How Confidence Works

Professor Ian Robertson explains where confidence comes from and how it can be learned.

Imagine we could discover something that could make us richer, healthier, longer-living, smarter, kinder, happier, more motivated and more innovative. What is this elixir? Confidence. If you have it, it can empower you to reach heights you never thought possible. But if you don’t, it can have a devastating effect on your future. Confidence lies at the core of what makes things happen. Probing the science and neuroscience behind confidence that has emerged over the last decade, clinical psychologist and neuroscientist Professor Ian Robertson tells us how confidence plays out in our minds, our brains and indeed our bodies. He explains where it comes from and how it spreads – with extraordinary economic and political consequences. And why it’s not necessarily something you are born with, but something that can be learned.

Author Biography

Ian Robertson is Co-Director of the Global Brain Health Institute (Trinity College Dublin and University of California at San Francisco) and T Boone Pickens Distinguished Professor at the Centre for BrainHealth at University of Texas at Dallas. A trained clinical psychologist as well as a neuroscientist, he is internationally renowned for his research on neuropsychology. He has written five books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles and comment pieces in the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Irish Times, Time magazine and New York magazine, amongst others. He has appeared on BBC Radio and featured in several major television documentaries. He is a regular speaker at major futurology and business conferences in Europe, the USA and Asia.