Kate Sweeny is Professor of Psychology and Teresa and Byron Pollitt Endowed Term Chair at the University of California, Riverside, where she runs the Life Events Lab. She received her B.S. in 2002 from Furman University and her M.S. in 2003 and Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Florida where she studied social psychology with Dr James Shepperd. Her research examines two broad questions. First, how do people cope with acute and stressful moments of uncertainty, like the wait for important news? Second, how should doctors talk to their patients? To answer these questions, Professor Sweeny has studied law graduates awaiting news about the bar exam, patients awaiting biopsy results, researchers awaiting manuscript decisions, surgeons talking to their adult patients, and asthma specialists talking to paediatric patients, among many other topics and studies.
Zan Boag: To start with, could you define what ‘uncertainty’ means to you?
Kate Sweeny: Uncertainty is
