For as long as I can remember, I have been desperately concerned with my level of metacognitive skill. It was the reason I gave the first story I ever wrote for public consumption to my best friend to critique, I was seven and I remember vividly the relief that I had a chance to fix it before I read it to the prep class (the grade before grade 1, in Australia.) Metacognition is the ability to assess one’s own skill level and, of course, I didn’t know the word until my university philosophy of mind studies, but my greatest fear has always been not failure to achieve perfection but to have thought that what I had done was objectively good and then to discover that it wasn’t.

Whether a child, probably too young even to have metacognitive ability, should be worrying about such things is a valid question for another, more private, forum, but it has driven a life-long love of theory and research, if only to do as much as I can to make sure I don’t find myself in that situation. It’s what drives me to believe that editing and story analysis classes are more important for a writer than any “Express yourselves, dahlings!” creative writing classes. It’s also lead to a morbid curiosity about how on earth people have the confidence to, for example, audition for So You Think You Can Dance despite having no ability whatsoever. Aren’t they embarrassed? And how can they not know how bad they are?

The same questions come to mind when I read an terribly flawed piece of writing.* When I have been asked to give feedback (professionally or no) I have to try to work out why the writer hasn’t noticed these flaws so that I can work out the best way to approach giving my feedback in the hope that it will be taken as constructively as it is meant. I have found, again and again, that the level of confidence the writer has is an excellent gauge, invariably, those whose pieces need the most work are most shocked that any work is required and genuinely seem to have believed they had produced a masterpiece.

I have discussed this many times with Superman and he recently pointed me to a 1999 report which shed some interesting light on the subject and backs up the, now old-fashioned, belief that anyone who believes themselves to be the best at anything is unlikely to be even close to the best.

The Report: “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”**

In their 1999 report, Kruger and Dunning outlined four studies they had undertaken which were inspired by previous studies which showed a correlation between level of confidence and lack of ability. Kruger and Dunning devised experiments in which they asked people to take tests in the areas of logical reasoning, humor and English grammar, then asked them to estimate both: what their specific test score had been and; which percentile their test results fell into (i.e., where their test result would fall in comparison to others’.) The aim was to find the subjects’ actual skill level in an area, and then see if they were aware of what their skill level actually was.

Their findings were unambiguous: the less skill you have, the more grossly you overestimate your ability and, perhaps more instructively, it seems only those with above average skill underestimate their skill. Thus, if you want to make an assumption about a person’s skill from their attitude, the best thing to do is to watch out for humility, not confidence!

“But, but, but!” I hear all the management-book-steeped would-be-Donald-Trumps of the world shriek, “That’s loser talk. Confidence is the most important thing! If you don’t think you’re the best, who will?”

This is an attitude that, as far as I can tell, began to seep into the world in the 80’s, as advertising men, salesmen and generic ‘business’ men began to make enormous amounts of money, and people started looking to them as icons of success. Suddenly, everyone was reading management and wealth-building books written by these ‘guru’s, and this requirement for uber-self-confidence was being applied in interview rooms across all sorts of industries. Quiet confidence and humility became associated with ‘losers’ – who just didn’t want it enough, or were cursed with low self-esteem - a condition which was to be treated like a highly contagious disease.

I’m not denying the existence of, or problems associated with low self-esteem. It may surprise some people who have met me, because I usually speak with confidence, but I’ve been close to crippled by low self-esteem for much of my life. When I speak up, it is with confidence, but that’s because I only speak up if I have done copious research, practice and, especially if it involved public speaking, throwing up, in private.  I understand completely that a certain level of confidence is required just to step into any arena of experience, some more than others, but beyond the minimum level of confidence required for the particular task at hand confidence is, as the studies demonstrate, more of an indication of lack of skill than of competence.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that projection of confidence is essential in marketing, or sales, or any profession which requires one to convince others to willingly do what you want them to do. I also understand the philosophy that any interview is a sales pitch of yourself. It is not true, however, that every job is a sales job and anyone who conducts interviews for non-sales positions and makes their decisions based on who sold themselves most confidently really can’t complain when that applicant turns out not to have the skill they’d hoped (or has even lied on their resume!) Such interviewers are as responsible for the bad hire as they would be if they’d ordered a disappointing piece of exercise equipment skillfully advertised in the wee hours of the morning.

Of course, a study like this isn’t going to instantly change the prevailing culture but I thought it worth sharing with my small audience of, mostly, writers hoping to be published who are wrestling with their own levels of confidence, or perhaps should be

*Note: Any discussion of ability brings with it the jinx that there will be numerous grammatical and spelling errors in the very piece discussing it. I’d like to point out that metacognition is the issue here and I’m fully aware that this blog post won’t be perfect, unwilling as I am to spend more time than it takes to jot down the thoughts and get my creative juices flowing for my fiction writing!

** “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”, Justin Kruger and David Dunning Department of Psychology Cornell University, © 1999 by the American Psychological Association For personal use only--not for distribution December 1999 Vol. 77, No. 6, 1121-1134

As you will no doubt assume from the fact that it was a year and a half ago and no one has tracked me down to tell me, I never really knew my father. He and my mother married in January 1966 and had me in 1973. Ten months later their marriage was over and I didn’t see him again until I was 15, when my Aunt and Uncle (on my mother’s side) accidentally came across him when they where holidaying up the Queensland Coast. While my mother and I were struggling to survive, at not yet 50 my father had semi-retired to an idyllic stretch of Queensland coast where he ran a caravan park with his brother and his third wife and third child seemed to be holding on to him (he had left his second wife and second child when that child was about 10mths old, too – as far as I know.)

