Maybe? I find I have a "dangerous other" type reaction to people who seem too confident. I mean, I can get over it, but my initial reaction to a confident person tends to be quite negative; I pretty much immediately switch to "defense against salesmen" mode and only slowly start to consider that they might actually be competent after they have proven themselves, which is quite different, I think, from how I try to treat people in general.
I found out that your reaction mainly rise among intellectuals, which are not the majority.
Also it's only triggered with certain kind of display of confidence (like aggressive confidence, or confidence mixed with poor vocabulary/skill, etc). E.G: the confidence of a humble but strong expert does not trigger the reaction.
why would I care if someone is faking confidence any more than I would care about it if someone is faking feeling energetic or silly?
I mean, I guess I would feel a little weird if I thought you felt you needed to fake confidence around me, so there is that.
Is there an optimal level of confidence you can project to get the optimal social response from me, and is that optimal level other than the lowest level possible? Yeah, sure.
My main point was just that my reaction to people who are too confident is immediate, negative and extremely strong. I do my best to ignore it like all other bits of personality that aren't relevant to the role, of course, if it's a role where confidence doesn't matter... but I am human, and these things leak.
I was just bringing this up as a counterpoint to the "humans are hard wired to favor displays of confidence" because, as I mentioned before, I am human, and have a significantly negative (and difficult to consciously suppress) response to levels of confidence that seem to be normal in the marketing professions.
