Confidence is one of those words that we use to mean different things without even realizing it. There are two types of confidence: epistemic confidence, social confidence, and self-assuredness, both of which can be used to indicate different things in different contexts.
Why social confidence is more valuable
Individuals who embrace this type of thinking are often remarkably self-assured
- They are not afraid to express uncertainty, and they can hold a crowd’s attention when they speak
- Social confidence also involves how you carry yourself
- Benjamin Franklin
- He was brimming with social confidence, yet he paired his abundance of social confidence with an intentional lack of epistemic confidence
People judge you based on your social confidence
Being more self-assured is better than expressing certainty when it comes to the impression you make on people
- In a 2012 study, university students worked together in small groups while researchers videotaped their interactions
- The researchers then showed the video to a separate group of people and asked them to rate how confident and capable each of the students seemed based on how much social confidence they displayed
- So the more a student participated in conversation and had a relaxed demeanor, the more competent they appeared to the viewer
- By comparison, epistemic confidence hardly mattered
- Another study investigated the same question using actors trained to display combinations of the two types of confidence
How to be more socially confident
Build social confidence by practicing to speak up in groups, hiring a speech coach, dressing better, improving your posture, and seeking to inspire without overpromising
- All of these techniques make a difference in how people see you, and none of them require you to make unrealistic claims