During my consequent visit to this sub-tropical idyll (surreally, via a visit to EXPO ‘88 in Brisbane because my mother thought we could have some FUN on the way???), my father sat me down to ‘discuss’ what had happened between he and my mother. Much more rationally than I had expected, he said that the truth of what happened will always be “somewhere in the middle of everyone’s stories” and said that they had once loved each other very much (something my mother had never said) but that he had tried but couldn’t live with her and that it wasn’t my fault (the exact opposite of what my mother had always said). Then he began to describe what it was like living with her. And it struck me – he KNEW.

You see, all my life my mother told me that she’d never had a temper until I was born. That her rages were caused by a child that had “come out angry.” I never quite understood how that worked, but I knew all my life that her rages were my fault and that was why no one else seemed to know the same woman that I knew: I brought it out in her. I realize, only with clarity now, that I had always either assumed, or maybe hoped, that that was why my father had left me with her – because she hadn’t been a violently angry person around him and he just didn’t KNOW. But he did.

That day back in 1988 he described to me the enormous mood swings, and the ranting which built to violent rages and right then I wanted to ask: “WHY did you leave a ten month old baby in the hands of a woman like that?” But I couldn’t get the words out. At 15, I was still living with her and tied up in the “don’t tell because then everyone will see what a bad/insane girl I’m dealing with and they’ll put you in an institution” that I grew up with, and believed. The only thing I managed to ask was why there had been no child support for all those years – to which the answer was that there had been till I was 2 when my mother apparently flew into a rage on the phone and told him she didn’t want his money anymore. The rage part rang true and, later, my mother admitted to the fight, but said that, at 2yrs old, I had run into the room and hung up the phone right at that moment and she hadn’t been able to get back in touch with him (yeah, I know, that’s when I finally started to realize who the insane one was.) However, even if it was true that my mother had told him not to send any more money, frankly, that was no excuse for never again checking whether I had a roof over my head and food in my belly - I often didn’t. A few months after that, I did try to escape my mother by asking to move in with him and, to his credit I guess, he did say I could come, but the idea was soon nipped in the bud by my mother and some more masterly mind-fucking.

Almost ten years later, in 1997, when I’d been away from my mother for seven years and was starting to recover from an illness which had kept me housebound for several months, I was trying to deal with some of the issues from my childhood and I decided to visit him and finally ask that question. I went up and almost every moment of every day I was there I tried to get the words out, but I left without asking. Now, I’m left with the knowledge that I will never have the chance to ask him why he abandoned me to the care of a woman he knew was unstable and prone to violent rages, but I also finally realize why I never asked:
I knew the answer, but I couldn’t face hearing him say that he just didn’t care.

So, as I read the farewell in the newsletter of the bushwalking society for which it seems he was secretary, as they talk about what a sweet man he was and what a good husband and father he was, I am glad that my half-sister and his third wife got a good father and husband (assuming it’s true) but I find myself desperately sad that I didn’t and, to be honest, not a small part bitter because it seems he never felt any consequences, positive or negative, from having had his eldest daughter, let alone abandoning her. Having me seems to have been like hitting a possum on the road, feeling the bump and moving on (though, it seems from the bushwalking club, that he so loved nature that he probably wouldn’t have just left a possum to die by the side of the road – perhaps I should have been born a cute native animal and he may have cared what happened to me.)

So, I post this on my blog in the hopes of both alleviating that  feeling of impotence that all children of bad parents probably feel when the parent dies without confrontation, and proving to myself that I no longer suffer the disease of secrecy that goes along with an abused childhood, and say publicly: Farewell, Peter, you failed me utterly.

At least now I can stop asking myself that question.

About a decade ago, I witnessed an Australian cognitive scientist declare with utter conviction that a person's capacity for happiness was genetically pre-determined and then refuse to be drawn into any discussion of environmental factors for the rest of the seminar. When asked if he was happy himself he responded "As happy as I am capable of being" and gave a smug, self-satisfied, lips-only smile - a happiness of sorts, I suppose. In contrast, Nancy Etcoff tells us that cognitive scientists have now discovered that, while they do their share, genes are only about 50% responsible for our level of happiness, the rest is a combination of chasing natural beauty, social activity and other such pleasure inducing experiences while avoiding misery inducing ones and the judicious satisfaction of desires (which may or may not be pleasure or misery inducing themselves).

Contrary to the idea Plato's Socrates gives us, that happiness exists only in as much as we experience the absence of its opposite, our emotional well-being is not a continuum from happy to sad but, rather, a balance of parallel emotional systems. Making ourselves less miserable does not automatically result in a move towards happiness, it acts solely to make us more able to enjoy whatever happiness we find without the chemical fog of depression. Similarly, pursuing what we feel an urgent desire to attain, whether it a material possession, or the love of a person, satisfies only our dopamine-based, "need" system, which is at the heart of addiction; we won't feel as bad as we do when we are yearning for that thing, but getting it will not necessarily raise the happiness level of the equation unless what is gained is something which also gives us pleasure, rather than merely the absence of yearning.

To be truly happy, if I have understood Etcoff correctly, one must address not only misery and it's avoidance but our, separate,  desire system and the pursuit of its satisfaction, while also indulging in experiences that give us pleasure (yet another system again). Like an audio engineer finding the perfect mix, we must adjust all three sliders to find the sweet spot, which is likely to be slightly different for everyone.

As a writer, this insight is exciting; I can see how this will be a tool for tweaking characters: which one of the sliders is the character more influenced by, which does he have the emotional skills to manipulate better?

Etcoff is a great presenter, too. Enjoy!