Read The Confidence Code Online
Authors: Katty Kay,Claire Shipman
Tags: #Business & Economics, #Careers, #General, #Women in Business
The Confidence Code (27 page)
And thanks are due especially to our long-suffering, fantastically supportive husbands, Tom and Jay. They both read this manuscript with great interest, and from commas to insightful commentary, they made this a much better book. They brought us tea (Katty) and ice cream (Claire), ferried kids, and filled in ever-shifting gaps. We are very lucky. And confident that we’ve done well in choosing our husbands.
Finally, we would both like to thank fate for bringing us together. Or, perhaps we need to give ourselves more credit than that. Having learned the lesson of this book, we will not merely give luck all of the praise for making us friends, partners, and confidence collaborators. We thank each other for the mutual efforts we make to nurture our relationship. There are not many people in the world you can write not one but two books with, and still be the best of friends.
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was made. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature on your ebook reader.
1: It’s Not Enough to Be Good
8
first Chinese-American cabinet secretary
: http://elainelchao.com/biography.
11
it eventually caught on across the Atlantic:
“BBC News Profile: Dominique Strauss-Kahn,” last updated December 10, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13405268; “Strauss-Kahn Resigns From IMF; Lawyers to Seek Bail on Rape Charges,” last updated May 19, 2011, http://abcnews.go.com/US/dominique-strauss-khan-resigns-lawyers-return-court-seeking/story?id=13636051.
14
how confident they feel in their professions:
Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, and Mary Davis Holt, “Four ways women stunt their careers unintentionally,”
Harvard Business Review
20 (2011).
14
Linda Babcock:
Linda Babcock, “Nice Girls Don’t Ask,”
Harvard Business Review
, 2013.
14
problem stems from lack of confidence:
Marilyn J. Davidson and Ronald J. Burke,
Women in Management Worldwide
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 102.
15
Think about it for a minute:
Justin Kruger and David Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Assessments,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
Vol 77 (6), Dec 1999: 1121–34, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121.
15
notions about their ability:
David Dunning, Kerri Johnson, Joyce Ehrlinger, and Justin Kruger, “Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence,”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
, no. 3 (2003): 83–87.
16
when in the minority:
Christopher F. Karpowitz, Tali Mendelberg, and Lee Shaker, “Gender inequality in deliberative participation,”
American Political Science Review
106, no. 3 (2012): 533–47.
16
self-perception decades ago:
Toni Schmader and Brenda Major, “The impact of ingroup vs. outgroup performance on personal values,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
35, no. 1 (1999): 47–67.
19
30 percent better than it is:
Ernesto Reuben, Columbia University Business School Journal, Ideas At Work: “Confidence Game,” last modified November 22, 2011, https://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/ideasatwork/feature/7224716/Confidence Game.
20
play into different stereotypes:
Nalini Ambady, Margaret Shih, Amy Kim, and Todd L. Pittinsky, “Stereotype susceptibility in children: Effects of identity activation on quantitative performance,”
Psychological Science
12, no. 5 (2001): 385–90.
21
Hewlett-Packard conducted a study:
Hau L. Lee and Corey Billington, “The evolution of supply-chain-management models and practice at Hewlett-Packard,”
Interfaces
25, no. 5 (1995): 42–63.
21
value of confidence and competence:
Cameron Anderson, Sebastien Brion, Don A. Moore, and Jessica A. Kennedy, “A status-enhancement account of overconfidence” (2012), http://haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/papers/anderson/status%20enhancement%20account%20of%20overconfidence.pdf.
24
described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as perfect concentration:
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Flow
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991).
2: Do More, Think Less
27
His groundbreaking studies:
Adam Kepecs, Naoshige Uchida, Hatim A. Zariwala, and Zachary F. Mainen, “Neural correlates, computation and behavioural impact of decision confidence,”
Nature
455, no. 7210 (2008): 227–31.
