(Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay)

In a previous blog post, Blánaid wrote about the importance of being open and honest about what you don’t know. Insisting that you know everything is a really annoying habit, and makes people unlikely to take kindly to what you have to say. Often, however, I find that pro-life activists are reluctant to come across as though we don’t have an answer for the points that pro-choice people and others make. The idea of saying “Yeah, I don’t know” to an argument in favour of abortion does not seem like a winning strategy! Surely it’s important to show how confident we are in our pro-life position? After all, how can we expect others to be confident in what we’re saying if we’re not confident in it ourselves?

This is a fair point, and is worth responding to. The best way that I have found to think about this question is to distinguish between two types of confidence. Julia Galef makes this distinction in her book The Scout Mindset: Why some people see things clearly and others don’t, by discussing the two terms “epistemic confidence” and “social confidence”.

“Epistemology” is a fancy term for knowledge, and so in this context, “epistemic confidence” means “confidence in what you know”. In other words, if you say you are 100% sure that X is true, you have high epistemic confidence in X, while if you say you’re only 60% sure that X is true, then you don’t have very high epistemic confidence in X. Social confidence, on the other hand, is more like being confident in how you come across. Someone who seems very sure of themselves, who is at ease and friendly, who is calm and focused in what they have to say, has high social confidence.

Galef’s theory is that in order to get people to agree with, trust and like you, social confidence, rather than epistemic confidence, is key. She uses the example of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who made no secret of the fact that he didn’t think Amazon had much of a chance of success. In fact, Galef reports that Bezos reckoned the chances of Amazon succeeding were around 30% – he knew that internet companies in general had about a 10% success rate, and he figured his idea was better than average. However, rather than hiding these poor odds, and instead confidently predicting that his company would be the success it turned out to be, Bezos instead routinely told potential investors that he thought there was a 70% chance that they’d lose all their money. 

Bezos openly displayed very little epistemic confidence in his company’s chances of success, and yet he secured the investment he needed. How? Via his social confidence. Bezos spoke with self-assurance. He was engaging, and came across as though he knew what he was doing, even though he was so unsure his company would actually succeed. His social confidence was what was required to secure the trust of his investors, not his epistemic confidence.

For pro-life people, epistemic confidence is not only unnecessary, it’s actually often counterproductive. When we confidently say, for example, that there’s a good chance a woman will regret her abortion, or that abortion is never necessary to save a woman’s life, or that we can never know for sure whether a baby suffering from a life limiting condition will die shortly after birth, we can actually come across as arrogant rather than confident. It can be far more effective to honestly say “I’m not actually sure; I’d need to check that”, “It sounds like you know more about this than I do so I’m not going to push back”, “I hadn’t considered that; can I have a think about it and get back to you?”. So long as you are calm, self-assured, and display social confidence when making these kinds of statements, you are far more likely to actually make the other person warm towards you. You are more likely to encourage them to listen to you, and trust you, and you may even pique their curiosity.

Growing in social confidence requires practice. It can be daunting to come across as calm and collected when having a discussion on something like abortion. However, hopefully this post has shown you that not being sure of all the facts, or not having an answer to every objection at the tips of your fingertips, is not a reason to be nervous of having these conversations – it can actually work to your advantage! Being honest and humble is more effective than being right.

Muireann