Someone recently called me arrogant but I think they were misinterpreting my confidence. So what is the difference between the two? According the World English Dictionary arrogant is “having or showing an exaggerated opinion of one’s own importance, merit, ability, etc; conceited; overbearingly proud” whereby confident is “sure of oneself; having no uncertainty about one’s own abilities and correctness”.
The only way to separate the two is look at what they have in common as well as how they differ. Both talk about abilities but the former uses the word exaggerated and the latter uses the words “no uncertainty”. What is interesting is how you could work out if someone’s perception of their own abilities is exaggerated or not. Technically we need to measure both their perceived abilities and actual ones and if there is a significance difference then maybe it’s fair to call them are arrogant – otherwise confident would have to be a more appropriate label.
Let me know your thoughts below.
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Finally, this will be our final post for 2010 so I’d like to wish you a great festive season from all of us at Condor Performance. Cheers, GJM