(Irrational) confidence and the ability to escape a sinking car or score a World Cup goal

I first heard the phrase "irrational confidence" about 15 years ago, from famed sports writer Bill Simmons, who used it describe NBA players who assumed they could make any shot, often without solid supporting evidence.

J.R. Smith was irrationally confident. So was Nick Young. Trae Young remains irrationally confident.

Irrationally confident players have a swagger. They're charming because they're sure they're the best player on the court, regardless of evidence. One of my favorite all-time irrationally confident players was former Celtics forward Antoine Walker, whom a sports writer once asked, "Why do you shoot so many threes (three-point shots)?" to which Walker replied, "because there aren't fours."

There are many irrationally confident humans beyond the NBA. To no one's surprise, most of them are male.

A recent YouGov survey asked Americans how well they think they would do in various challenging situations: Could they pass the U.S. citizenship test, perform CPR on a person whose heart has stopped, survive a week alone in the wilderness or safely land a passenger airplane relying only on air traffic control assistance? You know, the type of situations that have been the plot for hundreds of movies and TV show episodes over the years and are ridiculous every time.

In virtually all those situations – particularly those that involve something that 12-year-old boys pretend to do – men were far more confident of their ability to succeed than women. Compared to women, men were 10% more confident that they could do a stranger's job for a day. They were 23% more confident (more than twice as much) that they could escape from an underwater, sinking car. They were 15% more confident that they could survive a week being lost at sea on a life raft.

Let's be clear: This is not suggesting that 41% of men could successfully escape a sinking car or that 46% of men could survive a week alone in the wilderness.

That's the percentage of men who think they could. Because most men (including me) have an unearned confidence in our ability to do hard things, mostly because we've watched someone do it on TV and have critiqued their performance from our couch. ("You have to give the plane plenty of runway to land, dummy!" we shout at an actor pretending to land a plane.)

I've broached this subject before and I don't know the correct takeaway. Are men are absurdly self-confident? Should women should be more brash in their assessment of their abilities?

In the survey, there were a few situations where women were more confident than men. More women thought they could perform CPR on a person whose heart stopped. More women thought they could deliver a baby in an emergency (still, 27% of men said they could, which seems absurd).

Some of the options seemed like they were dreamed up by a 12-year-old boy (or me): Could you hotwire a car in under a minute? Could you beat a chimpanzee in a fight if you were unarmed? Could you successfully navigate to a destination using only the stars?

Of course, more men than women thought they could do each of those. (I'm not sure I even want to talk to the 12% of men who thought they could win a fight against a chimpanzee.)

The YouGov people also broke down the information by different demographics. Unsurprisingly, Republicans were more confident that they could perform most challenging tasks (MAOA: Make America Overconfident Again). Older people are more confident that they could perform emergency medical tasks (a Heimlich maneuver or perform CPR), likely because we were trained on how to do that 40 years ago and still think we could do it.

Confidence is a strange trait. It's painful to watch someone who lacks confidence, but it's irritating to watch someone who is overconfident. I love watching irrationally confident athletes or kids (I'm forever amused by 10-year-olds who think they can do things that they clearly are incapable of doing), but am bugged by overconfident regular adults.

While my confidence level is admittedly closer to irrational than underconfident, when I look at the list of options provided in the survey, I suspect the only ones in which I could succeed are doing a random person's job for a day (presuming it was something easy) and beat a chess grandmaster in a single game.

Explanation of the second point: I don't play chess, but that question doesn't say the "game" is chess. I think I could beat a chess grandmaster in a single game of Uno or Trouble, if we played enough times. (An area in which I have supreme confidence: The ability to find loopholes in phrases that allow me to succeed.)

Oh, and a few weeks after the first survey, YouGov released another survey at the end of the World Cup, asking whether people thought they could score on a penalty kick in a World Cup match. The survey revealed that 24% of men believe they could accomplish that ridiculous feat, while 15% of women thought they could.

The most confident group? Fifty-eight percent of Republican men under 45 said they could score in that scenario. I can only assume they would do so after landing a passenger airplane with air traffic control help, then escaping a sinking car on the way to the World Cup match.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.