40 Embarrassing Moments People Didn't Know Who They Were Talking To And Made A Fool Of Themselves

Even though there's a line between self- and over-confidence, trusting in your judgment can help you become successful in life.

Both verbal and nonverbal communication can be extremely effective at garnering positive attention and influence in groups. According to one hypothesis (the presumption of calibration hypothesis), people generally assume others have the self-knowledge to know how confident they should be, and we also assume they will truthfully communicate this confidence to us (the so-called truth bias), unless extenuating circumstances suggest otherwise.

So whenever we see confidence, we tend to find it compelling, and we expect it to be justified.

Interestingly, some research has reported that being overconfident while participating in a group activity did not damage the person’s reputation — individuals who trusted their task performance (but were later revealed to be worse at the task than they had claimed) did not suffer a severe drop in their social status in the group relative to someone who had been well-calibrated.

The researchers concluded that "the status benefits of overconfidence outweighed any possible status costs."

So extreme cases aside, being featured on r/DontYouKnowWhoIam might not be the worst thing that can happen to you.