What is this "confidence" thing?

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In a previous thread, someone highlighted that there was a difference between "dominance" and "confidence" (i.e. in men). What exactly is confidence and how is it different from maintaining "social status"? Does "confidence" require one to have any position in a given hierarchy? My viewpoint is that "confidence" is, essentially, the display of social status, through body language, tone of voice and other cues.

I ask this here rather than in the social skills forum, because it seems the term is used in dating a lot, particularly by women. I am, however, interested in hearing about what people mean by confidence in all settings.

I am hoping this will be a civil discussion, without personal attacks or trolling of any kind.

Good luck with that.

Anyway, I have no idea what is confident vs. arrogant. I just know it when I see it and that I don't have any confidence at all. D:

Confident men generally don't care what people think, but in a mature way.

In my view, confidence and social status are not necessarily linked. Some people have high social status, but low confidence. (For example, someone from a wealthy family who has never been motivated or required to accomplish anything). Others have high confidence, but average social status. (For example, an employee who is able to manage complex, high-pressure situations that end with everyone satisfied).

To me, confidence comes from within and is independent of social status. It's faith in your own capabilities to succeed, based on experience - without being conceited or arrogant. It shows in body language and tone of voice, but in behavior too. For example, confident people are able to make fun of themselves, but are careful not to make fun of others. Confident people can admit that they make mistakes and take responsibility for them. Confident people tend to be open and friendly. People who are not confident tend to be jerks.

OP: I like the first paragraph, you said it pretty well. Some pointers I'd give though - you have to astutely watch how you react to people and whether or not you're nonverbally overaccomodating them. Also, something my friend's brought up recently - for guys, being real chatty at any given point and talking with your hands a lot are both things you want to avoid, mainly because its read as nervous and/or obsequious behavior. There are a lot of other small rules, but, if you already have enough in life to feel confident about its really about getting a handle on how this works as well as knowing what sorts of games people are playing and how to counter or deflect it. Ironically it is more image than reality in a lot of cases.

i agree. well put.

Foomith, this doesn't help much, because it only throws the ambiguity onto the term "success". Do you mean "success at pursuing any goal one has"? That would make autistics, who experience a lot of hostility, quite unsuccessful in that they are not organized to adequately campaign against it. It sounds inappropriate to judge someone on the basis of how successful they are, rather than what their goals are (e.g. an abuser will be confident due to the ethical composition of every society, which enables him/her to carry out abuse).

techstepgenr8tion, to clarify, I am not interested in cultivating "confidence", so much as understanding it in order to determine whether I already have it, I should have it or I should refrain from having it, and also to see whether it could serve as an effective, quick identifier for one's morality.

For the last part I'm not really certain - it seems neither here nor there in regard to morality. I would say this though - if you have achieved a lot in your life (ie. degree, high skill at something that society generally respects), you could be very inwardly and perhaps even outwardly confident - but, you'll also have many people in the world who, say, do nothing and think they God's gift to earth just like you'll have people who were abused when they were young, that pain perhaps drove them to achieve great things, but being driven by pain they still may feel that the bar of acceptibility as a person was simply set that much higher for them.

As for should you be confident? If you have qualities that you feel are on target and you have a lot to give the world then yes - and from there the trick is knowing how to communicate your authority, gently perhaps but knowing how to nonetheless. For those who haven't had as much success or feel like what they have to offer is questionable - either one of two choices are in front of them, 1) either to cultivate one's self into the former or 2) learn how to fake it effectively and hopefully open more doors of opportunity with that endeavor.

The tricky thing with this topic is that its very difficult to get into what inspires inward confidence without discussing outward confidence and authority, especially when we're discussing how confidence reflects back at us from others or how we read their relative confidence or lack thereof.

To clarify, while I do not believe a person with confidence necessarily has morality, I hold that if someone believes confidence is a good thing, they are (consciously or unconsciously) immoral, because they place value in other people's success irrespective of the nature of that success, i.e. have a mercenary attitude. I suppose I tend to gravitate towards those who are unsuccessful and try to help them.

I would say I am inwardly confident and outwardly confident in regards to supporting friends based on the above descriptions, but find my options with succeeding against hostile people limited - not having cultivated a sense of politics or an ability to manipulate / intimidate, all I can strive for when the need arises to oppose people is physical violence, and I always suppress that urge for obvious reasons.

Last edited by primaloath on 09 Sep 2010, 6:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

Pretty much whae hale_bopp said. It's not that they are not considerate of others, but they do not have a low self worth.

I have a friend who is naturally confident. Not overly confident. Not dominating. Not egotistical, but when he gets something in his mind, like starting a vending machine business the concept of "can't" usually doesn't enter into his thoughts. He really just thinks about how he is going to proceed and then does it. And he does things like this consistently enough that he knows he's reliable.

With women, he really never entertains the idea of rejection. He just starts talking to them. I'd say he's rejected about 40-60% of the time but he just shrugs and says "she wasn't interested"
and it really isn't a big deal to him because there are plenty of women in the world to talk to, and he really just likes the social aspect of it.

He also negotiated a sizable raise once. He was able to do this because he could accurately gauge his value to the company, and when his boss asked him why he think he deserved a raise, he was able to articulate everything he did step by step, and how much the average salary for his position was.

Then I have another friend. Not confident at all. Massive self defeatist. He thinks about failure and "can't" in everything so he never gets much done.

In an L & D context confidence has something to do with appearing to not care about making an ass of yourself without actually making too much of an ass of yourself.

There is a particular kind of confident man that wears a deodorant that is called Axe. The recipe for Axe if I remember right is two parts Massengill and three parts Summer's Eve compressed into an aerosol canister. As a result, many girls tend to think that a guy who goes out smelling like a Massengill and Summer's Eve mixture is very secure is his manhood.

To be completely exact, though. The 'confidence' really is whatever women thinks appears confident. In L & D, the appearance of being confident is much more important than actually being the definition of 'confident'.

would you please provide relevant examples of this? are the folks posting on this thread, who have described their lack-of confidence, jerks also?
the french have a nice bon mot used to describe people "who know what to do" - savoir faire.

You can get non confident people who display it as jerkiness, and some who just doubt themselves. Its where the persons personality type comes into play.

i don't think very many people value confidence in and of itself. most people seem to value confidence that is backed up by something they respect. i respect expertise in most areas, so i appreciate a person who is confident about that expertise (but not cocky).

i believe confidence is a good thing, because we all have talents that we can be proud of, but i don't think my appreciation of confidence is immoral.

See the mysoginists of wrong planet for further examples

This is called codependency. Which is not to say that it's a bad basis for a relationship, necessarily, but that's the clinical term for it, and it comes with risks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency

Ideally, for me, relationships are based on mutual respect and equal power dynamics. The world is full of people who need my help, but the person I want as a life partner is somebody who can go toe to toe with me and stand by my side and join me in my fights and let me join her in hers, and call me on my B.S., and be called on her B.S., and do all of this in a context where she and I love each other from head to toe, hair to bone marrow, persona to deepest darkest secrets.

Confidence is a good indicator that somebody is well situated for that role. If somebody isn't confident, that's not necessarily a dealbreaker--but it indicates that I may have more power over her than I would really want in a romantic relationship. My job would be to help her become more successful and feel better about herself so that she can become more confident. And then, maybe when she's more confident, I'd consider dating her. But more likely, the more confident version of her would find someone else.

It's not completely beyond the pale that I'll find somebody to save and end up marrying her. But all things being equal, that's not what I'm looking for. And I would never want to date anybody whose self-worth depended on me.


Cheers,

TH