previously seen their profiles. They were told that the men (a) liked them a lot, (b) liked them only an average amount, or (c) liked them either a lot or an average amount (uncertain condition). Comparison of the first two conditions yielded results consistent with the reciprocity principle. Participants were more attracted to men who liked them a lot than to men who liked them an average amount. Results for the uncertain condition, however, were consistent with research on the pleasures of uncertainty. Participants in the uncertain condition were most attracted to the men-even more attracted than were participants who were told that the men liked them a lot. Uncertain participants reported thinking about the men the most, and this increased their attraction toward the men.
I actually don’t have any idea about how or why this connects to the economic situation, it just showed up when I was googling for papers on uncertainty.
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