Category: Health and wellbeing

What predicts performance differences in two people with equal aptitude and prep?

What predicts performance differences in two people with equal preparation? Challenge!

Deskman

Tests, performance and stress.

We all face tests in our lifetime. As I write, all across the country people are preparing for, or sitting exams. My own students are no exception – I have 180 undergraduates who are busy revising (I hope) for a exam on social psychology next week. There are a lot of things which predict success in such tasks. Some are out of our immediate control – some people simply have an aptitude for exams and some (like me!) find them more difficult. Other things are more within our control – how much you engaged with the course when it was presented, how much extra reading you did and how thorough your revision was. But what predicts the differences between two people of equal aptitude, who have prepared similarly? The ‘edge’ the stronger person have may be less to do with how much they know or how skilled they are, and more to do with how they perceive the situation. I understand this via something called the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat [BPSM][1]

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Suffering from sleep deprivation due to kids, work or something else? You are basically permanently drunk, but try not to take out your ‘hangover’ out on others.

Lack of sleep can affect us in many ways, but did you know in some ways it is the equivalent of being drunk?

Asleep

I love my children, but boy, do they keep me up at night. I reckon over the last three years, 98% of my nights have involved being woken up multiple times, often for stretches of 30 minutes plus. The other 2% of the time I am away at conferences. Things were just settling down with our last one (by settle down, I mean just up once a night) when we had the next one. I think my partner has it even worse at the moment with our four month old!

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