Uncertainty mindset intervention promotes uncertainty-as-enabling beliefs and modulates directed exploration

Uncertainty is prevalent in everyday decision-making and lies at the heart of the explore-exploit dilemma. Prior work has shown that psychological constructs related to uncertainty processing are associated with individual differences in exploration. Yet, it remains unclear whether interventions targeting beliefs about uncertainty can influence how people explore. In a randomized controlled study (total N  = 862, behavioural choices = 137,920), we administered a brief ~ 10-min uncertainty mindset intervention designed to promote the perspective that uncertainty offers opportunities and can be actively shaped by individual action, and examined whether it influences uncertainty-driven exploration. The intervention increased uncertainty-as-enabling mindsets and improved affective and cognitive outcomes relative to a control group. Using computational models of different exploration strategies, we demonstrated that the intervention did not uniformly increase the tendency to explore uncertain options. However, a non-preregistered analysis indicated that the intervention strengthened the association between uncertainty-as-enabling mindsets and directed exploration. These findings suggest that a brief, easily scalable intervention can enhance the extent to which uncertainty-related beliefs guide exploratory behaviour, with broader implications for well-being and adaptive functioning under uncertainty.