Can confidence be taught?

No. It is a learned attribute.

You can encourage confidence, but it really has to be learned through repeated tries and effort.

I agree with @MRSHINYSHOES. It can’t necessarily be taught but it can be encouraged; you can encourage people to keep trying even if they fail at first. People gain self-confidence by succeeding at things. And none of us can succeed all the time. We fail sometimes. But with enough successes, both small and large, over time, we become more and more self-confident.

Yes, if you consider self-teaching as teaching. This is the same as saying it can be learned for oneself.

Another person can coach you, encourage you, and perhaps place you in situations where you can learn confidence, but it is still something that you gain through your own effort and experience.

In other words, I agree with the preceding posts.

I’m in agreement with those above me. It can’t really be taught to another person, but it can certainly be learned. Experience, in this case, really is the best teacher.

Teachable with patience.

Yes, I teach it to my students all the time.

Cary Grant wasn’t always Cary Grant. He was Archie Leach, before. He had no confidence, and wanted to be that guy , so he pretended to be confident, smart, and debonair. He did such a good job, that in a few years, he was!

Confidence has various aspects. One can be socially confident and yet procrastinate when it comes to exercising life skills due to fear of messing up.. Or one can be very comfortable get things accomplished but shy away from one on one verbal contact with others. It was once explained to me that there are people comfortable at the podium level because they are addressing a crowd and it is basically talking to people, whereas one on one or in small groups interaction is required and this causes discomfort or sometimes even distress.

I don’t think it can be taught from an external source, except by experience. Positive experiences increase it, negative ones decrease it.

Absolutely. Coaches do it all the time. So do teachers. You can instill confidence in others by teaching them and showing them they are competent and excellent and they can believe it will always be there.

I have taught many people various skills, and there usually comes a time when they suddenly get that they have these skills and they trust them and believe they can use them at any time. They develop confidence. It’s a pretty basic thing.

(according to a study I read 6 months ago) American children are #1 in confidence yet something like 25th in intelligence/education of all countries in the world.

I think they are “born into” this culture, but yet they learn it from the culture. Therefore the answer is both born, but really it is learned.

If you’ve ever seen the Mike Tyson doc. Mike Tyson’s trainer would tell him he was the best over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. That’s *@!$ing confidence!

Confidence is taught and can be learned. You are born totally dependent on your parents and from there life’s experiences are our teacher and some learn confidence and others never are able to cut the cords of dependency.

That said as after 8 years as a scout leader I have seen veritable wall flowers become confident young leaders of their peers. After 6 years in martial arts I have seen similar results with people afraid to take on their own shadow win sparring trophies. I the knowledge you can bring on the pain if and when someone crosses the line with you is hugely empowering.

Simple… You CAN teach a person to be more confident, but you cannot impart YOUR confidence onto them. Each episode and instance of confidence is unique to the individual.

Otherwise it’s called acting.