Is Your Anxiety Impacting Your Ability to Problem-Solve?

            Let’s face it—we all experience heightened levels of anxiety at times. And while we see some aspects of how anxiety impacts our daily lives—difficulty concentrating on important tasks, learning new information, or making tough decisions—new research may provide an explanation for why anxiety sufferers are likely to experience impairment in their ability to problem-solve. For those who are frustrated by how they struggle when, for example, one of your employees needs a quick solution to a problem, or when you used to pride yourself in your ability to come up with solutions to complex problems in those important meetings with colleagues and now find it difficult, you may find relief knowing that those symptoms are more common than you might think—and to identify when it’s time to get help.

            To better understand how anxiety impacts the cognitive processes involved in decision making, we need to first understand Attentional Control Theory; essentially, when we experience anxiety, our attention is diverted to the things we believe to be causing our anxiety (environmental stimuli), thereby decreasing the level of cognitive processing available for other important processes (like problem-solving), while also impacting the rate of retrieval (working memory).

            Our brains are thought to store specific information related to our pasts in an intricate structure that progresses from the abstract things we know about ourselves (like where we went to school growing up) to very specific events (like what you had for dinner on that first date). The latter is called autobiographical memory specificity (AM), and it turns out it is a critical component in the problem-solving process because our brains use these memories and other very specific information from our past to develop solutions for the present and future.             Along with decreased AM retrieval, anxiety also impacts social problem-solving. So, figuring out the best way to handle the drama with that one friend becomes even more difficult and may explain your cruel and unusual response to the situation (i.e. losing your temper). When anxiety levels are elevated, your brain is working with incredible inefficiency.

            Psychologist David Hallford, from the University of Deakin in Melbourne Australia, published an experimental study in Applied Cognitive Psychology on how anxiety affects problem-solving through decreased AM specificity.  The study included 301 participants from the United States (median age=28, 55% female), and had varying education backgrounds (12% postgraduate qualifications, 41% college graduates, 23% high school diplomas, 22% diplomas or certificates), and each participant was compensated $1. Three tests were administered: the first examined the level of detail at which participants could recall events from their past, assessing levels of rumination (repetitively thinking about negative events) among participants by rating how they identify with statements related to distress from a scale of 0 (not at all) to 10 (very much).

            He then used the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale to determine participants general anxiety levels. This test consisted of seven questions on a four-point scale (0=none, 4=most of the time) that assessed levels of anxiety over the previous week. The Patient Health Questionnaire on a three-point scale (0=not at all, 3=nearly every day) was then used to determine levels of depression over the previous two weeks.

            Finally, participants were administered the Means-End Problem Solving Task to assess the level of detail in steps taken to resolve three problems they were presented: 1) a dirty living space that ends up clean, 2) an avoidant friend with whom the relationship is improved, 4) a poor diet that becomes healthier. Each participant had three minutes to list the steps they would take to arrive at the solution. The steps were then counted (as long as they were relevant to the problem), using an unaffiliated author to validate the results.

            Prior to his experiment, he hypothesized that anxiety (independent variable) would be associated with a fewer number of listed problem-solving steps (dependent variable) and that this anxiety involved increased rumination (mediator variable) causing reduced AM specificity. After compiling the results, he proved his hypothesis, that there existed a relationship between anxiety and depression on the number of problem-solving steps listed and that participants with those symptoms struggled to retrieve specific event-level memories that were important for problem-solving.

            Increased anxiety levels lower the ability to filter out the things we have identified as threats in order for our brains to concentrate on the retrieval of information necessary for solving problems. Problem-solving is a process we will engage in most days for the rest of our lives; if you are finding that problems of all sizes are becoming more challenging, consider whether anxiety or depression may be a contributing factor.