Not long ago, I shared some research suggesting a counterintuitive way to deal with doubt. Instead of trying to build confidence, sometimes it helps to learn to doubt your doubts.
Now another new study suggests that not all self-doubt works the same way, and that how you should respond to it depends on where it’s coming from in the first place.
Researchers at University College London and the University of Copenhagen conducted a study of more than 1,400 people and analyzed what happens after people make a decision but before they decide how confident they feel about it.
What they found is surprisingly simple, but powerful.
‘Negative rumination’
At first glance, the pattern looks familiar. People with higher anxiety tend to feel less confident in their performance. Women, on average, also report lower confidence than men, even when ability and outcomes are similar.
But the researchers found that these two forms of self-doubt are not the same thing at all. They come from different mental processes and evolve in opposite directions over time.
“Underconfidence is not a phenomenon with a single cause,” said lead author Sucharit Katyal. “People may end up with the same pattern of self-deprecation, but via completely different mental processes.”
For people with anxiety, the longer they spend thinking about a decision, the worse they feel about it. Extra reflection seems to give negative thoughts time to pile up.
Result: “more time for introspection allows for a mental process of negative rumination,” which can steadily lower confidence.
For women, the pattern flips. Initial confidence may start lower, but the more time spent reflecting, the more that gap shrinks. Given time to review the evidence, confidence rises.
“Women are typically less confident than men immediately after making a decision—but the difference diminishes when they have time to think things over,” Katyal explained. “For women, it can be beneficial to take time to consider major decisions. For people with anxiety, on the other hand, it is better to trust your first instinct.”
It all suggests that the same advice—“sleep on it,” “take time to reflect,” “trust your gut”—could help one person and hurt another.
This fits neatly with the earlier study I wrote about, which found that when people are questioning their ability to reach a long-term goal, they can sometimes stabilize their motivation by questioning their doubts instead.
That research was about interrupting the authority of negative thinking. This new study points to something just as important: timing.
If anxiety is involved, giving your mind more time to replay the decision may make the internal critic louder. If the confidence gap is more about an initial bias, giving yourself time may actually help correct it.
Put those ideas together and confidence isn’t just about what you think; it’s about when you think it.
What to do with this
Of course, sometimes lack of confidence is a feature, not a bug. The problem arises when you’ve actually done well or been correct and yet you begin to doubt your success.
The researchers are cautious, but they do point toward practical implications.
“By uncovering the mechanisms behind these biases, we can design targeted interventions,” Katyal said. The goal, he added, is “interrupting negative self-assessments in people with anxiety—and promoting reflection to reduce gender differences.”
So, if you know you’re prone to anxiety, be careful about over-processing decisions you’ve already made. Once you start replaying things repeatedly—what you said in a meeting, whether you answered a question well, whether you made the right call—you may actually be training yourself to feel less confident over time.
One useful habit here is to capture your first reaction. Right after finishing something important, quickly rate how you think it went—then, move on.
That initial judgment may be closer to reality than what your mind constructs after an hour of second-guessing.
If your confidence tends to start low, don’t assume that first impression is accurate. Give yourself time to examine the evidence.
What actually happened? What did you get right? What feedback did you receive?
The study suggests that reflection can help counteract an initial bias toward underestimating your performance.
Separate performance from interpretation. Both studies—this one and the earlier one on doubting your doubts—point to the same mental trap.
People often treat their immediate interpretation of events as if it were the objective truth. It rarely is.
So, instead of asking, “Was I terrible at that?” try asking, “What am I basing that on?”
That small shift slows down the process through which doubt turns into certainty.
Finally, put boundaries around post-decision thinking. If you tend to spiral, decide in advance how much time you’ll spend reviewing a decision.
Five minutes? Ten? Then stop.
Structure can prevent reflection from sliding into rumination.
Confidence isn’t just a personality trait. It’s something that shifts minute by minute, shaped by how you process what you’ve just done.
Sometimes, the difference comes down to a simple choice.
Other things:
A winter storm pummeled the Northeast on Monday, unleashing blizzard conditions that blanketed major cities in snow, brought travel to a standstill and caused mass power outages. The powerful nor’easter dumped more than 2 feet of snow across much of the Eastern Seaboard by the afternoon. More than 40 million people were under blizzard warnings from Maryland to Maine, as several states recorded hurricane-force wind gusts. (USA Today)
More dramatic fallout and accountability from the Epstein files in other countries, anyway: British police on Monday arrested Peter Mandelson, a former U.K. ambassador to the United States, in a misconduct probe stemming from his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein. It came days after a friendship with Epstein landed the former Prince Andrew in police custody. Both men are suspected of improperly passing U.K. government information to the disgraced U.S. financier. (AP)
At Mar-a-Lago, a North Carolina man who was fatally shot early Sunday as he allegedly attempted to enter President Trump’s in Florida was an avid supporter of the president, but was “fixated” on the Epstein files, those who knew him say. Austin Tucker Martin, 21, was armed with a shotgun and a gas canister when he encountered two Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy just inside Mar-a-Lago’s north gate. (The Independent)
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee, permanentty blocked public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s extensive report on the classified-documents case against President Trump — a resounding victory for Trump’s efforts to block public viewing of what probably would be damaging details about his retention of classified materials after he left the White House in 2021. (Wash Post)
How did Nicki Minaj raise her profile? She spent the past year transforming herself from a polarizing rap superstar into a high-profile conservative provocateur, lobbing viral attacks at Democratic leaders, boosting MAGA talking points and earning public praise from President Donald Trump and his allies. Meanwhile, a sophisticated army of bots was unconditionally praising and amplifying Minaj’s content — more than 18,000 of them — that drove algorithms to spread Minaj’s posts on X. Bot networks have become a familiar feature of modern politics since revelations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. (Politico)
Canadian officials have summoned leaders from OpenAI for a meeting following revelations that the company did not inform the authorities about a user whose account had been suspended months before she committed a mass murder in British Columbia. The country’s minister of artificial intelligence, Evan Solomon, said he was “deeply disturbed” by what he had learned of the company’s actions involving Jesse Van Rootselaar, the 18-year-old who the authorities say killed eight people in the rural community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. (NYT)
Osaka has received a hefty gift of 46 pounds worth of gold bars worth $3.6 million from an anonymous donor asking for its specific use: to fix the Japanese city’s dilapidated water pipes. “It’s a staggering amount and I was speechless,” the mayor said. “Tackling aging water pipes requires a huge investment, and I cannot thank enough for the donation.” (AP)
Thanks for reading. Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.
A sociologist Deborah Tannen wrote a book back in 1990 “You just don’t understand” where she talks about how (western culture) men and women are brought up and communicate differently. Girls are taught to be inclusive, while self sufficiency is more reinforced in boys. I think this plays a part in the differences found in those studies. As a woman, in my decision making, the more I have a chance to consider the impact of that choice not only on me but within the context of how it may affect others, the more confident I feel about my choice. For someone who is dealing with anxiety, when given time to ponder the effects of these decisions (and the pond ripples of that decision widen, so to speak) it can move them into a sense of overwhelm. I would wager that the ones who get more anxious and less confident as time goes by may also be ones who, once the choice is made, will lock into that choice and be less flexible to reconsider.
I’d gently call out the (8th) paragraph…”For people with anxiety,…”. Then 2 paragraphs later “For women the pattern is reversed..”
Implication that women aren’t people?