Fatalistic Thinking and Ambiguity Attitudes

Fatalistic beliefs denote the perception of one’s life trajectory as predetermined by fate and a consequent attitude of resignation in the face of the unknown. Piloting one’s coping mechanisms employed under challenging circumstances, fatalism underlies the orientations involved in decision making. When it comes to the assessment of attitudes towards ambiguity, the ubiquitous context of such cognitive aspects renders their impact on choices a promising research field. This thesis questioned the effect of fatalistic outlooks on ambiguity attitudes in a sample of 58 individuals via an online survey. The emergent findings implied a weak positive association between the two concepts, but the outputs missed statistical significance. The insufficient evidence of an effect in this study, encompasses the constraint of a small sample size and the obtained results cannot be relied on as an accurate reflection of the “true” population association. The employment of a larger sample could have the potential to enhance the evidential value of the findings.