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Updated: Jan 16, 2026

Using the Threat Probability Task to Assess Anxiety and Fear During Uncertain and Certain Threat
Published on: September 12, 2014
Gender and anxiety reveal distinct computational sources of underconfidence
Sucharit Katyal1,2, Stephen M Fleming2,3
1Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Background:
Confidence exhibits systematic individual differences across mental health, gender, and age. However, it remains unknown whether these distinct sources of metacognitive bias have common or distinct computational origins.
Methods:
To address this question, we developed a novel dynamic computational model of metacognition to study the temporal evolution of underconfidence associated with individual differences in transdiagnostic anxiety symptoms and gender in samples of online participants (total N = 1,447).
Results:
We found that underconfidence associated with anxiety symptoms became more prominent the longer individuals took to make metacognitive judgments - suggesting that it is exacerbated by additional time for introspection. In contrast, gender-related underconfidence decreased with greater metacognitive judgment time - suggesting that additional time for introspection is able to remediate prepotent biases. Our computational model of confidence explained these effects - while both gender and anxiety symptoms involved shifts in confidence criteria, only anxiety symptoms involved a temporal accumulation of negatively biased evidence about one's ability.
Conclusions:
Our study reveals multiple computational pathways to the formation of underconfidence, in turn highlighting specific potential mechanisms for its remediation.
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Anxiety: Overview
Individuals with anxiety often experience a range of physical and emotional symptoms, including sweating, trembling, tachycardia, and disturbances in sleep patterns. These symptoms vary in intensity and frequency but are generally disruptive and distressing.

