How Confidence Can Help

¶ … Confidence Memo of Transmittal Confidence is a somewhat abstract concept that can be studied from an array of different perspectives and is relevant to nearly any course of study or profession. It is not only important to work to build confidence in yourself, but it is equally important to understand how you and others build confidence in other people or systems.

For example, you may intuitively feel confident in someone else's decision making ability based on personal heuristics that may not accurately reflect the situation and the confidence bestowed is not really deserved. Thus developing a basic understanding of confidence can be useful on many levels. This analysis use a multi-disciplinary method of investigation to attempt to build a comprehensive understanding of confidence that based on a wide range of perspectives.

The analysis uses research that focuses on confidence in a range of different circumstances such as giving speeches, improvising jazz vocals, determining investor behavior, and even the fate of entire countries. It was found that to personally develop confidence in yourself that preparation and a level of knowledge built about a particular interest can help build confidence. Furthermore, it was also found that individuals often base their confidence on heuristics which can be influenced by levels of knowledge, professionalism, and even culture.

Analysis There are many strategies that are proposed in the literature to develop confidence based on the circumstances of the application. For example, in the business world it is often extremely important to be able to deliver effective presentations with a level of confidence. However, public speaking does not come easy to everyone and it can be a daunting experience for some.

Many people are fearful of making presentations yet the ability to think on one's feet and to deliver presentations is a skill that employers desire in their employees (Blaszcynski & Green, 2010). Furthermore, although prepared presentations can be frightening in themselves, impromptu presentations, regardless of the length, can be even more terrifying and it definitely takes a level of confidence to overcome these emotions. Impromptu speeches are common in business and are ?delivered on the spur of the moment with minimal preparation (Blaszcynski & Green, 2010).

Some researchers have outlined a four-step process that promotes becoming an authentic speaker those steps include four intents: to be open, to connect, to be passionate, and to listen (Blaszcynski & Green, 2010). Yet many people have natural tendencies that are not quite consistent with these steps.

For example, it is often common for an individual to use fillers as they talk such as "uh," "er," "um," "like," and "you know" which are all phrases that can indicate to an audience that the speaker is not only not confident in their abilities, but these fillers can also be considered distracting and/or annoying to the audience. One strategy to practice speaking without using fillers can be to record your own speech habits and systematically practice speaking based on your speaking habits.

Then, if you can overcome your own habits of using fillers, you can quickly build confidence in your presentations (Blaszcynski & Green, 2010). Another situation that might be scary for some individuals would be to sing in front of others; especially trying to sing in an improvisational style in front of others. It is reasonable to believe that to accomplish such a task with any level of success that confidence would be of paramount importance.

One study attempted to determine if an intensive vocal jazz workshop could significantly enhance both the improvisation skills of choral music education majors and the confidence to teach it (Ward-Steniman, 2014). A set of students was first asked to trying to improvise a jazz song to set a baseline. Then the population of students then attended an eight day workshop that was taught that included both improvisation and stylist aspects of vocal jazz.

The research found that by attending the jazz workshop, students significantly improved their confidence levels when trying to improvise jazz vocals. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that education and preparation can significantly improve confidence even in a task as daunting as trying to improvise jazz vocals in front of other people. Another study also examined the role of confidence in the business world from another perspective.

Much of the economic progress in a country and the level of investments made by individuals is dependent upon their confidence in the system and their confidence in the system's ability to perform in the future. In mainstream research on investor behavior can never be ignored in studies on behavioral finance and investor confidence deserves particular consideration because of its alleged tendency to significantly change over time and its potential importance in influencing the behavior of markets (Yang, Hsu, & Chiayu, 2012).

The researchers found when examining market data that a financial firm's client's confidence can be optimized by leveraging higher levels of professional knowledge and selecting and training employees who can maintain a high level of professionalism. Thus it could be implied that one factor related to building confidence in others is to maintain a high level of professionalism.

The tendency for individuals to evaluate the reliability of information by the confidence with which it is expressed has been termed the 'confidence heuristic' by psychologists and perceiving the capacity for sound judgement is largely a factor of professionalism in many professional contexts (Bang, et al., 2014). Figure 1 - Psychological Model Developed to Study Confidence Heuristics (Bang, et al., 2014) The ability to build confidence can also largely depend on the circumstances and the cultural differences within the parties involved.

In regards to nations, confidence among the nation's leaders in other nations can be a significant factor in building trust and mitigating conflict. For example, if a nation does not have confidence in another country to maintain its integrity and fairness, among other factors, then this could likely lead to a level of hostilities.

In one of the most unstable regions of the world, the Middle East, strategist developed a series of incremental steps to help the Israelis and Palestinians build confidence in each other to help quell the hostility in the region. This initiative was referred to as confidence building measures (CMBs) and these were designed to help these parties move from conflict to coexistence (Bzostek & Rogers, 2014).

While improvising jazz vocals in front of other individuals may seem frightening, dealing with a hostile nation in which both parties have fairly consistently used the threat of violence as well as violent action is on a whole new level. The international community helped.