Form matters: Limitations on assessment

Suppose someone asked you, in the warm, bright glow of an office Christmas party, if you have any fear of being in unlit places, or if the idea of being cold and alone in an unfamiliar environment was unsettling. Depending on your gender, age, and individual personality traits, you might respond that neither prospect is especially bleak, or you might allow that such things would be unwelcome but manageable. Some runners, after all, enjoy bouts of isolation, especially outdoors.

But no matter what answer you gave, it’s likely that it would suggest a more optimistic picture than whatever would unfold in reality. If I’m standing around shooting the breeze in a 65-degree room amid smiling people, wired on plenty of coffee, I might not even be able to remember what it was like to be underdressed on a New Hampshire winter night, cutting through some woods because I thought I knew a short cut home, only to hear things that sounded suspiciously like large animals crashing about nearby. In short, I’d underestimate the extent to which I’d be stressed in such a scenario — even if I’d experienced something similar in the past.

How does this relate to form analysis? In several ways, actually.

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