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Originally Posted by tc33  I believe that each of us has a significant amount of human potential. I suppose the reason I don't value confidence as highly as most others is because I believe a few kind, supportive words to the right person at the right time in their lives can prompt an insecure person to tap into their potential and become a confident person almost instantly. Moreover, at least in my experience, I have seen that many outwardly confident people are often trying to cover up some character flaw, which also sours my perception of confidence as an indicator of ability. Apparently, the world does not share my opinion. Hey, when in Rome... 
Tom |
You know, for the most part I've been sharing the same thoughts as you outlined here. Where I think the distinction is, is that there are 2 extremes and a middle to this.
Overall, real confidence is that middle part, with all the other character traights described above along with it.
The extreme to the left is people with no outward/extravert confidence being projected but still with most/all the other qualities described above. So they might be a great spouse, aim to do well in life, care for others etc etc.
The extreme to the right are people who project that outward/extravert confidence but do not have a lot of those other characteristics. So they are basically faking most, if not all, of it.
I guess there's one more extreme somewhere, and it's when you don't have the outward/extravert personality and you don't have any of those character traits (yet at least).
I think the reason that having that the middle is more favourable is because if you can tell that the confidence/extravert personality is genuine, you can better predict what other character traits the person will have. How good you can do this probably depends on how well you can "read people". The next question then is, what is the approximate percentage spread across those possibilites.