How to be more confident, according to science

The phenomenon of transferred expectations, also called a "self-fulfilling prophecy," occurs for a combination of two reasons. The person holding the expectation treats the other person differently, giving him or her more challenging work to do. This leads to more learning. At the same time, the person receiving the suggestion accepts it as an accurate assessment of his or her ability, and that in turn increases the level of effort the person gives.

The lesson here is plain: you should understand the power of being in a high-performing/ high-expectation social environment versus a low-performing/ low-expectation one. Your social setting can strongly affect what you believe is possible — and that will affect your confidence, the effort you expend, and the results you achieve. [Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success]

…repeated experiments have demonstrated the value of praising effort rather than innate talent. If you are praised by others in the right way, this can lead you to praise yourself based on your genuine effort when you accomplish something significant and discount comments about the role of your natural ability. You should ignore any result — good or bad — that comes after you put in only a halfhearted effort. And you should be proud of any result that follows hard work — even when the result is not what you had hoped. [Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success]

What we studied in this project was whether these rituals are really of beneficial effect in terms of bringing you confidence and potentially impacting your performance positively. That is actually what we found. What is interesting about the studies is that we also have physiological measures. What we find is that if you engage in a ritual prior to a potentially high anxiety task, like singing in public or solving difficult math problems, you end up being calmer by the time you approach the task, and more confident in what you're about to do. As a result of that, you actually perform better. [Barking up the Wrong Tree]

In one of the best articles on Olympic training I have ever read, Daniel Chambliss tracked the techniques used by U.S.A. Swimming to get its athletes ready to compete in the Olympic games. One of the common threads in this training was to focus on a series of "small wins" in training rather than on the larger goal of winning a medal. As Chambliss summarized it, the swimmers "found their challenges in small things: working on a better start this week, polishing up their backstroke technique next week, planning how to pace their swim." As a result, they got the satisfaction of "very definable, minor achievements," which in turn gave them the confidence to attempt more small wins each and every day. [Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success]

The researchers found that by activating good luck beliefs, these objects were consistently able to boost people's self-confidence and that this up-tick in self-assurance in turn affected a wide range of performance. Lucky thinking, it turned out in this study, positively affected people's ability to solve puzzles and to remember the pictures depicted on 36 different cards, and it improved their putting performance in golf! In fact, people with a lucky charm performed significantly better than did the people who had none. That's right, having a lucky charm will make you a better golfer, should you care about such things, and improve your cognitive performance on tasks such as memory games. [The Courage Quotient: How Science Can Make You Braver]

It is not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest. [Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success]