Talking about confidence

[chrisvenus]

I read something that suggested that finding out more about confidence from the point of view of others was helpful to building your own self-confidence. So here we go. I am at times very un-confident in myself so I am going to ask a few questions to get people going on the subject. If you want to add in more comments or questions then feel free. I have a vague feeling I did something similar before but now I'm copying from a book so it will be much better. Anonymous posting welcome if you don't want to put your name to your answers. :)

1) What do you think confidence is?

2) Where does confidence come from?

3) Can you think of someone who is completely confident?

4) How can you tell if someone is confident or not?

5) How do you feel when you talk to someone who is not at all confident?

6) Does a confident person always feel confident?

and my own one for number 7:

7) What is the difference between being confident and acting confident?


I will try to put up my own answers later but I don't have time right now.

Comments

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

I don't think "I feel confident" is any different from "I have confidence", and both are a risk-moderated version of "I have knowledge".

This makes me think that you must be a hyperrational person. I would say that confidence is a long way from a risk-moderated version of "I have knowledge". I rarely feel confident, despite generally having good odds, and the degree to which I feel confident rarely bears much relation to the odds that I would attribute to a situation. Your sense of confidence, I assume, must correlate much more closely with your rationally attributed odds than mine does.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Not as much as you might think. Like I say, I think that the irrational fear causes the unjustified lack of confidence: I'm not so rational that my emotions have no effect at all on my beliefs.

I think what you're describing is what I said early on: "one can be over-confident or under-confident either because of bad information or irrational effects". I should add that it's possible to hold conflicting beliefs: one rational and another under the influence of fear, panic, or whatever else is going on.

In that case I think you can honestly say that you're confident of success, you expect it, you predict it, and so on. You can simultaneously feel that there's no chance, or feel non-specific dread, and not be confident at all. I'd say that's conflicting beliefs, rather than two different things only one of which is really "confidence". I guess (contrary to what I said before) one could be described as "having confidence" and the other as "feeling it".

If that doesn't correspond with your experience, then I'm not saying that you're "really" confident even though you feel that you aren't. Just that I don't think of the feeling itself as being 'confidencelessness', but as a fear which inhibits confidence. It's also possible for an assessment of low risk to inhibit fear (unless that's a hyperrational trait too...).

I think it's the same as the way that a prejudice can interfere with someone's ability to form rational beliefs based on their observations. It's pretty rare for someone to acknowledge a prejudice and still maintain it for long, but when it happens I think you probably get the same situation where you "know" something, but don't "feel it to be true".