When people question the validity of their doubts — a process called meta-cognitive doubt — it can deepen their commitment to important goals rather than diminish it.
Researchers used writing tasks and even non-dominant hand writing to nudge people into doubting their thoughts, then measured how that shifted commitment to personal goals.
This effect showed up among people wrestling with meaningful, long-term “identity goals,” but experts warn the idea shouldn’t be overapplied or used to dismiss real concerns.
If you’ve ever questioned whether you’re on the right path with something deeply important — like finishing school, launching a business, or training for a marathon — you’re not alone.
Psychologists call those moments action crises: times when you seriously wonder whether you should stay the course or throw in the towel.
A team led by psychology professor Patrick Carroll at The Ohio State University wondered whether getting people to literally doubt their own doubts — a kind of thinking about thinking known as meta-cognitive doubt — might actually change how committed they feel toward their goals.
Instead of boosting confidence directly (as most self-help advice does), they flipped the question: Can questioning your uncertainty make you more committed?
Their answer: yes — at least sometimes.
“When you’re pursuing identity goals, bumps in the roads inevitably arise. There may come a point where the obstacle is big enough to evoke doubts about whether to continue,” researcher Dr. Patrick Carroll said in a news release.
“What this study found is that inducing doubts in one’s doubts can provide a formula for confidence.”
The study
Carroll and his colleagues carried out two related experiments to explore this idea.
In the first study, 267 adults started by rating how much they were questioning whether they should continue pursuing a personally meaningful goal — an identity goal tied to who they want to become.
Then, participants were given a so-called “unrelated” writing task: half were asked to write about feeling confident in their thinking, and the other half were asked to write about a time they felt doubtful about their own thoughts. After the writing, everyone rated how committed they felt to their goal.
In a second experiment with 130 college students, the team used a different trick: having participants complete the goal survey using their non-dominant hand, which tends to induce a subtle sense of uncertainty because the shaky writing feels unfamiliar.
The results
In a twist, the first study found that writing about confidence strengthened people’s belief in their original doubts and led to lower commitment. By contrast, writing about their own doubt made people question the reliability of their doubt itself — and that nudged some toward greater commitment.
Even with a different method in the second trial, people who were already struggling with doubt about their goals ended up reporting stronger commitment when their confidence in their own thinking was disrupted.
What the results mean — and what they don’t
This research suggests that the way we evaluate our thoughts matters: when doubt feels like just another thought rather than a rock-solid reason to quit, it may lose some of its power to derail us.
That doesn’t mean ignoring all concerns. Carroll and colleagues caution that such techniques should be used carefully and might work best with someone else’s guidance (like a therapist or teacher) so you don’t slip into overconfidence or dismiss real problems.
“You don’t want to undermine humility and replace it with overconfidence or premature certainty,” Dr. Carroll said. “This needs to be used wisely.”