The key to easing your doubts is — perhaps counterintuitively — more doubt, study finds
'It's ironic that doubt can apply to anything … including doubt itself,' researcher says
If you have your sights set on big goals this year, like running a marathon or writing your bar exam, you may be grappling with feelings of doubt.
“In my previous research, I had shown that doubt really kills commitment to goals. And so I began asking the question of what might kill doubt,” Patrick Carroll, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University at Lima, told Bob McDonald, host of Quirks & Quarks.
The key to easing those doubts, Carroll found is — perhaps counterintuitively — more doubt.
His study, involving 267 participants, was published online in Self and Identity and suggests that those who questioned their doubts about achieving a long-term goal showed higher commitment to those goals.
Doubt + more doubt = less doubt
Carroll asked his test participants to consider an important self-identity goal they had for themselves. A self-identity goal is one that defines who you want to become and usually takes years to accomplish, such as becoming a doctor, or an athlete.
They filled out a questionnaire designed to measure their doubts about attaining their most important personal goal. They were then asked to consider a time when they had experienced doubt or confidence in their thinking. Participants were then asked to rate their overall commitment to their goals.
The results consistently showed the same finding. Those who had higher doubts about attaining their goals and also wrote about a time when they felt doubtful were the ones who showed higher commitment to their goals.
“When we're deliberating between holding on to a goal and letting go of it, I think what it reveals is that those beliefs can only affect judgment and action …If you can somehow undermine that belief then you can reverse the effect,” said Carroll.
It produced a counterintuitive formula: doubt + more doubt = less doubt.
"It's ironic that doubt can apply to anything … including doubt itself," Carroll said.
Julie Erickson, a clinical psychologist and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Toronto, says it's not the doubt itself that can be problematic but our beliefs about doubt and how we perceive it.
“There's real power in taking a few steps back and asking yourself, to what extent has doubt been accurate in the past for me,” said Erickson, who was not involved in the study. “And just taking that step to question the doubt, as the study suggests, can be a good way for doubt to lose its grip on you.”
Writing with your less dominant hand
A second test was performed on university students in which they wrote out their doubts with their less dominant hand. This exercise is from a line of work called embodiment research, which looks at how our thoughts can be shaped by physical movements.
“Essentially, people use their own bodily movements as cues to infer the validity of the thoughts they have in mind. So they take their shaky handwriting with their non-dominant hand as a cue that the thoughts … must be invalid. And thereby, they hold them with less confidence,” Carroll said.
Nicole Byers is a psychologist and an adjunct research assistant professor with the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. Byers, who was not involved in the study, said this is a very useful exercise.
In an email to CBC Radio, she noted that humans have two halves of the brain and for those who are right-handed, the left half of the brain processes and produces language.
“When we activate the language parts of our brain, we can get into rational-mode. So a right-handed person writing out their doubts with their right hand is going to light up those language centres and feel more sure of their doubts. In contrast, when a right-handed person writes with their left hand, they’re activating more diffuse parts of their brain,” she wrote.
“I suspect not only does writing with your non-dominant hand make you question what you’re writing because it’s so messy like the original researchers propose, but also using that non-dominant hand is activating more widespread networks in your brain, which gives your brain capacity to challenge those doubts.”
The power of self-belief
Carroll suggests a few ways you could try this on yourself. Write out any doubts you may be having about reaching a long-term goal with your less dominant hand, and shake your head “no” as you do so. These physical cues can help indicate that it’s not a valid thought, he said.
Erikson also says it helps to recognize that doubt isn’t a threat to eliminate.
“If anything, it's just a signal that we're on the field, playing in the game, so to speak. And not sitting on the sidelines.”
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