If you’re planning on traveling during the upcoming holidays, consider this: your ability to smoothly get through airport security might be correlated with how well the agent slept. In today’s Nerdy Curio, courtesy of 60-Second Science, learn about how poor quality sleep can make subjects less accurate in face-matching tasks, yet more confident in their level of accuracy. Sounds like a perfect formula for stressful airport encounters…but also an opportunity to practice a holiday-appropriate sentiment: empathy for the sleep-deprived!

Aired October 19, 2016

All 60-Second Science content is available at www.scientificamerican.com