Research explores what happens when people face goal obstacles
Jeff Grabmeier, Ohio State News, grabmeier.1@osu.edu.
When it comes to our most important long-term goals in life, it is not uncommon to face obstacles that may lead us to doubt whether we can achieve our ambitions.
But when life hands you doubts, the answer may be to question your doubts, a new study suggests.
A psychology professor found that when people who were worried about achieving an identity goal were induced to experience what is called meta-cognitive doubt, they actually became more committed to achieving their goal.
“What this study found is that inducing doubts in one’s doubts can provide a formula for confidence,” said Patrick Carroll, author of the study and professor of psychology at The Ohio State University at Lima.
The study was published online recently in the journal Self and Identity.
Carroll was interested in what happens when people have what is called an “action crisis” while pursuing an identity goal – a long-term objective centered on who you want to become in life. Wanting to become a doctor, for instance, is an identity goal.
An action crisis is a decision conflict where you are not sure if you want to continue pursuit of the goal.
“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,” Carroll said.
Most research on the topic has focused specifically on these doubts and how they can impact whether people go forward with their goals.
But based on previous work done by other Ohio State researchers, Carroll decided to examine meta-cognitive doubt, which is the sense of certainty a person has in the validity of one’s thoughts.
In the case of this research, a person can have doubts about whether they can achieve their goal. But what happens if you make the person wonder if their doubts are valid?
Carroll conducted two studies. One involved 267 people who participated online. First, they completed an action crisis scale about their most important personal goal. The scale included items such as “I doubt whether I should continue striving for my goal or disengage from it” and participants responded on a scale from “strongly disagree” to strongly agree.”
Participants were then told they would take part in a second, unrelated study on the effect of memory writing exercises. Half of the participants were asked to write about a time that they felt confidence in their thinking. The other half were asked to write about a time when they had experienced doubt in their thinking.
After completing the writing exercise, all participants were asked to rate how committed they were to achieving their most important personal goal, on a scale from “not at all committed” to “very committed.”
Findings showed that the writing exercise succeeded in making people feel more confident or more doubtful in their own thoughts about their identity goal – even though the writing exercise was not directly connected to their goals.
Here’s how it worked: Those participants who felt doubtful about their identity goal – and then wrote about an experience feeling confident – were less committed to achieving their goal. In other words, the writing exercise made them more confident in their doubts about achieving their goal.
On the other hand, those who felt doubtful about their goal and then wrote about an experience of feeling doubtful in their own thoughts actually had higher levels of commitment to their goals. For them, writing about doubt made them question their own doubts about achieving their goal.
“On some level, it may seem that doubt would be additive. Doubt plus doubt would equal more doubt,” Carroll said. “But this study found the opposite: Doubt plus doubt equaled less doubt.”
Carroll replicated the findings in another study, involving 130 college students, that used a different way of inducing doubt. In this study, Carroll used a technique developed by Ohio State researchers that had the participants complete the action crisis scale with their non-dominant hand.
“Previous research showed that using the non-dominant hand leads participants to have doubts in their own thoughts because they use their shaky handwriting as a cue that their thoughts must be invalid,” Carroll said.
“And that is exactly what I found in this study. So in two different studies we found that inducing meta-cognitive doubt can lead to people doubting their own doubts.”
On a practical level, it may be difficult for individuals to induce doubts about their doubts on their own, Carroll said. One reason it worked in this study is that participants were not aware that the doubt induction was related to their goal doubts.
This could be more effective if someone else – a therapist, a teacher, a friend or a parent – can help a person question their own thoughts and doubts.
“You don’t want the person to be aware that you’re getting them to question their doubts about their goals,” he said.
Carroll also noted that this technique should be used carefully, because it could potentially undermine wise judgment if overused or misapplied.
“You don’t want to undermine humility and replace it with overconfidence or premature certainty,” he said. “This needs to be used wisely.”
Originally published by Ohio State News at The Ohio State University on December 29, 2025. Republished with permission.Editor's Note: Corrected "pursing" to "pursuing" (typo in original). Ohio State Communications confirmed no AI tools were used in content creation.
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