The word “confidence” is a bit fuzzy, and is conflating a few things, here, but also I think that’s okay.
One of the things is the delta between one’s self-reported competence and one’s felt sense of confidence—I agree that in a certain sense they would always be the same if people were perfect perceivers and perfect reasoners, but they usually aren’t.
Another is something like … maybe you would call it meta-confidence? i.e. “I’m just a white belt and I really suck at these roundhouse kicks, but I’m going to confidently proceed throwing them, counting on repetition to help me improve!”
In the graphs, is “confidence” referring to “confidence in my ability to improve”, then? And so we are graphing competence vs. ability to improve competence?
Otherwise, if I’m trying to place myself on one of these graphs, I’m simply unable to to anything but follow the dotted line. There is no “felt sense of confidence” that I can identify in myself, that doesn’t originate in “I am competent at this”.
How about “anticipated okayness of failure”? Like, one may typically proceed “more confidently” in an arena that doesn’t matter/where there are low or no stakes, than in an arena where one fears the consequences of a misstep. Does that match any subjective experience you have?
Interesting, that was something I considered, but didn’t think was included in the idea of confidence. I have experienced that before. The stakes of a situation also seems like an objective fact, like competence. Perhaps the subjective evaluation of stakes and competence are entangled into the feeling of confidence. Maybe it has something to do with low variance of outcomes? If you have done something a lot, or if it doesn’t really matter, then there isn’t anything to worry about, because nothing that matters is up for grabs in the situation.
I think the key here is when your self-rating of competence differs from your actual competence.
If someone is bad at karate (low competence) but thinks they’re really good (high confidence), they’ll be in the bottom left area. This could go wrong for them if someone attacked them and they attacked back and totally messed up.
On the other side, if someone is good at karate (high competence) but doubts themself (low confidence), they’d be in the top right area. This could go wrong for them if someone attacked them and they assumed that they’re bad and didn’t bother to fight back, even if they could’ve defended themself successfully.
The word “confidence” is a bit fuzzy, and is conflating a few things, here, but also I think that’s okay.
One of the things is the delta between one’s self-reported competence and one’s felt sense of confidence—I agree that in a certain sense they would always be the same if people were perfect perceivers and perfect reasoners, but they usually aren’t.
Another is something like … maybe you would call it meta-confidence? i.e. “I’m just a white belt and I really suck at these roundhouse kicks, but I’m going to confidently proceed throwing them, counting on repetition to help me improve!”
In the graphs, is “confidence” referring to “confidence in my ability to improve”, then? And so we are graphing competence vs. ability to improve competence?
Otherwise, if I’m trying to place myself on one of these graphs, I’m simply unable to to anything but follow the dotted line. There is no “felt sense of confidence” that I can identify in myself, that doesn’t originate in “I am competent at this”.
How about “anticipated okayness of failure”? Like, one may typically proceed “more confidently” in an arena that doesn’t matter/where there are low or no stakes, than in an arena where one fears the consequences of a misstep. Does that match any subjective experience you have?
Interesting, that was something I considered, but didn’t think was included in the idea of confidence. I have experienced that before. The stakes of a situation also seems like an objective fact, like competence. Perhaps the subjective evaluation of stakes and competence are entangled into the feeling of confidence. Maybe it has something to do with low variance of outcomes? If you have done something a lot, or if it doesn’t really matter, then there isn’t anything to worry about, because nothing that matters is up for grabs in the situation.
I think the key here is when your self-rating of competence differs from your actual competence.
If someone is bad at karate (low competence) but thinks they’re really good (high confidence), they’ll be in the bottom left area. This could go wrong for them if someone attacked them and they attacked back and totally messed up.
On the other side, if someone is good at karate (high competence) but doubts themself (low confidence), they’d be in the top right area. This could go wrong for them if someone attacked them and they assumed that they’re bad and didn’t bother to fight back, even if they could’ve defended themself successfully.