Indecision and recency-weighted evidence integration in non-clinical and clinical settings

Journal article

Biases in information gathering are common in the general population and reach pathological extremes in paralysing indecisiveness, as in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Here we adopt a new perspective on information gathering and demonstrate an information integration bias whereby there is over-weighting of most recent information via evidence strength updates (ΔES). In a crowd-sourced sample (N = 5,237), we find that a reduced ΔES weighting drives indecisiveness along an obsessive–compulsive spectrum. We replicate this attenuated ΔES weighting in a second lab-based study (N = 105) that includes a transdiagnostic obsessive–compulsive spectrum encompassing OCD and generalized anxiety patients. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we trace ΔES signals to a late neural signal peaking at ~920 ms. Critically, highly obsessive–compulsive participants, across diagnoses, show an attenuated neural ΔES signal in mediofrontal areas, while other decision-relevant processes remain intact. Our findings establish biased information weighting as a driver of information gathering, where attenuated ΔES is linked to indecisiveness across an obsessive–compulsive spectrum.

Authors: del Río, M; Trudel, N; Prabhu, G; Hunt, LT; Moutoussis, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: Nature Human Behaviour
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 727-740
• Publication date: 2026-01-21
• Acceptance date: 2025-11-24
• DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02385-1
• EISSN: 2397-3374
• ISSN: 2397-3374
• Language: English
• Keywords: Sampling bias; Replicate; TRACE (psycholinguistics); Perspective (graphical); Weighting; Anxiety; Population; Sample (material)