| | Jim, I use the words confidence and incompetence differently. For me, confidence is a feeling of trust in one's abilities in a particular area. It is acquired over time, from experience. Because it is based upon a series of evaluations of past events in that area, and those evaluations might have been made on bad information, or on faulty reasoning, the confidence might be misplaced. There is also pseudo-confidence. That would be where the person lies to themselves about their abilities in a particular area. Confidence and pseudo-confidence feel very different. The first feels comfortable and freeing. The second feels brittle and restricting and uncomfortable.
Competence and incompetence are determined in the context of the task undertaken - not the context of a third parties value judgment of the desirability of the task. E.g., the more incompetent Nancy Peolosi turns out to be in getting Obama-Care passed, the happier I am.
Obama had reason to be confident in his abilities to persuade people, based upon his competent performance in getting elected. As he experiences failure despite his best political skills, will he lose confidence? Well, because appearing to be confident is a political skill, he will try to fake it for his audience and politicians are often good body-language liars.
But his expectations and motivations will tell the story about his actual confidence level. If he went into this knowing that his popularity would decline and that the tide would turn and that he would start loosing battles, then his confidence might not drop. Just as my understanding that I can't flap my arms and fly keeps me from losing confidence if I were to flap my arms and show someone that it wasn't going to happen. On the other hand, if Obama suffers a narcissistic need to see himself succeeding or being loved even when the polls tell a different story, then he will start experiencing pseudo-confidence.
If he does not lie to himself, but it comes as a surprise that he isn't still winning most of them, he will suffer lowered confidence. Confidence is a tendency to feel predisposed to success in a specific skill or task based upon the relation between past experiences and the expectations held at the time.
(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 12/12, 11:40am)
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