"So my first reaction when reading of female underconfidence* is not simply that this is a problem. It’s to ask, how can we inject more of this self-doubt and self-policing into the wider culture. How can each of us get a better mixture of “female” self-doubt and “male” self-assertion?"
But my second reaction is to notice that people are phenomenally terrible at estimating their own self-worth. Some Americans seem to value themselves ridiculously too little while others value themselves ridiculously too highly...
The person with the self-confidence mind-set starts thinking about his own intrinsic state. The person who sees herself as the instrument for performing a task thinks about some external thing that needs doing. The person with the confidence mind-set is like the painfully self-conscious person at a dinner party who asks, “How am I coming across?” The person with an instrumentalist mind-set is serving a craft and asks “What does this specific job require?” The person with a confidence mind-set is told “Believe in yourself.” This arouses all sorts of historical prejudices and social stereotypes. The person with an instrumentalist mind-set is told “Look accurately at what you have done.”
One of the hard things in life is learning to ask questions that you can actually answer. (read the whole thing)
* a "fascinating" summary of “The Confidence Code” by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman on the current issue of The Atlantic.
23 comments:
'Women are phenomenally assured about their ability to manipulate men into giving them more stuff.
Whining, bitching and sexual withdrawal are all part of the female arsenal. So, is running to Daddy and crying.
This "confidence" gambit is a recent addition to the game.
I grew up with three sisters. I know the game.
I'll read this crap if you can tell me precisely what pressing, real world problem we're supposed to be addressing.
On a microscopic level, confidence can be found in the fibers of a crisp pleat.
One of the things that women are best at doing is manipulating fools like this Brooks doofus.
Complaints about how mistreated they are send white knights like Brooks off on a Quixotic crusade to find the bad men and fix whatever is making the girls cry.
I've been watching this stupid shit for 64 years. It's comic gold, except when you're the man the white knights decide has to pay the price.
I guarantee you, the same damned stupid game played out in our grandfathers' and great-grandfathers' lives. Men seem to be too damned romantic, too bone headed, and too beset by ill will engendered by their competition with other men to know that they are being made fools.
@April: LOL!
"Much of the recent psychological research also suggests that overconfidence is our main cognitive problem, not the reverse."
Maybe that's what someone's research shows, but it's not the problem. It doesn't really matter how confident you are. That's a scapegoat. What matters is what you actually do, complete, and learn from. It's your actions, not your feelings. Confidence can follow action, but even accomplishment often does not lead to confidence. The problem is that people simply don't DO things that they easily can. They don't take step one, and even more often fail to take a following step. It's the hardest thing to do the whole dance to the end. Sometimes it's insufficient confidence, but most ofetn it is other things like laziness, or lack of prioritizing, or just running out of energy or focus. No confidence is just an excuse for lack of action.
People often do amazing things in the middle of great doubt, but driven by necessity or pure desire alone. It seems to me that the most important things are accomplished despite any assurance of success. If you want it enough, and you can use that desire to keep your feet moving forward, you will get there, but all that really matters in the end is did your feet keep moving?
Yes April, Perfect! I love to see someone say that to Brooks live.
"what pressing, real world problem we're supposed to be addressing."
"The gender pay gap", ie a political feather in the cap of democrats, ie Hillary Clinton.
The Atlantic article a prop Hillary piece w/o necessarily mentioning her.
If all I can do is melt ice... then I must be valuing myself too highly.
That's just my own opinion.
I was channeling Bagoh's sense of humor. I may not live up to such greatness, but I try. :)
@Lem - I agree with you that these opinion pieces by the left are Hillary prep. It's ALL framework for Hillary. Suddenly women's issue are of the utmost importance. We lack confidence, we are under-appreciated, we are not paid enough blah blah blah.
The left operate the levers of victimology, and they do it well. Sadly, it's all meaningless.
There are moments in movies or TV when somebody says something -- usually while stressed out -- so amazing out of kilter and yet so revealing of some awful personal truth that it hits you like a punch to the head that leaves you dazed for an instant.
For example, in the movie Ordinary People the mother, played by Mary Tyler Moore defends herself by saying: "Hate him? My God, how could I hate him? Mothers don't hate their sons!"
POW!!!
Well, anyway, last night I saw the latest "Mad Men" and Betty and Henry get into a domestic squabble where he basically tells her to stifle herself in social situations because she only mucks things up for his career.
Betty is way angry and she defends herself by saying: "I'm not stupid, I speak Italian!!!"
Yeesh.
Anyway, the foregoing was my meditation of the topic of female confidence.
Worth about what you paid for it, by my surmise.
A long time ago, maybe it was 1985 or 86, I used to go to this dry cleaner who had a sign up that said "Women's skirts pressed, $1.00 per pleat."
I thought to myself, "Jesus Christ! No wonder nobody wears skirts anymore!"
It's a simple proposition from ABC'S Claire Shipman and BBC anchor Katty Kay.
You people, voting Americans, elected Obama because he was black. Now we want to you elect Hillary because she is a woman.
The qualifications via historical biography (or something like that) that propelled Obama was your racism towards people of color.
The qualifications via historical biography (or something like that) that we want to propel Hillary with is your sexism towards women.
You owe it to us.
They can't come right out and say it... not because they lack confidence but because it would be off-putting, politically damaging and they are journalists... they are supposed to be above petty politics.
So they it dress-up in social psychology.
It's your actions, not your feelings.
You just lost the women's vote, bagoh!
I assume this is the same Claire Shipman who is the wife of one Baghdad Bob Carney?
Lem - exactly.
--with the media -they insist we go with their choice. We owe it to them.
One of my favorite stock photos is embedded here. However, the idea that that cat has "confidence" is in error...that cat is an arrogant idiot. The "confidence" is in the dogs to maintain their "setz" position and not move, a primary requirement of a BH (obedience trial) title. Otherwise, that cat is lunch.
Nothing wrong with confidence.
Witness: The Confident Housecat
chases off nuisance bears
and keeps them off the porch
Gators, too
He could be "lunch" at any time but he does it anyway. He has confidence in his mission and the animal energy is on his side.
If his confidence ebbs and the mission fails and he becomes lunch then he was overconfident.
I'm already bored with people trying to make Hillary! happen. Same old same old, dividing Americans against each other - over/under confident, male/female. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
Crista Flanagan as Luann Lockhart exudes confidence.
The cat is wondering why the cruel humans placed it there. The cat is thinking "oh shit oh shit oh shit..."
Arrogant? No way. Arrogance has nothing to do with it. The cat more than likely lacks confidence based on prior experience. Being chased by a dog sucks.
The dogs are well trained and the person with the most confidence in unseen in the photo.
The trainer.
The dogs are indeed awesome and confident, but again -that is because of the human.
So bottom line - humans are awesome! Dogs rock. Pussy just wants to be left alone with a can of tuna and a warm spot to nap.
April...you've not meet my cat "NitWit"...aptly named because of her over confidence and arrogant behavior. She thinks she rules German Shepherds....and does a got imitation of it. Actually she's a grumpy persistent nag ... so much so that after a few minutes of loudly complaining her food dish is not over flowing with tuna, "Dera" my little 85 lb female GSD will come and get me to shut her up...even wake me if necessary...like most mornings.
Hillary is confident that the shrillness of her shaking voice and double clenched fists, her outwardly expressed Medusa, her impatience and ambition, control-freakiness, the ease with with she slips into shriek Harpy mode and irrational leftist axioms can cower any adversary. And it does. In the U.S. House and in impotent toothless investigative committees it does.
Bpe by chip. (best post evah)
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