learn to trust and rely on ourselves. (If you already trust and rely on yourself, even just a little, then you can smile and feel good about yourself.)
As for the definition with regard to individuals, the following comes up in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary:
A feeling of self-assurance arising from an appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.
A belief in your own ability to do something and be successful.
The feeling that you are certain about something.
Specifying ‘self-confidence’ gives us the following dictionary definition:
A feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities and judgement.
If we also look at the Oxford English Dictionary definition of self-esteem, it seems to be one step further than confidence in our own worth or abilities:
A feeling of being happy with your own character and abilities.
So is confidence based on self-esteem? Is self-esteem inner and confidence outer, or does outer confidence show inner self-esteem? Does high self-esteem lead to self-confidence? What a mental maze.
FINDING A PERSONAL DEFINITION
Social psychology studies have shown that we try to manage our feelings of self-worth. With social media, and generations who haven’t experienced life without social media, there is a whole new arena to research. A University of Wisconsin and Madison1 2013 study measuring Facebook users’ self-esteem looked at how quickly participants made positive associations about themselves when looking at their own profile. But the study didn’t look at how and why a Facebook profile is a version of self, or to what extent it’s a true version. If Photoshopped and filtered photos boost your self-esteem, then how real is it? If you’ve posted photos from parties where it looks as though you’re having a fabulous time, but in reality you left early because your ex was there or you were bored, how does looking at photos of yourself looking good help you feel good at the next party or when you’re on your own?
The above study didn’t assess the effect of people looking at other people’s profiles and newsfeeds. One that did was the 2014 study at the University of Queensland’s School of Psychology,2 which found that active participation in social media produces a positive sense of belonging. The study looked at one group of people in which half posted regularly on Facebook while the other half passively observed posts. According to the study, not posting for two days had a negative effect on those who were simply observing the posts. In another group, participants using anonymous accounts were encouraged to respond to each other. However, half of the group were unaware they were set up not to receive any responses. Those who didn’t receive responses felt invisible with lower self-esteem. What does this tell us about self-esteem? That it’s changeable, that it’s vulnerable, that it’s dependent on the group and peer activity? And how does this all tie up with confidence?
If you’re someone who receives compliments about how together you are, if you can be the joker of the group, or if your job involves helping others at a high level, and yet lack of confidence is your guilty secret, then you know all too well that appearances are deceptive. If you can appear to be confident to others but aren’t inside, what does this mean? How can we define confidence to take these contradictions into account?
Enter the academics, with a term we don’t use every day: self-efficacy. In the good old Oxford English Dictionary, efficacy is defined as the ability of something to produce the results that are wanted whilst self-efficacy is the ability to produce a desire or intended result.
Let’s say you want to start going to a yoga class to de-stress. You’ve put it off because you feel hopeless at anything new, you don’t like group activities and you don’t like your body in gym clothes. In short your self-esteem is low. But finally, out of desperation to help you sleep, you go to a low-key class that a neighbour has recommended. Everyone is friendly, no one is in scary designer gear, no one is looking at anyone, you forget yourself and time, and during relaxation you go out like a light, and come round at the end of the class feeling refreshed. You’ve produced your intended result.
If we can change our personal definition of confidence, could that change our view of confidence? If you were totally clear about what confidence is, would it be less elusive and more attainable?
CONFIDENCE MEANS HAVING A GO
One of the problems with defining confidence is that the psychologists themselves haven’t researched this much. Most of the research is somewhere between self-esteem and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a concept that first emerged in the 1970s through Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura3 and has been researched extensively.
“ Self-esteem is more about liking yourself. Self-efficacy is our belief in our capacity to try and accomplish something. ”
If you don’t like yourself it’s not easy to change this. If you don’t like a part of yourself, it’s not easy to change this. Let’s say you don’t like your body. You might very well find the idea of going to a gym intimidating because you picture that it will be full of people perfecting their six-packs and toned bodies. But you might decide to give running a try because you live near a splendid park and were pretty good at running at school. You discover it clears your head after work, you get fit and then proudly notice your body looking better.
Bandura’s definition of self-efficacy in simple terms means: ‘I can have a go. I’m hopeless at exercise, I’ve been a couch potato for years, but I was good at running at school, so I might like it again. I can give it a try and see how I get on.’ What this shows is that confidence is a skill that can be learnt, as long as we simply try.
“ I can have a go is not a guarantee of a positive outcome, but it’s a positive feeling that you are able to try. ”
What Boniwell highlights is that there’s confusion and misrepresentation in our society as to what confidence actually is. People with inflated self-esteem might have real confidence, but they might not. While self-esteem applies to our character in general, self-efficacy is what explains why we can be confident in one area of our lives and not in another.
Boniwell, a highly qualified academic and accomplished professional, remembers being confident at school from the start. ‘Very early on I was confident reading poems in front of hundreds of pupils. I was always confident with teachers.’ But as the tallest girl (she was her adult height at the age of 12) she had to contend with all the other children at school making fun of her. When her family moved from Latvia to Saransk, Russia, she was the tallest female in a city of 300,000 people. ‘I was called giraffe. And Eiffel Tower.’
As a result of her height she wasn’t confident with boys. For a start she had to wait for them to catch up with her height. By the time she was 19 her confidence began to develop but she admits it wasn’t until her late 20s that she got over this. Her personal experience underlines her views on confidence: ‘We can be confident in one thing and not another. And we can develop confidence in areas where we lack confidence. That was the case with me.’
Looking at definitions of confidence and delving into what it means as a word and an academic term in psychology, as well as in actual living terms, immediately makes it more accessible. Self-esteem might be a part of confidence, but it’s by no means the only part. That’s great news because changing self-esteem is
