Your Second Thoughts May Be Distorted If You Have Anxiety, Study Finds
Why Overthinking Can Make Anxiety-Driven Doubt Worse
Taking time to reflect on your performance is often considered a good habit. But new research suggests that for people with anxiety symptoms, lingering on a decision may actually deepen self-doubt rather than resolve it.
A study conducted by researchers at University College London and the University of Copenhagen found that confidence changes over time in very different ways depending on the source of doubt. For individuals with anxiety, longer reflection leads to lower confidence. For women’s commonly observed underconfidence, the opposite is true: taking more time reduces the confidence gap.
The findings were published in Psychological Medicine and are based on data from 1,447 participants across four experiments.
Measuring Confidence Second by Second
Participants completed simple visual and memory-based decision-making tasks, such as identifying the most common color on a screen or recalling briefly presented objects. After each decision, they rated how confident they were and researchers recorded how long they took to provide that rating.
Participants also completed standardized questionnaires measuring anxiety symptoms, and gender differences were analyzed across all experiments. Trials with unusually fast or slow responses were excluded to maintain data quality.
Importantly, confidence was measured within seconds of each decision—capturing real-time self-evaluation rather than long-term reflection.
Anxiety and the “Snowball” Effect of Doubt
The central result was striking: among people with higher anxiety symptoms, confidence steadily declined the longer they spent evaluating their performance. Each additional moment of reflection widened the confidence gap between anxious and non-anxious participants.
This pattern appeared consistently across tasks and experiments, suggesting it reflects a general mechanism rather than a task-specific quirk.
The data indicate that anxious individuals don’t just start out less confident—they accumulate negative self-evaluations over time. As reflection continues, self-doubt compounds, creating a snowball effect that pulls confidence down even further.
Why Gender-Related Underconfidence Works Differently
Gender showed a very different pattern. On average, women reported lower confidence immediately after making decisions. However, as they took more time to reflect, their confidence increased. By the longest response times, the confidence difference between men and women had largely disappeared.
This suggests that gender-related underconfidence stems from an initial bias rather than ongoing negative rumination. Extra time appears to help override a snap judgment of “I’m probably wrong,” rather than reinforcing it.
What Computational Models Revealed
To explain these opposing effects, the researchers used a computational model based on drift-diffusion theory, which describes decision-making as a process of accumulating evidence over time.
They identified two distinct mechanisms that can reduce confidence:
A lower starting point (baseline underconfidence)
A time-dependent downward pull, where confidence erodes the longer someone reflects
When the model was fitted to individual data, anxiety symptoms were associated with both mechanisms: anxious participants started off less confident and continued to gather negatively biased evidence as time passed.
Gender-related underconfidence, in contrast, involved only the lower starting point, without the time-based accumulation of negative thoughts.
What This Means in Practice
The findings offer a possible explanation for rumination in anxiety. Extra reflection may give anxious individuals more opportunity to replay imagined mistakes or assume poor performance—even when nothing has objectively changed. Reflection, in this case, doesn’t clarify; it amplifies doubt.
For gender-related underconfidence, reflection appears to serve a corrective function, allowing people to reassess and regain confidence.
That said, the study focused on rapid confidence judgments in simple lab tasks, not complex real-world decisions. The reflection periods lasted only a few seconds, and it remains unclear whether the same dynamics apply to longer-term self-evaluation, creative work, or high-stakes professional decisions.
Still, the results suggest an important distinction: in anxious states, the first wave of doubt may not be reliable information. Knowing when reflection turns into rumination—and when it genuinely improves judgment—may be key to managing confidence effectively.