Self Belief and Self Delusion

I was watching Arsenal vs Fulham and I heard the commentator mentioned that Arsenal is playing with a greater self-belief.

That started me thinking.

The commentators could have said Arsenal is now playing with more confidence, but it seems self-belief is the popular thing to say.

Also I thought that self-belief is another popular wisdom, namely it is something people want to and like to believe, for it sounds good, encouraging and optimistic.

And self-belief is used only for someone that believes something positive about themselves, and not something negative.

For example, no one would say Fulham have self-belief that they are going to lose, which they did of course. The objective of the game is to win and to believe you will lose is self-defeating and not self-believing. That's the English language. But rationally speaking what’s wrong with believing you will lose if you have reasons to believe so?

My aversion to the popular notion of self belief is that it can be easily muddled to become self-delusion, i.e. think and believe you can do it and you can and will do it; think success and you will succeed.

I think this is a lie.

You may immediately react to this and reject me as negative and pessimistic.

But what I am saying is that if self-belief is mere unjustified and unsubstantiated belief about yourself and your abilities, then it is irrational, foolish and potential dangerous too.

On the other hand you should be confident, optimistic and bold when you know, or some reasons to believe, that you are able to do something and accomplish it successfully.

I am not objecting to self-belief per se but rather the reasons for so believing or the lack thereof.

But you may say you don’t need to have reasons you only need to feel so. Then I say again, by definition, such a state is irrational, and borders on the mystical, and gives no grounds for being confident, one way or another.

I then did some research on the Internet.

There are indeed the popular notions that I suspect are out there:

For example from here, we have this: "To achieve any goal in life, you must believe you are going to be successful. If you do not, you are likely to fail."

And from here, we have, "Approaching new goals or challenges with a healthy mindset is crucial to achieving the results you strive for."

On the other hand, there is a well-written and rational analysis of self-belief in Wikipedia, here. The notion of self-belief is refined by the concept of self-efficacy, i.e. the ability to accomplish a thing with one own self, or as defined in Wikipedia, as "people’s perception of their ability to plan and take action to reach a particular goal."

We can think of a 2x2 matrix, with accurate and inaccurate perception on one axis, and able and unable on the other side.

One obvious concern area in real life is of course when your self-perception is inaccurate. If you are able but perceived otherwise, then you are shortchanging yourself. On the other hand if you are unable but perceived you are, then you may jeopardized yourself, i.e. you may try to bite off something more than you can chew.

And the answer to attaining accurate perceptions is to have mirrors, mostly other people, people who know you and whose judgments you can trust, as in the do not have ulterior motives telling you what they see.

There is also a link to an academic study of perceptions of self-efficacies with culture by the Freie Universität Berlin. You may be surprised but it seems that the Japanese and the Hong Kong Chinese have the lowest sense of self-efficacy when compared to Western cultures. Maybe the problem is in the way self-efficacy is measured.

I have copied here the ten questions used to assess self-efficacy:

1. I can always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough.

2. If someone opposes me, I can find means and ways to get what I want.

3. It is easy for me to stick to my aims and accomplish my goals.

4. I am confident that I could deal efficiently with unexpected events.

5. Thanks to my resourcefulness, I know how to handle unforeseen situations.

6. I can solve most problems if I invest the necessary effort.

7. I can remain calm when facing difficulties because I can rely on my coping abilities.

8. When I am confronted with a problem, I can usually find several solutions.

9. If I am in trouble, I can usually think of something to do.

10. No matter what comes my way, I'm usually able to handle it.

They sound very much like gut feelings and 'beliefs' about and ‘faith’ in yourself, i.e. the answers to these questions may not necessarily be reasonable or justified in your true abilities. For example you may say yes to the question that you can always get out of trouble, but in reality and in your historical track record it may not be so.

So it may be pseudo science after all.

But in any case self-perceptions of own abilities, or lack thereof, don’t really matter, unless there are some particular and desirable goal or goals to be reached. (Or when, because of your self-perceptions, you have no desire for some necessary and critical goals.)

And then it matters when there is a mismatch between your abilities, however perceived, and the desired goals. What these goals should be is another matter, but assuming that the goals are rightly desirable, then the question now is what do you do if you perceived yourself as inadequate to attain it on your own?

Then to persist by the sheer ‘self-belief’- either positively, i.e. I can do it no matter what, or negatively, i.e. I wont even think about it - is what self-delusion is all about.