The Biology of Confidence vs. Competence
Why your brain often misjudges your abilities — and what leaders must understand about metacognition
Confidence and competence are often spoken about as if they are twins: developing side-by-side, rising and falling together. But biologically, they are different systems, built on different neural circuits, shaped by different pressures, and influenced by different forms of feedback.
Most people overestimate one and underestimate the other.
Leaders confuse them. Teams misread them. Individuals make decisions — and mistakes — because they don’t know how these two architectures work internally.
This article brings together research from neuroscience, psychology, organisational science, and metacognitive theory to map the deep machinery behind confidence and competence — and how they often diverge.
Competence: The Biological Ability to Meet Demands
Competence is not a vague trait. It is a measurable biological and cognitive architecture shaped by:
Ability
Aptitude
Skill
Effectiveness
Developmental conditions
Weinert (1999) defines competence as the capacity to meet meaningful demands in your environment.
In other words:
Competence is your brain and body’s ability to adapt, perform, and succeed under real-world conditions.
Competence can belong to:
An individual
A group
A system
An institution
It is not about how you feel about your ability. It is about whether the architecture exists — or is being developed — to perform.
This matters because:
Competence is functional. Confidence is interpretive.
These two systems do not always speak to each other.
Confidence: The Metacognitive System That Judges Your Own Thinking
Confidence is not a feeling in the traditional sense. It is a meta-cognitive judgement — your brain evaluating its own performance.
Metacognition involves:
Primary cognition → the task itself
Secondary cognition → thinking about the task, evaluating performance, predicting success
Luttrell et al. (2013) show that meta-cognitive confidence is shaped by activity in:
Prefrontal cortex (PFC)
Parietal regions
Effort and ease signals
This means:
Confidence is not an internal truth detector. Confidence is a brain-generated prediction, influenced by cognitive strain, emotional state, and past experience.
This is why highly competent individuals can feel underconfident and less competent individuals can feel supremely confident.
The systems were not built to stay in sync.
The Two Types of Confidence — and Why They Matter
Fleming & Dolan (2012) reveal that your brain uses different regions depending on what kind of confidence you’re generating:
A. Retrospective confidence
“How well did I just do?” This relies on the rostral and dorsal lateral PFC — areas associated with reflective accuracy.
B. Prospective confidence
“How well do I think I will do?” This relies on the medial PFC — heavily influenced by emotion, expectation, and internal narratives.
This explains why:
You can fail at something you were certain you’d succeed at.
You can succeed at something you were sure you’d fail.
You can be deeply competent and feel unsure.
You can be unskilled and feel overconfident.
The accuracy of confidence is biologically limited.
Metacognitive accuracy varies dramatically from person to person. It is partially trainable — but never perfect.
Confidence is a biological estimate, not a measurement.
If you are looking to understand how we tell stories to ourselves, I have an article written on the psychology of storytelling here that you can explore.
Why Self-Evaluation Is Inherently Biased
Stewart et al. (2000) point out a critical truth:
Self-evaluation can never be objective.
Why?
Because the evaluative system is:
Embedded in your beliefs
Distorted by emotional experiences
Shaped by upbringing
Influenced by internal rules
Filtered through identity
You are using the thing you are measuring to measure itself.
Therefore:
Self-evaluation tools should be used to reflect, not judge
Introspection clarifies patterns, not accuracy
Confidence scores should not be mistaken for competence
Leaders should avoid assuming people “know their level”
Human beings are not built for accurate self-assessment — only meaningful self-reflection.
This distinction is vital for leadership and personal development.
Why Leaders Misjudge Talent — The Confidence/Competence Split
In organisational neuroscience, competence is one of the three pillars of intrinsic motivation (SDT): autonomy, relatedness, and competence.
Saruhan (2023) shows that true neuro-leadership integrates:
Neural activation patterns
Emotional regulation
Intrinsic motivational states
Confidence monitoring
Competence development
Most leaders misjudge talent because:
Some people look confident without underlying competence.
Some people are highly competent but lack visible confidence.
Stress distorts both systems.
Belonging and safety heavily influence meta-confidence.
People over-rely on charisma over cognitive architecture.
This is where leadership collapses or thrives.
A leader who cannot differentiate confidence from competence will:
Promote the wrong people
Overlook the right people
Misinterpret silence as uncertainty
Misinterpret fluency as intelligence
Misinterpret insecurity as incapacity
A leader who can distinguish them becomes exponentially more effective.
The Biological Divergence: Why These Systems Don’t Align
Confidence and competence diverge because they arise from different biological processes:
Competence comes from:
Neural skill circuits
Practice-driven plasticity
Executive control
Working memory
Expertise consolidation
Confidence comes from:
Metacognitive monitoring
Interoceptive awareness
Emotional regulation
Predictive coding
Narrative identity
Competence is a performance system. Confidence is a prediction system.
They work together, but they do not obey one another.
This is why your feelings about your ability rarely match your true ability.
For high performers, this is liberating. If you are feeling as though burnout is becoming an increasing threat to your way of life, read this article on how burnout can be a transformation process here.
What This Means for High Performers and Leaders
To improve competence:
Train skills
Increase precision
Deepen practice
Build neural efficiency
Develop domain-specific expertise
To improve confidence:
Improve emotional regulation
Develop accurate interoception
Understand your cognitive biases
Train realistic prediction models
Create psychological safety
To improve metacognitive accuracy:
Increase reflection
Use performance data
Get external calibration
Build a culture of clear feedback
Ultimately:
You do not need to “feel” confident to be competent. And you can feel confident without being competent.
But if you want true excellence, the goal is alignment — a nervous system that accurately interprets its own performance.
That is the foundation of stable leadership.
If you are curious about how the neurobiology of ambition forms, I explore this in further detail here.
Work With Me
If you’re a founder, leader, or high-capacity professional, you don’t need motivation — you need clarity, self-command, and psychological precision. You need a way to navigate complexity with a nervous system that stays stable under pressure.
That’s where I come in.
I combine biology, psychology, and narrative strategy to help you make decisions you can trust, break friction cycles, and build a way of working that doesn’t burn you out. My clients come to me when they want depth, honesty, and a thinking partner who won’t let them hide from themselves.
If you want to explore whether we’re a fit, you can schedule a consultation here.
