Psychology Today: How Anxiety and Depression May Interfere With Decision-Making

Dealing with uncertainty is an unavoidable part of life, and for many, it can be a major source of stress and anxiety. However, not everyone handles this challenge in the same way—and some strategies may be better than others.

Recent research suggests that anxiety and depression may be associated with less adaptive approaches to resolving uncertainty. Take a second to consider how you tend to deal with uncertain situations. What types of strategies do you use? How effective do you think they are?

These questions relate to two important concepts in recent research: reflection and information-seeking.

If you don’t have enough information, you might find ways to increase your level of confidence before committing to a choice.

Specifically, information-seeking is when a person comes up with a strategy to figure out the best way to achieve their goals.

Recent studies in psychology and neuroscience are helping to improve our understanding of reflective thinking and information-seeking, and how they may be affected by emotional disorders.

A recent study in our lab found that individuals with greater symptoms of anxiety and depression displayed less information-seeking and less reflection. Another recent study found that information-seeking was reduced specifically by the bodily aspects of anxiety, such as a racing heart, fast breathing, and muscle tension. These and other studies showing reduced information-seeking under stress are helping us to better understand the ways anxiety and depression may interfere with healthy decision-making

Reflection involves “stepping back” before making a decision to consider how much information you actually have and how confident you should be that you know the best course of action.

In a kind of vicious cycle, too little information-seeking may play an important role in maintaining emotional disorders. This is because individuals with emotional disorders are often very confident that bad things will happen if they enter specific situations, and so naturally they avoid those situations. However, reflection can sometimes suggest that this confidence is based on insufficient information.

Individuals can be seen as “jumping to conclusions” about what would happen if they took certain actions, leading them to avoid situations that would, in fact, improve their wellbeing. Reflecting on their level of confidence, the individuals in each example realized they needed more information, and sought it out. This allowed them to learn what they needed to know to make better choices for their wellbeing. Therapy can be a method for this process: helping individuals reflect on the limited evidence they may have for certain expectations and then helping them make plans to gain more information.

What might this mean if you are currently struggling with anxiety or depression? One thing these results suggest is that it might be helpful to reflect on whether there are any situations (or thoughts or emotions) you are avoiding, and on what you expect might happen if you stopped avoiding them.

Even if you find yourself in uncomfortable situations, you might be surprised to find you can handle them better than you expected. You might also find that approaching these situations makes other aspects of your life better (e.g., getting more time with friends, getting more exercise, getting more work done, etc.). This reflective, information-seeking process is a big part of what people learn to do in therapies like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT;) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; ).

The studies mentioned above now offer a better understanding of these processes, in controlled lab environments. But it's important to stress that there is still a lot we do not know.

Overall, we hope that this line of research will help us better understand the mechanisms that lead to healthy and unhealthy decision-making and to uncover new ways we might increase healthy decision processes in those struggling with emotional disorders.

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#Anxiety #Depression #EmotionalRegulation #DecisionMaking #Reflection