I blogged before about the notion of the confidence gap, where some people are loudly overconfident about their own abilities.
I wonder how these people who overestimate their own competence assess other people's abilities? ("Competence" is actually a better word than "abilities" for what I'm trying to express here, but the post rapidly became ridiculous with the conflation of the similar-looking and -sounding words "confidence" and " competence")
To make it easier to give examples, let's pretend that abilities can be measured in Ability Points. Does a person who actually has 50 Ability Points but is overconfident enough to think they have 70 Ability Points perceive someone with 60 Ability Points as more competent or less competent?
Or do they equate loud overconfidence with ability, and so can't recognize that the quietly-competent person in the corner easily has at least 100 Ability Points, but the loudmouth down the hall only has 40 Ability Points on a good day?
I suppose you could also look at this from the other side: how do people with imposter syndrome perceive other people's abilities?
I can't tell you for certain that I underestimate my abilities, but both anecdotal evidence and other people's comments to my younger self suggest that I have done so in the past. (I'm too close to the present to accurately assess it.) And during that time, I simply assumed that other people had the level of awesomeness that I myself felt subpar for lacking. For example, I thought I had 50 Ability Points, and assumed that others had 100 Ability Points, when in fact they were within 10 Ability Points of me. (I'm too close to the situation to tell you objectively if that meant we both had ~50 Ability Points or ~100 Ability Points or some vastly different number.)
But that's when comparing myself to other translators in the realm of translation. In other areas of life where I very clearly don't have particular expertise, if someone who is supposed to have particular expertise doesn't appear to be vastly better than I am in a way I can clearly perceive, I feel betrayed. If I'm right about something and my doctor or lawyer or realtor is wrong, I don't feel I can trust them. I have no idea if this is representative or just one of my personal neuroses.
2 comments:
Does a person who actually has 50 Ability Points but is overconfident enough to think they have 70 Ability Points perceive someone with 60 Ability Points as more competent or less competent?
Or do they equate loud overconfidence with ability, and so can't recognize that the quietly-competent person in the corner easily has at least 100 Ability Points, but the loudmouth down the hall only has 40 Ability Points on a good day?
Theory of mind isn't my strong suit, so this is just a wild guess, but as I get older I become more and more convinced that the overconfident types are pretty aware of the quietly competent and her 100 Ability Points. They simply believe that confidence is far, far more important and valuable than competence. After all, even if you have a legit need for the latter, it is a thing that can be bought shockingly cheaply.
Book smarts vs. Street Smarts. I think we know who's winning. Down here south of the border, anyways.
I think people with Imposter Syndrome overestimate other people's abilities. I think that's a defining characteristic of Imposter Syndrome.
But the loud, overconfident people, I wonder, do they recognize quiet competence at all? I get the impression they only recognize each other. But I don't know what's going on underneath.
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