The Illusion of Confidence

"Fake it until you make it." -Steven Tyler

We talked about masks awhile ago and I think it's pretty self-evident that we all wear masks, or in the very least have worn them at some point in our lives. It's just a natural survival impulse that if the environment is a certain way we should act in whatever manner will likely lead us to survive or ideally towards success. I greatly dislike the idea of a mask drastically different than one's self, but subtle aspects such as being more outgoing may play out to your advantage. That said, I believe one of the most common masks people wear, or what they strive for in their individuality, is confidence.

Timmy is ready to take on the world.

I mean it's only natural because people are much more certain of and trust those who know what they're doing, which confidence portrays. It's not typically the people who stutter or mumble that you see in successful positions, especially not in the corporate world.

Confidence is an interesting trait because it doesn't really mean wisdom or skill, but merely a sense of certainty in one's self. I was going through the library recently and stumbled upon an interesting book called, The Invisible Gorilla. All about how our intuition commonly fails us; I read a section detailing how any confidence was more or less a hoax.

The example given was that a person who acquired lyme disease went to the doctor, who grabbed their medical book and used it as a source to indicate the condition and prescribe a treatment in front of the patient. This was appalling to the patient because when we go to the doctor we of course want someone who knows what they're doing... or apparently appears to. A study was done and patients felt much more at ease when their doctor prescribed a treatment, despite them being unsure and not saying so. The patient who received the reference however was cleared up in no time after the prescription was filled. Isn't that the important thing?

Eye-witness testimony was another example and how despite an individual's extremely confident testimony is more likely to sway juries, it is generally only 70% accurate. That means that roughly a third of the time it's wrong. Finally, there's the correlation between ignorance and higher confidence. Poorly skilled criminals for instance are generally much more confident in their abilities, whereas more knowledgeable individuals in any profession are a better judge of their abilities. This tends to be why you see so many duds on shows like American Idol. The general consensus was that people will often overestimate their abilities, while only a small few will actually underestimate said skills. Doing the extreme of either can have dire consequences.

Confidence is really the most important element of rhetoric and sadly has a huge influence in how likely we are to instill trust in people, whether based in fact or not. The problem is that when a doctor admits that they don't know someone's condition it usually stuns the patient, despite it probably being in their self best interest to find a doctor who can. This is why second opinions are extremely important.

Personally, I believe that confidence is a valuable skill because it transitions into your work and growth, however it should be a product of skill rather than simply general persona. That said, experience should be what we look for when trusting individuals, not primarily how they carry themselves. The above quote about temporarily faking confidence until you achieve it is fair, but you wouldn't want a doctor to take the same approach, so I think that true confidence is accepting when you're out of your element. Moral. Show reasonable confidence in yourself and careful skepticism in that which is shown by others.

Never stop questioning.