Are We Attracted to Arrogance?
“Illusory superiority” is the name that psychologists give to the idea that many of us feel we’re smarter, more moral, or more physically fit and healthy than other people. Even though, statistically speaking, it’s impossible for more than half of us to be above average, we persist in our delusion that we’re somehow special. We’re not just confident. We’re overconfident.
But are there any advantages to this sense of superiority? To be specific, are arrogant so-and-sos luckier in love?
“Self-confident individuals behave in a manner that differentiates them from diffident individuals, and humans and other animals are adept at detecting this difference”, says Sean Murphy of the University of Queensland in Australia, in a research paper published recently in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Over five experiments, Murphy and his colleagues investigated the pros and cons of a confident demeanour. They dug into how acting like a big shot affects your mating opportunities.
In his first experiment, Murphy had around 200 people complete the “Over Claiming Questionnaire” or OCQ, a measure of overconfidence. This questionnaire lists 150 terms from the physical sciences, contemporary culture, consumer products, history, and other topics. The participant’s job is to rate how familiar they are with each term. For example, under the physical sciences category of the OCQ we find the term “Manhattan Project”. If you’ve never heard of the Manhattan Project, you would respond with a zero. You don’t know what it is. If you are aware that it was a research and development project that produced the first nuclear weapons during World War II and was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada, you might respond with a six to indicate you are very familiar.
But what if you’re an idiot, and you think the Manhattan Project was how the US government transformed physicist Jon Osterman into radioactive Blue Man Group reject, Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan? You might claim familiarity you don’t have and your overconfidence would go undetected.
This is where psychologists’ twisted sense of humour comes into play. Sprinkled into the OCQ are invented terms, to catch out cheaters and the irretrievably confused. How familiar are you with cholarine? With ultra-lipids, or with plates of parallax? The correct answer is not at all, because each is a totally fake concept. People who claim familiarity with these terms — and many do — are quite obviously overconfident.
Next Murphy had these same participants write a dating profile, and then a second group of participants rated the dating profiles for confidence and desirability as a dating partner.
As he had hypothesised, Murphy found that overconfident people tended to write more confident-sounding dating profiles. The relationship between overconfidence and desirability was more complicated. To the extent that overconfident people came across as confident in their profiles, they were seen as more attractive. But a follow up study showed that the overconfident are also seen as arrogant, and therefore unappealing.
What could be the advantages to appearing arrogant? Through a further series of experiments, Murphy found that overconfidence sets you apart from your romantic competitors. If you appear confident, even arrogant, you are able to throw your rivals off their game. If you feel overconfident, you’re more likely to compete for romantic partners.
For these reasons, it might not matter so much if overconfidence makes you less attractive. If you and your massively inflated ego have overwhelmed your competitors, you’re going to be the only one left to get a look in. The only member of your peer group to pluck up the courage to plunge into the dating pool.
Perhaps the high school quarterback with a big head to match his swollen biceps wins the heart of the head of the cheerleading squad, not because he’s the hottest but because his haughty demeanour has sent the rest of the football team scurrying back to the locker room for an early cold shower.
Good news for all you fans of pomposity and conceit. You might end up with a partner who is far too good for you, and you can blissfully assume your life worked out so great because you’re a beautiful genius.
Murphy, S. C., von Hippel, W., Dubbs, S. L., Angilletta Jr., M. J., Wilson, R. S., Trivers, R., et al. (in press). The role of overconfidence in romantic desirability and competition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Read summary
For an audio version of this story, see the 14 July 2015 episode of The Psychology of Attractiveness Podcast.
