WHY WE TRUST CONFIDENT PEOPLE (EVEN WHEN THEY ARE WRONG)

By Victor Alawode

Imagine you are in a meeting and two people give different answers to the same question. The first person hesitate, hedges, and says “I think this is the answer" then the other person stands up, looks you dead in the eyes and say “this is simply the answer"

If you are like most people, you are most likely going to believe the second person without having to confirm if they are right or wrong even though neither of them present evidence to support their answers.

Psychology has a useful way of describing this kind of shortcut: THE CONFIDENCE HEURISTIC. This is simply the tendency to equate how sure a person sounds to how right they actually are.

In a 2004 study published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, researchers Paul Price and Eric Stone tested this by having college students evaluate two fictional financial advisors predicting stock performance, one well-calibrated and the other overconfident. Despite both advisors being right the same number of times, participants consistently preferred the overconfident one, and their preference was driven by how the advisors' confidence shaped perceptions of their knowledge and accuracy. In other words, sounding sure was enough to be seen as the right one, evidence didn't need to catch up.

Our brains are wired for efficiency not accuracy. Verifying every piece of information we hear is going to take so much time and effort and to shield us from this stress, our brain provides us a shortcut by making us look for certain quick clues to establish what is right and what is wrong. Clues like; tone of voice, posture, eye contact, absence of hesitation, etc. once these details are present, we assume that the truth has been passed across.

Confidence and competence are not the same thing. Confidence reflects how certain we feel; competence reflects what we can actually do or understand.

This bias shows up clearly in different settings, in leadership for instance:

Research from the University of Kent, published in Personality and Individual Differences by Dr. Andrew Martin and colleagues, found that socially dominant individuals were more confident in their decision-making but not more accurate in their choices than people of lower social status. The study directly challenges the assumption that confidence signals competence, a perception that often pushes dominant individuals into leadership roles in the first place. It suggests that acting confidently can function as an effective social strategy on its own, independent of whether it's backed by actual skill.

This subconscious action of ours is not without a cost in fact, it can cost us more than we can imagine. For instance, organizations might end up employing the least competent applicant just because they appear confident. Also, when a certain information is passed across, people tend to believe it swiftly as long as it is confidently presented even if it is false.

The question now is “is confidence bad?" And the answer is NO. And here is where most people get it wrong.

Confidence on its own is not bad, what is bad is confidence without substance.

For the purpose of understanding this, we can think of confidence in two forms

Genuine confidence: this is the confidence that comes from clarity and actual understanding. For instance, I may be able to teach algebra boldly because I have taken time to study it very well and to know the nooks and crannies of it. This kind of confidence is good and encouraged

Performed confidence: this is the dangerous kind of confidence. It is simply a communication style that mimics certainty regardless of what is underneath.

Therefore, to maintain a healthy society, merely ‘looking' confident is not enough, real confidence must be built through actual study, practice and intense preparation.

In short, a society won't grow if members only sound confident without actual substance. Therefore, speakers must fact-check information and be sure that what they are passing across with confidence is true. Also, listeners, the next time someone sounds extremely certain, don't ask only, “How confident are they?” be curious about what their confidence is actually built on.