Learned uncertainty: The free energy principle in anxiety

H. T. McGovern, Alexander De Foe, Hannah Biddell, Pantelis Leptourgos, Philip Corlett, Kavindu Bandara, Brendan T. Hutchinson*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    14 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Generalized anxiety disorder is among the world’s most prevalent psychiatric disorders and often manifests as persistent and difficult to control apprehension. Despite its prevalence, there is no integrative, formal model of how anxiety and anxiety disorders arise. Here, we offer a perspective derived from the free energy principle; one that shares similarities with established constructs such as learned helplessness. Our account is simple: anxiety can be formalized as learned uncertainty. A biological system, having had persistent uncertainty in its past, will expect uncertainty in its future, irrespective of whether uncertainty truly persists. Despite our account’s intuitive simplicity—which can be illustrated with the mere flip of a coin—it is grounded within the free energy principle and hence situates the formation of anxiety within a broader explanatory framework of biological self-organization and self-evidencing. We conclude that, through conceptualizing anxiety within a framework of working generative models, our perspective might afford novel approaches in the clinical treatment of anxiety and its key symptoms.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number943785
    Pages (from-to)1 - 12
    Number of pages12
    JournalFrontiers in Psychology
    Volume13
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 6 Sept 2022

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