ArticlePsychological medicine2021
Experimentally induced and real-world anxiety have no demonstrable effect on goal-directed behaviour.
Article in Psychological medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- Verbal and Visuospatial Working Memory Performance During the COHuman psychopharmacology · 2026Trial
- The evaluation of devaluation: Deficient outcome devaluation leads to wrongly considering goal-directed actions as habits.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Sex differences in compulsive alcohol drinking phenotypes: implications for decision-making and social behavior in a preclinical model.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Inhibitory control deficits in problematic short-form video users: evidence from drift diffusion model.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- The prefrontal-striatal signatures of reduced model-based learning in depressed patients.Annals of general psychiatry · 2026Article
- Individuals with methamphetamine use disorder show reduced directed exploration and learning rates independent of an aversive interoceptive state induction.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Hypercapnia Reduces Perceived Heat Pain in Healthy Subjects.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2025Article
- Anxiety as a disorder of uncertainty: implications for understanding maladaptive anxiety, anxious avoidance, and exposure therapy.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Disrupted state transition learning as a computational marker of compulsivity.Psychological medicine · 2023Article
- Computational perspectives on human fear and anxiety.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Relating psychiatric symptoms and self-regulation during the COVID-19 crisis.Translational psychiatry · 2022Article
- Article
- Determining the effects of training duration on the behavioral expression of habitual control in humans: a multilaboratory investigation.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2022Article
- Modeling anxiety in healthy humans: a key intermediate bridge between basic and clinical sciences.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundGoal-directed control guides optimal decision-making and it is an important cognitive faculty that protects against developing habits. Previous studies have found some evidence of goal-directed deficits when healthy individuals are stressed, and in psychiatric conditions characterised by compulsive behaviours and anxiety. Here, we tested if goal-directed control is affected by state anxiety, which might explain the former results.
methodsWe carried out a causal test of this hypothesis in two experiments (between-subject N = 88; within-subject N = 50) that used the inhalation of hypercapnic gas (7.5% CO2) to induce an acute state of anxiety in healthy volunteers. In a third experiment (N = 1413), we used a correlational design to test if real-life anxiety-provoking events (panic attacks, stressful events) are associated with impaired goal-directed control.
resultsIn the former two causal experiments, we induced a profoundly anxious state, both physiologically and psychologically, but this did not affect goal-directed performance. In the third, correlational, study, we found no evidence for an association between goal-directed control, panic attacks or stressful life eventsover and above variance accounted for by trait differences in compulsivity.
conclusionsIn sum, three complementary experiments found no evidence that anxiety impairs goal-directed control in human subjects.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.