It has become known why women tend to be anxious

Scientists led by Olivia Harrison from the University of Otago have identified a significant gender-specific feature in the perception of bodily signals in people with increased anxiety. The study found that in women, increased anxiety is associated with reduced confidence in assessing their own sensations related to breathing, despite the fact that the accuracy of perception does not decrease. No such correlation was found in men. The results of the study are published in the journal European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN).

The study focused on interoception - the ability to sense internal body signals, such as breathing, heartbeat, or hunger. This system is key to regulating both physical and emotional states. Previously, there were assumptions that anxiety might disrupt interoceptive awareness, but precise data on gender differences in this process had not been available until now.

The authors of the work collected data from 175 participants from four European laboratories. Men and women participated in the study in roughly equal proportions. All participants were asked to perform a task related to breath perception. They needed to breathe through a special device that periodically created a barely noticeable resistance to inhalation. The participants' task was to determine whether this "barrier" was felt, and then assess their confidence in their answer.

The results showed that anxious people generally doubted the accuracy of their assessment more often, despite the fact that the objective accuracy of perception remained high.

However, when the data was divided by gender, it was found that the decrease in confidence and the ability to correlate it with actual accuracy was observed exclusively in women. In men, anxiety did not significantly affect so-called metacognitive awareness - the ability to assess the reliability of one's own bodily sensations.

At the same time, the general ability to perceive changes in breathing, as well as the level of confidence, did not differ between men and women. Differences manifested specifically in how anxiety affects self-reflection regarding one's own sensations.

It was also found that long-term anxiety (so-called trait anxiety) and symptoms of depression are associated with reduced metacognitive awareness in all participants, regardless of gender. This emphasizes the special role of situational anxiety in reducing trust in bodily sensations specifically in women.

According to the researchers, the results obtained can play an important role in developing personalized methods for treating anxiety disorders.

"We want not just to better understand the mechanisms of anxiety, but also to develop more precise, individualized approaches to its treatment," concluded Olivia Harrison.