Letters Remain

Tag: confidence

  • The Relationship Between Boasting and Arrogance

    In certain situations boasting about one’s achievements is a necessary evil (I’m British, OK?). It’s a delicate thing to do correctly and there are strategies to successfully avoid the situation completely[1]. When you must brag, however, research has shown in what circumstances a person’s boasting comes across as self-absorbed arrogance and when it comes across as…

  • Bertram Forer Experiments: Your Personalised Generic Profile

    Here is the ‘personalised’ personality profile as used in a 1948 experiment by Bertram Forer: You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have…

  • Seven Psychological Principles Con Artists Exploit

    Inherent human vulnerabilities need to be taken into account when designing security systems/processes, suggests a study that looks at a dozen confidence tricks from the UK TV show The Real Hustle to determine recurring behavioural patterns con artists use to exploit victims. The study was a collaboration between Frank Stajano of the University of Cambridge…

  • On Good and Bad Managers

    Charisma, confidence and being vocal are key to being perceived as a leader, Time suggests after summarising some research on what makes people persuasive leaders. Social psychologists know that one way to be viewed as a leader in any group is simply to act like one. Speak up, speak well and offer lots of ideas,…

  • Scams, Cons and the Psychology Behind Them

    Back in January Jason pointed to Wikipedia’s list of confidence tricks; an educational and amusing read. Now, the UK’s Office of Fair Trading has commissioned some research into why people fall victim to scams (pdf). According to the (260 page) report, here are the reasons why successful scams fool us: Appeals to trust and authority.…

  • Our Convenient Overconfidence

    Overcoming Bias looks at two research papers on overconfidence, concluding that we “are more overconfident on tasks we don’t actually expect to perform, and when we don’t expect to have to explain our evaluation to others”. On performance: Participants made predictions about performance on tasks that they did or did not expect to complete.  In…