My results
BEST TIME AND ROUND
Your best performance came in round one.
You weren’t playing against an opponent in round one. This suggests that you may be someone who performs best when not directly competing against someone, or that you can only sustain good performances at the beginning of tasks or competitions.
CONSISTENCY
You scored MEDIUM for consistency.
This means that most of your performances were similar across all rounds of ‘The Grid’. You’re probably someone who can sustain a fairly even level of performance across different situations. Like most people, you performed reasonably evenly with one unusually strong or weak performance from the four rounds.
Consistency is a hallmark of people who perform well when it really counts. People who perform consistently in practice have a much better chance of carrying that performance level into pressurised situations.
IMPROVEMENT
You scored LOW for improvement.
Across the four rounds of ‘The Grid’, your rate of improvement was lower than others who had a similar amount of practice. It could be that you are a natural at this game and left yourself little room for improvement, but that would be the exception, not the rule.
Learning quickly from mistakes and putting that learning into practice is an important habit to develop, in order to perform better in high-stakes situations.
EFFICIENCY
You scored HIGH for efficiency.
This was calculated by comparing the number of correct clicks on your four rounds of ‘The Grid’ to the number of mis-clicks or wrong clicks.
A high score indicates that you are someone who knows how to conserve your effort, staying calm, and focused on your goals. It may be that you are someone who does not waste energy on unproductive activity.
Your optimum mood was Happiness
Your best performance on ‘The Grid’ came when you were feeling HAPPY.
Happiness can be a signal that all feels right in your world. Performances flow with ease and we’re less likely to dwell on problems. Concentrating on something positive from your life can help to generate happy feelings. Remembering happy and content moments can make you perform better. Next time you’re under pressure to perform, you might find that using these banks of memories is a way to get the best out of yourself.
That matches what you predicted – you thought your best performances came when you felt happy. So it looks like you're someone who understands your own emotional state and how to use it to help you perform. When you are in competitive situations, you’ll go through a range of emotions. You need to understand them and use them, if you’re going to be at your best.
You scored HIGH for suppression
You scored HIGH for ‘suppression.’
From the questions you answered, it seems that you are someone who tries to ignore any negative feelings you get. That can be a problem. Research shows that the effort it takes to ‘suppress’ a negative emotion, can actually make you feel physically tired. It also means that you're not dealing with the emotion, you're trying to temporarily bury it. That can be OK if you haven't got time to process the emotion, but it's not a long term strategy for dealing with emotions under pressure. Suppressed emotions can often come back later. You might benefit from trying to use the reappraisal strategy more frequently.
Suppression is sometimes a necessary strategy for sportspeople. For example, an athlete walking out into a roaring stadium might put their emotional response to the situation 'on hold' until after the event; their emotions might not be experience until they are standing on the podium.
You scored HIGH for reappraisal
You scored HIGH for reappraisal.
You seem to be someone who looks at the emotions you are feeling and tries to re-interpret them. You try to change a negative emotion by actively thinking about the situation differently. For example, you might try to re-interpret feeling anxious as a signal that you are ready to perform. And you seem to be able to put some perspective on the pressure you might feel in intense situations. This is an effective way of dealing with emotions under pressure.
Sportspeople often use reappraisal to help them turn negative emotions to their advantage. For example, a sprinter might try and reflect on a false start as a sign of their eagerness to race, rather than as a mistake. This strategy could help them re-focus, ready for the next event.
