Confidence is hugely important in social, professional and romantic settings. The idea is that self-confidence may actually reflect the desirable qualities that an individual possesses. But by recognizing and exploiting the perception of confidence, some people might be able to heighten their own desirability by being over-confident. A recent study, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (link is external), set out to explore how being over-confident might help, or hinder, attracting mates.
In the first experiment, participants wrote short dating profiles and completed a simple measure of over-confidence. This involves rating familiarity with 150 terms or phrases. The trick is that one in every five terms is completely made-up (something like "sentence stigma"). Participants claiming familiarity with these made-up terms are obivously being over-confident in their estimates. Another group of participants then rated the dating-profiles and it was found that over-confident individuals wrote more confident dating profiles (no-brainer), and that more confident profiles were more desirable. However, over-confidence itself didn't make the profiles anymore desirable. In fact, a follow-up experiment showed that over-confident profiles were rated as arrogant, explaining the lack of direct link between over-confidence and desirability.
But the story doesn't end there. The researchers also wanted to know how over-confidence might affect competition for romantic partners. It might be the case that you're less likely to try and make conversation with someone if there's a mouthy jerk next to her chewing her ear off about his quarterly sales index. So in a third experiment, participants imagined that they were taking part in a singles mixer that a desirable mate would also be attending. When they arrive, they find the object of their desire is sitting with a rival of the same sex. To get an idea of their rival, these participants read the dating profiles from the previous experiment. They were then given an option of joining the table with their highly desirable potential partner and a rival, or the second table with two less desirable people. As predicted, the researchers found that people are far less likely to compete when their rival is over-confident.
To make matters worse, a follow up analysis showed that over-confident people are more likely to compete themselves. So not only will they not let you get a word in edge-ways through their bragging, but they're also more likely to stick around to the bitter end until you get tired of their hubris and decide it's not worth it.
Over-confidence may make you seem like an arrogant jerk, but the other guys are less likely to compete with you and if there's no one else around at the end of the day, you might just end up with the girl anyway.
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