Research Hit: The Link Between Anxiety, Depression, and Low Self-Belief

A persistent focus on the negative despite good performance leads to low self-belief

I could imagine there is a link between depression and low self-belief!

Yes, it would make sense, but the key question is, is this low self-belief justified, and is it different to those with lower levels of anxiety and depression?

Well, is it?

This is what Sucharit Katyal and colleagues at University College London set out to investigate.

They conducted two large studies with 230 and 278 participants in which they played a game in which they had to fulfil certain jobs and tasks requiring different skills and then were asked to rate their performance. This measured their metacognitive ability — i.e. ability to judge themselves on their performance. During the jobs they were occasionally given feedback from a supervisor.

And what did this show?

Well some interesting results:

• Those with higher ratings of depression and anxiety performed just as well as those with lower levels of these.
• Positive feedback boosted self belief and negative feedback disrupted self belief for all…