{"id":6007,"date":"2025-03-17T14:44:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T14:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/?p=6007"},"modified":"2025-03-19T09:16:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T09:16:14","slug":"socially-dominant-individuals-are-more-confident-but-not-necessarily-more-competent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/2025\/03\/17\/socially-dominant-individuals-are-more-confident-but-not-necessarily-more-competent\/","title":{"rendered":"Socially dominant individuals are more confident but not necessarily more competent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Research from Kent\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/school-of-psychology\">School of Psychology<\/a>\u00a0has found that people who strive for dominance, whether in personal or professional life, are more confident in their decision-making but are no more accurate in their choices than those of a lower social status.<\/p>\n<p>The research, published by the journal\u00a0<em>Personality<\/em>\u00a0<em>and Individual Differences,<\/em>\u00a0challenges the idea that confidence signals competence, a perception that often propels dominant individuals into leadership roles.<\/p>\n<p>Led by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/school-of-psychology\/people\/2978\/martin-andrew\">Dr Andrew Martin<\/a>, the research found that social dominance was comparable between males and\u00a0females\u00a0and both showed an effect of greater confidence, debunking the long-held belief that dominance-driven strategies are primarily male traits.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Martin said: \u2018While high status within social hierarchies is often associated with socially dominant individuals, our research goes to show that there is no superiority in decision performance and why acting confidently can actually be an effective social strategy, regardless of ability.\u00a0Our findings uncover how socially dominant individuals may traverse society, acquire and possibly even retain positions of social power and influence.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>To reach their conclusions the psychologists assessed performance from participants through three studies using a two-choice statistical learning decision- making task and a self-referential memory task.<\/p>\n<p>The research paper \u2018Confidence does not equal competence: Socially dominant individuals are more confident in their decisions without being more accurate\u2019 is published by\u00a0<em>Personality<\/em>\u00a0<em>and Individual Differences<\/em>. (A.Martin; A Belotelova, University of Kent) doi:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.paid.2024.113037\">10.1016\/j.paid.2024.113037<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Research from Kent\u2019s\u00a0School of Psychology\u00a0has found that people who strive for dominance, whether in personal or professional life, are more confident in their decision-making but &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/2025\/03\/17\/socially-dominant-individuals-are-more-confident-but-not-necessarily-more-competent\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78674,"featured_media":6014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70,722],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78674"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6009,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6007\/revisions\/6009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/psychology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}