¹⁶ It may be more difficult to see why the aforementioned attitudes would also reduce frustration due to aversion, or a negative reward. Let us consider aversion based on expecting that a bad thing is likely to happen, such as your neighbours starting a noisy renovation. Now, taking account of uncontrollability means you cannot really avoid the bad thing, at least not with any certainty. This means that the probability of the bad thing happening is larger than what you might have initially thought—your flat will be noisy for sure. Thus the expected reward is less than what you would have thought without taking uncontrollability into account. More precisely, it is more negative, since the probability of a negative reward is larger. Thus, frustration is reduced by reducing the expectation of reward by making the negative expectation even more negative. Likewise, thinking in terms of unsatisfactoriness (in the Buddhist sense) means thinking that the bad thing is likely to be really bad—the noise is probably going to be something quite unbelievable. Again, this reduces expected reward in the sense of making it even more negative, and what actually happens is less likely to give you a negative surprise and frustration. On the other hand, a classical Buddhist account would point out that impermanence means that the object of aversion will eventually disappear, which makes at least the feeling of aversion weaker. Clearly, it will give me some comfort knowing that the noise will not be there forever. However, putting uncertainty into the framework of the frustration equation is not straightforward in the case of aversion, or negative reward. Taking account of the various forms of uncertainty might mean that you realize that the bad thing, which you initially thought is certain, is actually less likely to happen than what you first estimated. Paradoxically, this increases the expected reward, because the negative reward is less likely to happen, and actually increases your frustration. Thus, uncertainty may need to be treated in separate ways depending on whether the reward is positive or negative.