Why do some people chase new opportunities while others cling to the familiar? And how do emotions like anxiety and apathy influence these choices? Researchers Xinyuan Yan, R. Becket Ebitz, Nicola Grissom, David P. Darrow, and Alexander B. Herman explored these questions and published their findings in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging (2025).

Their study focused on how people deal with uncertainty. Not all uncertainty is the same. Sometimes, the world changes rapidly (volatility), while other times, it feels like everything happens randomly (stochasticity). The key finding? People with anxiety tend to see uncertainty as a sign that the world is shifting unpredictably, prompting them to seek out new information. Conversely, apathy makes people perceive uncertainty as pure chance, leading them to stick with their existing behaviours.

The researchers had 1,001 participants play a decision-making game where rewards kept changing. Anxious individuals switched strategies more often, especially after adverse outcomes, trying to make sense of the uncertainty. Apathic individuals did the opposite: they disengaged and kept repeating past choices.

The main takeaway? The way you interpret uncertainty shapes your behaviour. If you believe the world is chaotic but influenceable, you’ll keep searching for better options. You’re more likely to give up if you see it as purely random and out of your control. This insight is crucial not only for psychological research but also for improving treatments for anxiety and depression. By changing how people perceive uncertainty, we might also be able to adjust their motivation and decision-making.

Abstract of the study:

Background
Decision-making in uncertain environments can lead to varied outcomes, and how we process those outcomes may depend on our emotional state. Understanding how individuals interpret the sources of uncertainty is crucial for understanding adaptive behavior and mental well-being. Uncertainty can be broadly categorized into two components: volatility and stochasticity. Volatility describes how quickly conditions change. Stochasticity, on the other hand, refers to outcome randomness. We investigated how anxiety and apathy influenced people’s perceptions of uncertainty, and how uncertainty perception shaped explore-exploit decisions.
Methods
Participants (N = 1001, non-clinical sample) completed a restless three-armed bandit task that was analyzed using both latent state and process models.
Results
Anxious individuals perceived uncertainty as resulting more from volatility, leading to increased exploration and learning rates, especially after reward omission. Conversely, apathetic individuals viewed uncertainty as more stochastic, resulting in decreased exploration and learning rates. The perceived volatility-to-stochasticity ratio mediated the anxiety-exploration relationship post-adverse outcomes. Dimensionality reduction showed exploration and uncertainty estimation to be distinct but related latent factors shaping a manifold of adaptive behavior that is modulated by anxiety and apathy.
Conclusions
These findings reveal distinct computational mechanisms for how anxiety and apathy influence decision-making, providing a framework for understanding cognitive and affective processes in neuropsychiatric disorders.