Anxious avoidance as disrupted exploration
Abstract
Avoidance is a hallmark of anxiety. Exposure treatments often help overcome avoidance, yet why avoidance persists without external reinforcement remains unclear. We propose that one contributing factor is a failure to adaptively use uncertainty when deciding whether to explore choices with unknown outcomes. Using reinforcement learning and explore/exploit paradigms, we examined whether anxious individuals misestimate the value of exploration. We tested this hypothesis against alternatives— uncertainty intolerance, punishment sensitivity, and stochastic choice—in a task where optimal behavior required both increasing and decreasing exploration. Consistent with our hypothesis, people high in anxiety failed to adjust exploration based on uncertainty, instead either under-exploring or over-exploring. This deficit was distinct from intolerance of uncertainty and remained after controlling for other internalizing symptoms. These findings suggest that anxious avoidance may stem from misestimating uncertainty and the value of exploration, pointing to new treatment targets focused on improving adaptive use of uncertainty.
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BibTeX
@misc{brown2026anxious,
title = {{Anxious avoidance as disrupted exploration}},
author = {Vanessa Brown and Alexandre Dombrovski},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/jbr62_v2},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jbr62_v2/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Anxious avoidance as disrupted exploration
AU - Vanessa Brown
AU - Alexandre Dombrovski
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/31
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/jbr62_v2
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jbr62_v2/
AB - Avoidance is a hallmark of anxiety. Exposure treatments often help overcome avoidance, yet why avoidance persists without external reinforcement remains unclear. We propose that one contributing factor is a failure to adaptively use uncertainty when deciding whether to explore choices with unknown outcomes. Using reinforcement learning and explore/exploit paradigms, we examined whether anxious individuals misestimate the value of exploration. We tested this hypothesis against alternatives— uncertainty intolerance, punishment sensitivity, and stochastic choice—in a task where optimal behavior required both increasing and decreasing exploration. Consistent with our hypothesis, people high in anxiety failed to adjust exploration based on uncertainty, instead either under-exploring or over-exploring. This deficit was distinct from intolerance of uncertainty and remained after controlling for other internalizing symptoms. These findings suggest that anxious avoidance may stem from misestimating uncertainty and the value of exploration, pointing to new treatment targets focused on improving adaptive use of uncertainty.
ER -