41
optimism is the key to life:
Martin E. Seligman,
Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
(New York: Random House Digital, 2011).
42
Morris Rosenberg came up with a basic self-esteem scale:
Morris Rosenberg,
Conceiving the Self
(New York: Basic Books, 1979).
To check your self-esteem level, answer the following questions with one of the four statements:
Strongly Agree
Agree
Disagree
Strongly Disagree.
1. I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others.
2. I feel that I have a number of good qualities.
3. All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure.
4. I am able to do things as well as most other people.
5. I feel I do not have much to be proud of.
6. I take a positive attitude toward myself.
7. On the whole, I am satisfied with myself.
8. I wish I could have more respect for myself.
9. I certainly feel useless at times.
10. At times I think I am no good at all.
You then calculate your score as follows:
For items 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7:
Strongly agree = 3
Agree = 2
Disagree = 1
Strongly disagree = 0
For items 3, 5, 8, 9, and 10:
Strongly agree = 0
Agree = 1
Disagree = 2
Strongly disagree = 3
The scale ranges from 0 to 30. Scores between 15 and 25 are within normal range; scores below 15 suggest low self-esteem.
43
unrealistic self-esteem:
David H. Silvera and Charles R. Seger, “Feeling good about ourselves: Unrealistic self-evaluations and their relation to self-esteem in the United States and Norway,”
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
35.5 (2004): 571–85.
44
confidence and optimism as closely related:
N. Park and C. Peterson, “Positive psychology and character strengths: Its application for strength-based school counseling,”
Journal of Professional School Counseling
12 (2008): 85–92; N. Park and C. Peterson, “Achieving and sustaining a good life,”
Perspectives on Psychological Science
4 (2009): 422–28.
45
The work of Sharon Salzberg:
Sharon Salzberg,
The Kindness Handbook: A Practical Companion
(Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2008).
Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program
(New York: Workman Publishing, 2011).
45
recently pioneered as an academic pursuit:
Kristin Neff, “Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself,”
Self and Identity
2, no. 2 (2003): 85–101.
47
“Theory of Behavioral Change”:
Albert Bandura, “Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change,”
Psychological Review
84, no. 2 (1977): 191.
51
Estes did a series of tests:
Zachary Estes, “Attributive and relational processes in nominal combination,”
Journal of Memory and Language
48, no. 2 (2003): 304–19.
54
two of the most trusted confidence scales:
This first test, crafted by Professor Richard Petty of Ohio State University and Kenneth DeMarree of the University of Buffalo, was just crafted in 2013. It is simple, and it’s meant to provide a clear sense of general confidence. The key is to be as honest as possible in the responses.
Respond to the statements below on a scale of 1 to 9: A score of 1 indicates that you agree very much; a score of 9 means that you disagree very much.
1. I am a good person.
2. I am a sad person.
3. I am a confident person.
4. I am an ineffective person.
5. I am a warm person.
6. I am a bad person.
7. I am a happy person.
8. I am a doubtful person.
9. I am an effective person.
10. I am a cold person.
Now, isolate your results from items 3 and 8. Reverse the score for 3; in other words, if you gave yourself a 2, turn that into an 8, and then add those two numbers.
A score of 2 means that you are as doubtful as they come, and a score of 18 would be quite confident.
The average score among young people, students at Texas Tech and Ohio State, is 13. That should give you a sense as to where you fall. Professor Petty has told us that a range of 9 to 14 is average, based on data so far. Below 9 is lower than average, and above 14 is higher than average.
For more on how the scale has been used so far, see studies such as K. G. DeMarree, C. Davenport, P. Briñol, and R. E. Petty, “The Role of Self-Confidence in Persuasion: A Multi-Process Examination,” presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, Ill., May 2012; and R. E. Petty, K. G. DeMarree, and P. Briñol, “Individual Differences in the Use of Mental Contents,” presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, Berkeley, Calif., September 2013.
