kell1072: April 2012 Archives

"Over the course of a lifetime, more than 20 percent of us will experience a mood disorder" --psych book

This is the kind of comment I've always a little bit of a hard time understanding. What is meant by mood disorder, and does that infer that those who have them have some sort of minor mental disability--not to think outside of their pessimism?

Who is susceptible to mood disorders and why do they occur to only about 20 percent of us? If so many of us have a chance to be effected by a mood disorder, then it can't be the lack of something crucial in the brain: at least not a chronic shortage. So then what causes a mood disorder?

I've never fully trusted statistics like the one above because the concept of a "mood disorder" a bit vague, and because it's a bit vague I wouldn't even trust someone to be able to discern whether they've really had a mood disorder or not.

Many people are put through all kinds of stress. Different kinds of stress can have different kinds of effects on different people. This stress, whether it be to get good grades in school, how attractive someone wished they were, what type of guy/girl/friend someone wishes they would meet, or something else entirely I forgot to mention, one thing is the same: whatever stresses someone out, they must value. To be stressed out be something one must value something, because if someone didn't care about what they were stressing about, why would they be stressing about it?

I see mood disorders as a byproduct of this concept of values versus conflict with those values. At least, this kind of statistic would have to support mood disorders coming from someone having some kind of dissatisfaction in their life.

Where I'm going with all this is perhaps mood disorders are actually some sort of defense mechanism--that since some sort of conflict is coming between a person and what would satisfy them, they might as well give up? Is it a fear of hopelessness that can cause mood disorders?

The definition of mood disorder, to me, is much to vague.

Many employers like to use IQ test scores as an indicator of how well an individual will do for the job they've applied for. Is this right or wrong? I think that though IQ testing can be a useful tool for selecting a new worker, it should not take priority over other methods to predict quality job performance.

IQ testing, at first glance, seems like a very good way to decide on who to give a job. There's a slightly positive correlation between IQ score and job performance.

Though there is a positive correlation between IQ score and job performance that doesn't mean that it's a perfect correlation. For all the people that have a higher IQ than someone else and does better at a job because of it, there are some with lower IQ's that would have done a better job. It's similar to those who know how to look themselves good in interviews versus those who get too nervous to do so--just because some people get nervous for them doesn't mean that they wouldn't be good at their job, the same as the person who knows how to make themselves look good wouldn't necessarily do a good job.

IQ scores should be used as one of many methods of predicting job performance. IQ score isn't perfect at predicting a future worker's performance, which is why that error must be balanced out with other methods of prediction.