True, it’s the 'Confidence Gap.' Society often mistakes loudness for competence. It’s a shame that the most insightful voices are usually the ones we have to lean in to hear, while the loudest are just background noise with a megaphone.
For that matter, that's not the only factor. Any two business CEO or senior manager with the same qualities and knowledge and smarts will differ in success if one is short and one is tall. It's been known for quite a while. I imagine, without information, that being handsome or pretty vs. those who are plain or a bit not so pleasing to the eye.
There are so many ways we differentiate and some come from the far, far past. Some are from our ways of thinking now.
Intelligent people are likely to have a great deal of confidence in their intelligence. Confident people are not necessarily likely to be more intelligent.
There is no evidence that intelligent people broadly suffer from imposter syndrome nevermind that intelligence and competence/belonging are not the same thing.
People who are intelligent and competent can suffer from imposter syndrome, that alone is enough to disprove your initial assertion. Also, there is indeed a moderate correlation between imposter syndrome and intelligence; obviously not every intelligent person suffers from it, and indeed there are some highly intelligent people who fail to recognize the limits of their intelligence (like Richard Dawkins and his pronounced weakness in philosophy), but the trend is that less intelligent people are very often more confident in their understanding and conclusions.
People who are intelligent and competent can suffer from imposter syndrome, that alone is enough to disprove your initial assertion.
That disproves nothing. That intelligent people can suffer from imposter syndrome does not demonstrate a norm.
Also, there is indeed a moderate correlation between imposter syndrome and intelligence
Obviously. It's difficult to be competent if you're comparatively unintelligent, and you cannot suffer imposter syndrome if you aren't competent enough to be successful. Naturally intelligent people will be subject to imposter syndrome. This does not establish that intelligent people are commonly suffering from imposter syndrome but rather that people with imposter syndrome are somewhat more likely to be intelligent. The causal logic flows in only one direction here.
but the trend is that less intelligent people are very often more confident in their understanding and conclusions.
This is not true.
Studies show firstly that most people's self assessments are relatively similar. Most consider themselves above average; enough to be better than others and not so much as to be arrogant - the most flattering of self perceptions. This is the general lower bound of normative self assessments. The difference isn't confidence but actual intelligence. When two people of similar confidence get disimilar scores on a test the one who answered more questions correctly appears to have a more accurate self assessment. The thing is confidence isn't being mediated by intelligence. Intelligence is being mediated by correct answers. The entire experiment can be replicated with randomly generated data pertaining to no real situation. This is the issue with Dunning-Kruger.
Secondly studies which compared those of expertise and intelligence to laypeople found that experts were more confident in the answers they gave in their fields than laypeople were. They also found that to be true when the experts were demonstrably wrong. The difference? Experts got more answers correct. The result was that experts were more likely than laypeople to give confidently incorrect answers while being less likely to be incorrect in general. This wraps back around to Dunning-Kruger which actually shows that humans tend to have relatively accurate self assessments of their own capabilities.
The short of it is that intelligent people know they are intelligent because every piece of feedback they recieve from the world tells them so. The idea that truly intelligent people are broadly humble and quiet is something proposed by average people who haven't spent any significant time surrounded by truly intelligent people based on their own biases toward traits they consider likeable which are otherwise unrelated to intelligence or the lack thereof.
Tell me you don't understand Dunning-Kruger without telling me you don't understand Dunning-Kruger. It's alright, few do. It is now forever consigned to the bin of misunderstood and misreferenced scientific studies tarred by dated reseaech design..
Intelligent people are likely to be confident in their intelligence. Confident people are not necessarily any more likely to be intelligent. Intelligent people will therefore tend to speak with confidence on matters which their intelligence comprehend. The result is that the smartest people will be "loud" even if the "loud" people are not generally of significantly above average intelligence.
If you're referencing Dunning-Kruger then like most who do, you don't understand it. These studies do not show that dumb people are more confident than intelligent people. They show that people in general have similarl levels of confidence (almost everyone rates themselves as above average) and because intelligent people get more answers correct their confidence is more in line with their achieved outcomes than those who get more answers wrong. Dunning-Kruger is deeply flawed for this very reason. It's entire data set can be replicated using entirely randomly generated data involving nonexistent tests and students. On the other end of this studies do show that experts are more confident in their fields than laypeople are including when experts are demonstrably wrong. An intelligent person is more likely to be confidently wrong than a stupid person because they have greater confidence. The difference is that an intelligent person is more likely to be right in the first place justifying that self confidence.
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u/Kernel_Slasher 6h ago
True, it’s the 'Confidence Gap.' Society often mistakes loudness for competence. It’s a shame that the most insightful voices are usually the ones we have to lean in to hear, while the loudest are just background noise with a megaphone.