New research explains the root cause of persistent self doubt

Many people with anxiety or depression describe a constant sense of doubt, even when their performance matches that of others. Scientists have long puzzled over why this self-doubt persists, since individuals should be able to learn how capable they are by reflecting on their own results. A new study provides fresh insight into this mystery and suggests why confidence can remain low despite strong abilities and supportive feedback.

Researchers often study “metacognition,” the process of evaluating your own thoughts and performance. A team at University College London explored this idea by asking hundreds of participants to take part in a computer-based task. The activity centered on a fictional town called Fruitville, where players completed farming jobs that required sharp vision and good memory.

Each task required sorting or remembering details about different fruits. After each job, participants rated how confident they were in their choice. At the end of the session, they also gave an overall judgment of how well they thought they performed. This provided two different measures: local confidence, or confidence in each moment, and global confidence, which reflects long-term self-esteem. To add another layer, an “auditor” occasionally appeared in the game to give positive or negative feedback. This allowed scientists to see how external opinions shaped overall confidence.

The study, published in Nature Communications, involved two large groups of people, one with 230 participants and the other with 278. Everyone showed the same level of skill when completing the game tasks, regardless of whether they reported symptoms of anxiety or depression. Positive feedback helped raise global confidence across the board, while negative feedback lowered it. That pattern was consistent for all participants. Yet those with anxiety and depression symptoms consistently reported lower overall self-esteem.

Why? According to the researchers, these individuals discounted moments when they felt sure of their decisions and focused more heavily on times when they felt uncertain. In other words, high-confidence moments didn’t weigh as much in shaping their global view of performance. This blunted response to their own confidence meant that even when they were right, they didn’t let those successes build into lasting esteem.

Lead author Dr. Sucharit Katyal, who worked on the project at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research and now teaches at the University of Copenhagen, explained the significance of the findings.

“Overall, our findings offer a simple yet powerful message – that the persistent negative self-esteem experienced by people with anxiety and depression are often illusory, and may be rooted in a dysfunctional view of how they evaluate themselves,” Katyal said. He added that this pattern helps explain the link between these conditions and imposter syndrome, the chronic fear of being exposed as less capable despite clear evidence of success.

Although participants with anxiety and depression symptoms showed reduced sensitivity to their own high-confidence moments, they still responded strongly to external feedback. Both groups gained confidence from praise and lost confidence from criticism.

This means that encouragement from others may play a key role in helping people break out of cycles of underconfidence. Katyal suggests that balancing personal impressions with trusted external feedback may help counter distorted self-esteems. “When forming beliefs about ourselves, we should take our own metacognitive estimates with a pinch of salt, and perhaps adequately rely on the feedback provided by others,” he said.

The researchers hope that their work will inform new approaches for therapy, workplace coaching, and everyday support. By understanding how anxiety and depression shape self-evaluation, strategies can be developed to help people build stronger and more accurate self-esteems.

“By understanding how these individuals respond differently to their own performance and feedback, we can develop better strategies to support them in building and maintaining confidence – so they can flourish in the workplace and beyond,” Katyal said. These insights do not suggest that self-esteem issues are trivial or easily solved. Rather, they highlight the importance of recognizing how mental health conditions affect the process of self-assessment. With better awareness and supportive environments, the cycle of underconfidence may be disrupted.

The study underscores a subtle but important reality: people with anxiety and depression may not lack ability, but instead struggle with how they process evidence of that ability. By focusing more on times of doubt and giving less weight to moments of confidence, they maintain a distorted picture of themselves.

This research bridges the gap between science and lived experience, offering both explanation and hope. It shows that confidence is not simply about performance but also about how the brain chooses to value its own signals. And with that knowledge comes the possibility of change.

Research findings are available online in the journal Nature Communications.

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