Benjamin Mann is a young professional currently living, working, and dating in Toronto. More of his writing can be found at yourbrainondating.com.
“It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.”
– Lillian Hellman
When I talk to both men and women about personality traits they find attractive, one of the most common terms I hear is “confidence.”
It’s often sprinkled in statements like, “I need someone who’s confident,” or “confidence is sexy.” But despite the confidence with which they often make these claims, I’m pretty confident they don’t know what they’re talking about.
People seem to know what confidence is, but rarely do I think that they know what it looks like when someone actually has it.
In a world where books answer questions like Why Men Love Bitches and popular media positions independence as an absence of reliance more than a wealth of motivation and self-governance, I worry that our approach to the search for confidence is a bit backwards.
Let’s try an experiment. I want you to look at the pictures below and note to yourself the person in each pair to whom you attribute the most confidence:
Chances are, you were naturally drawn to one person over the other; B in the first and A in the second. Maybe you weren’t drawn to them for long, but probably just long enough to have registered some basic judgment and a shred of certainty.
B and A above are exhibiting behaviours and appearances superficially associated with strength and certainty. As a result, your brain went off on its own and concocted a miniature, subconscious narrative supporting their rise toward, and ultimate acquisition of, confidence. But with these photos, you don’t have nearly enough information to make a judgment about something as complex as confidence. In fact, you have no such information at all.
The problem is that confidence, within each individual, can be complicated, fragmented, and finicky; it’s hard to know when it’s there, where else it might be found, and for how long it might stick around.
Often, to tell ourselves a simpler, more attractive story, we conflate certain discrete skills and habits with an all-encompassing inner certitude. The problem is that when you jump to apply a blanket, you assume everything is covered.
The reality is much more nuanced.
Have you ever met a pick-up artist? Or a member of Toastmasters? Or anyone who has studied postures and body language? These people have nailed down some very impressive tactics. But have they become a confident person? Beats me. Is the guy who makes the guacamole at Chipotle a good cook?
When I search literature for coherent, consistent definitions of confidence, I come up pretty short. Here are some examples I found of attempts to illustrate measurable traits of confident people:
– Doesn’t seek approval (from their romantically preferred sex)
– “Put together” – could be achieved by carrying on interesting conversation
– Assertive in public
– Doesn’t apologize for not having a nicer car
– Doesn’t feel threatened by significant others’ friends
– Puts across: “I can deal with this. I can handle this.”
– Has a sense of humour
– Humble
– Handles opinions, pressures, and attitudes of others with grace, and appears comfortable in own skin
I’ve seen more uniformity at a Village People concert; the last point can’t even stay on track with itself. And if someone picks me up for a date in a rusty beater with no seatbelts, I want an apology and a number for their Geico rep. I could poke heuristic holes in almost all of the above points and frankly, some of them are straight up misleading.
We need to flip the script.
Instead of trying to quickly establish the existence of ubiquitous confidence, you should just define and spot the granular qualities and skills you find attractive. If you want people who are assertive in public, look for that. If you want people who are calm under pressure, find that. If you want someone who takes great pride in their public appearance, screen for that, and good luck with the rest of their priorities.
Without a lot of intimate interaction and observing reactions to stress and prolonged confrontation, it’s going to be hard to know whether someone is confident, artful, or both.
So start by breaking it down to specific behaviours and tactics you think you want. Then watch what kind of picture gets painted. Maybe they’ll turn out to be the poster-child for confidence. Or maybe they’re the encyclopedia for supressed anxiety.
Either way, if you’re more thoughtful about it, at least you can be more confident that they’re what you’re actually looking for.
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