Women and anxious people show distinct types of underconfidence

Women and people with anxiety are both prone to low confidence in their own abilities, but a new study by University College London (UCL) researchers has found that the two groups are prone to two distinct types of underconfidence.

When they took more time to reflect on their answers in a simple experimental task, people with anxiety grew less confident in their answers, while women who were underconfident gained confidence.

Lead author, Dr Sucharit Katyal, who completed the work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research before moving to the University of Copenhagen, said: "Previous studies have shown that women and people with anxiety are more prone to being underconfident in their abilities, even without any difference in actual abilities. But here, we wanted to find out whether women are underconfident in the same way that those with anxiety tend to lack confidence."

For the study, published in Psychological Medicine, the researchers pulled together evidence from two of their previously published studies, where a total of 1,447 participants had been asked to answer a simple question in a task, such as "Are there more red berries or purple berries shown in this image?" They were also asked to say how confident they were in their answers. In both studies, the researchers measured the time participants took before answering how confident they were.

The authors of the new paper also developed a dynamic computational model that helped to explain how people's confidence evolves over time.

The researchers found that people who reported high anxiety levels became even less confident the longer they took to complete the task, compared to those with low anxiety. The analysis suggested that more time for introspection allows for a mental process of negative rumination, which can further lower the confidence of people with anxiety as time elapses.

Conversely, the difference in confidence levels between men and women shrank the longer it took participants to complete the task; even though women in the study were initially underconfident compared to men, on average, this difference diminished as time elapsed. The researchers say their analysis suggested that men and women typically apply different thresholds to evaluate their own certainty about something, translating similar assessments of their own thoughts and beliefs into different levels of confidence.

The researchers say that for people who are underconfident but aren't prone to anxiety, allowing more time to process decisions might help them to feel more confident in their judgements.

Dr Katyal said: "These results show that underconfidence is not a single phenomenon with a single cause, as we identified two different types of underconfidence – one that tends to affect people with anxiety, and one more common among women. Different groups arrive at similar patterns of self-underestimation through very different routes."

The authors say their findings highlight the importance of personalised approaches to both mental health treatment and efforts to address societal disparities in confidence.

Senior author Professor Steve Fleming (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) said: "By revealing the mechanisms behind these biases, we may be able to design targeted interventions – for example, helping anxious individuals interrupt the accumulation of negative self-evaluations, or encouraging slower, more reflective decision-making to counteract gender-related confidence gaps."