It has become known why women tend to be anxious

Scientists discovered: women with anxiety trust their bodily sensations less, unlike men. Researchers from the University of Otago led by Olivia Harrison identified an interesting gender feature: anxious women doubt the accuracy of their perception of their own breathing, although they actually perceive it just as accurately as others. Men do not show a similar pattern. The results of this discovery were published in the authoritative journal European Journal of Neuroscience (EJN).

The study focused on interoception - our ability to feel internal signals of the body, whether it's breathing, heartbeat, or hunger. This system plays a fundamental role in regulating a person's physical and emotional state. Previously, scientists had suggested a connection between anxiety and disturbances in interoceptive awareness, but until now, there was no clear data on gender differences in this area.

The large-scale study involved 175 volunteers from four European laboratories with a roughly equal ratio of men and women. Participants were asked to perform a special task on breath perception. They breathed through a device that periodically created slight resistance during inhalation. The task was to determine the presence of this "barrier" and assess confidence in their answer.

Data analysis showed that people with increased anxiety generally trusted their sensations less, although they objectively perceived signals just as accurately as others.

However, the most interesting finding emerged when dividing the results by gender: decreased confidence and ability to correlate it with actual accuracy was observed exclusively in women. In men, anxiety had almost no effect on metacognitive awareness - the ability to adequately assess the reliability of their own bodily sensations.

At the same time, the basic ability to perceive changes in breathing and the general level of confidence were the same for representatives of both sexes. Differences manifested specifically in how anxiety distorts self-assessment of one's own sensations.

Researchers also found that chronic anxiety (anxiety as a personality trait) and symptoms of depression are associated with reduced metacognitive awareness in all participants regardless of gender. This emphasizes the special role of situational anxiety, which reduces trust in bodily sensations specifically in women.

Scientists believe that the results obtained could be the key to developing more effective, personalized methods for treating anxiety disorders.

"We strive not only to understand the mechanisms of anxiety more deeply, but also to create more accurate, individualized approaches to its treatment," emphasized the study leader Olivia Harrison.