It's called self esteem

One of my jobs at work is running cognitive testing for a "Mild Memory Impairment" study. It's somewhat repetitive being the same tests over and over again, but watching the way people handle the tests is fascinating. Everybody approaches things differently, especially the problem solving portions of the testing. The one yesterday kind of bothered me though.

The woman did just fine on the testing. That's the weird part. She was pretty average in the number of trials to get the memory stuff right, she did really really well on the free recall memory task, missed only one on pattern recognition...she struggled a bit, but no more so than anyone else has. Throughout the whole 45 minute test though she kept assuring me she was just horrible at these things. Not just "Oh, this is hard," but total self-deprecation at every step. "I just don't understand what's going on here" while comprehending perfectly and not needing any clarification whatsoever. "I wish my husband was here, he's an engineer and he'd be really good at this; I'm just terrible!" before nailing the test on the first try. "I'm just guessing on this; I'm totally lost," before hitting 4 of the 6 patterns correctly on the 1st try (which is damn good). I just wondered what was going on her head that she felt the need to constantly assure me that she was no good. Of course with the impartial nature of my role in that room I couldn't at all contradict her and tell her she was doing just fine.

It just made me wonder...why? Is she just timid? Certainly looked that way, pulling the computer to the edge of the table so she could keep her hands in her lap the whole time. Is it a generational thing? Not really, because plenty of other women in that age group aren't afraid to have skills and education and ability. Why did she so often express regret that her husband wasn't there? Is she trained and told at home that she's no good? That's my fear, based on almost nothing. I hope hope hope that it's not the fault of a male figure in her life that she's so afraid to do well at things. That would be tragic.