Highly anxious people are more likely to make bad decisions when feeling uncertain. Those were the findings of an international study that may lead to better treatment for anxiety disorders. Study leader Sonia Bishop of the University of California, Berkeley explains that those prone to high anxiety have trouble picking up environmental cues.

"Basically when you look at how people learn, they are able to adjust how rapidly they change their behavior according to whether the context is currently stable or is volatile and highly changing. And it’s trying to parse out the reasons for why things happen which we don’t expect, which seems to be the issue which anxious individuals are having."

Bishop says their findings can help the anxious better navigate around unpredictability.

"Our understanding of these kinds of issues could give a good framework for explaining why it might be worth not just jumping to conclusions based on one bad interaction."