The other relevant measure is the General Self-Efficacy Scale, developed in 1981 and still in wide use today. It is more a measure of a sense of belief in an ability to get things done than an assessment of a generalized sense of confidence. (English version by Ralf Schwarzer and Matthias Jerusalem, 1995.)
Answer the questions on the next page using the following response format:
1 = Not at all true
2 = Hardly true
3 = Moderately true
4 = Exactly true
1. I can always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough.
2. If someone opposes me, I can find the means and ways to get what I want.
3. It is easy for me to stick to my aims and accomplish my goals.
4. I am confident that I could deal efficiently with unexpected events.
5. Thanks to my resourcefulness, I know how to handle unforeseen situations.
6. I can solve most problems if I invest the necessary effort.
7. I can remain calm when facing difficulties because I can rely on my coping abilities.
8. When I am confronted with a problem, I can usually find several solutions.
9. If I am in trouble, I can usually think of a solution.
10. I can usually handle whatever comes my way.
Your total will be between 10 and 40, with higher scores meaning a more confident attitude. A score of 29 has been about average worldwide.
3: Wired for Confidence
58
essential to personality formation:
Stephen J. Suomi et al., “Cognitive impact of genetic variation of the serotonin transporter in primates is associated with differences in brain morphology rather than serotonin neurotransmission,”
Molecular Psychiatry
15, no. 5 (2009): 512–22.
58
a key criterion for confidence:
Klaus-Peter Lesch et al., “Association of anxiety-related traits with a polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene regulatory region,”
Science
274, no. 5292 (1996): 1527–31.
58
linked with happiness and optimism:
A. Graff-Guerrero, C. De la Fuente-Sandoval, B. Camarena, D. Gomez-Martin, R. Apiquian, A. Fresan, A. Aguilar et al., “Frontal and limbic metabolic differences in subjects selected according to genetic variation of the SLC6A4 gene polymorphism,”
Neuroimage
25, no. 4 (2005): 1197–1204.
61
sets of twins in Britain:
Alexandra Trouton, Frank M. Spinath, and Robert Plomin, “Twins early development study (TEDS): A multivariate, longitudinal genetic investigation of language, cognition and behavior problems in childhood,”
Twin Research
5, no. 5 (2002): 444–48.
62
link between genes and IQ:
Robert Plomin et al., “DNA markers associated with high versus low IQ: The IQ quantitative trait loci (QTL) project,”
Behavior Genetics
24, no. 2 (1994): 107–18.
62
proclivity to be a professional dancer:
Can you truly thank your genes for your fox-trotting ability? Israeli researchers have found that professional dancers often share two gene variants—one regulates serotonin, another affects the hormone vasopressin, which in turn affects bonding and social communication. The thinking (though it’s not widely accepted) is that these gene variants encourage an impulse toward creativity, communication, bonding, and even spirituality that makes dancing more appealing. Interestingly, the dancers don’t share a genetic variation many top athletes have. (That, if you are wondering, is a variant of the AGT gene, which seems to be common among athletes involved in power sports, and may, according to researchers, affect muscle strength.) No word yet on a bowling gene. R. Bachner-Melman et al., “AVPR1a and SLC6A4 Gene Polymorphisms Are Associated with Creative Dance Performance,”
Public Library of Science Genetics
(2005), e42. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0010042; Christian Kandler, “The Genetic Links Between the Big Five Personality Traits and General Interest Domains,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
(2011).
63
comparing DNA and IQ scores:
Robert Plomin and Frank M. Spinath, “Intelligence: Genetics, Genes, and Genomics,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, no. 1 (2004): 112–29, http://webspace.pugetsound.edu/facultypages/cjones/chidev/Paper/Articles/Plomin-IQ.pdf; B. Devlin, Michael Daniels, and Kathryn Roeder “The heritability of IQ,”
Nature
388 (1997): 468–71.
