How important is confidence? Psychologists say confidence is a series of mental, physical, and emotional habits that can be learned. What makes some people overconfident while others are realistic about their abilities and why are both outlooks important to succeed in life?
Ian Robertson is Co-Director of the Global Brain Health Institute (Trinity College Dublin and University of California at San Francisco) and Co-Leader of The BrainHealth Project at University of Texas at Dallas. A trained clinical psychologist as well as a neuroscientist, he is internationally renowned for his research on neuropsychology. He has written five books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles and comment pieces in the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Irish Times, Time magazine and New York magazine, amongst others. He has appeared on BBC Radio and featured in several major television documentaries. He is a regular speaker at major futurology and business conferences in Europe, the USA and Asia.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
We're so interested in what you've written about How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-Belief. I think that all of us could do with a little bit more confidence. Share with us a little from your book and how we can cultivate confidence.
IAN ROBERTSON
The book probes the science and neuroscience behind the idea that confidence can be learned, or whether it is something you inherit. Optimism, hope, and self-esteem are all concepts that are easily confused with confidence. But, as I show, they differ in one fundamental way - confidence empowers action. You can be an optimist who is hopeful that things will work out okay in the end without ever believing that you can play a part in that outcome, or indeed have any realistic grounds for that optimism. And you can have high self-esteem and feel good about yourself without feeling confident that you can achieve a particular goal.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
It comes down to people's skills and being able to say, if you're team building and don't have all the traits needed, but you have the confidence that people then follow you, so you can gather their traits and do something truly collective. That's the positive end of it. On the other hand, we've seen some politicians harness that confidence in different ways. And in your book, you write about a positive correlation between narcissism and political participation. Why do you think narcissism is so rampant in certain politicians? I'm thinking of Boris Johnson or Donald Trump.
ROBERTSON
Narcissistic people have very high self-evaluations. This means they're able to do things in spite of not having mastered their brief. I'm thinking of Boris Johnson and Trump, in spite of having lots of legal cases against them. And so the kind of things that would make the rest of us anxious, the narcissist is so engrossed in their positive self-perception that they're not fazed by things. But the other thing about narcissism, particularly in the media, it can create charisma, and charisma gives you status, and status makes you persuasive. And persuasion gets you money and power and all sorts of other things, and these reinforce the charisma. So there's a rather sinister, vicious cycle to the narcissist and vicious to the rest of us. That can put people who are not fit for power in power because of the superficial, supreme overconfidence that is a part of narcissism.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
You really point out that certain individuals may be naturally born with confidence, or it's been promoted and encouraged in them from the time they were young. Also, there's a gender divide because, and I think that one of the gists of your book is that women are more realistic and men can be overconfident.
ROBERTSON
Before I researched this book, I hadn't realized quite what an advantage men have in the world because, on average, they're more overconfident. And women are more realistic about their abilities, and there are many factors at play in this. Because of the positive effects that confidence has on your success in the world, and in your success in persuading other people, and in your success in building status. But if the right learning doesn't happen and the right experiences don't happen, it can result in a yawning gap in confidence, not just between men and women, but between people of different social classes, between people of a minority group and people of a majority group, and people who have certain physical appearances, height, looks, etc. All of these things feed into confidence, but none of them determine it. And that's the good news. Just as Venus Williams said, "Confidence is a series of mental, physical, and emotional habits that can be learned. And once you learn them, you can gain the compound interest benefits of confidence."
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
We are the stories we tell ourselves, and so if we surround ourselves with positive yet attainable stories, we can become the best version of ourselves. I really believe that. I'm glad that you mentioned the climate crisis. Currently, there are several groups of young environmentalists taking 32 European countries to court over climate policies, and they've won in Germany and recently in Montana. And they argued that the lack of adequate action is a breach of their human rights and their well-being. So they have this I think justified anxiety because they're going to have to live with the consequences of climate change much longer and they resent the heat waves. And some find they can't sleep and they can't study because the real urgency is something that the rest of the world is not paying enough attention to. So where do you balance what is enough anxiety, that fight or flight instinct, without blinkering ourselves to the dangers and addressing the situation?
ROBERTSON
Young people who are rightly feeling very anxious about the future of the world, the worst thing for them is to just feel this constant sense of threat and hopelessness. The best thing they can do is to change that fear into anger. However, anger is a dangerous and powerful emotion. And the thing about anger is its purpose in life is as a negotiating tool. So there has to be a sense of action of something you want to happen, a goal, and you know who it is you're asking to achieve that goal. And that's where collective action becomes a fuel and that fuel empowers confidence. And of course, confidence is most powerful when it's collective.
