New Study Shows Unique Insights on Confidence in the Workplace
When confronted with a challenge in the workplace, many people try their best to be persuasive rather than combative. In her new research, Shirli Kopelman, clinical professor of management and organizations, explores how confident individuals gain social influence. The research findings offer novel implications on how the social influence processes of confidence expressions are shaped by the felt competitiveness between individuals.
The article, titled “Can Confidence Influence Persuasiveness in Disagreements by Conveying Competence versus Dominance? The Moderating Role of Competitiveness,” was published in the journal Negotiation and Conflict Management Research in 2024 and received the NCMR Article of the Year Award in 2025.
Kopelman’s co-authors in the study are Michigan Ross PhD alum Laura Rees of Oregon State University, Ming‐Hong Tsai of Singapore Management University, and Hsiu-Hua Hu of Ming Chuan University. Kopelman shared a few key insights from the research team's paper in the following Q&A.
What led you to study this topic?
An observation that stood out vividly in our courses was that many of our students passionately tried to persuade their classmates by speaking with great confidence about their ideas. While this approach sometimes worked brilliantly, at other times, it completely backfired, leaving us curious about the underlying reasons. We noticed a similar pattern in work meetings, where confident colleagues presenting bold ideas would either gain widespread support or face unexpected pushback.
We wondered why confidence was such a powerful tool for persuasion in some cases but a source of resistance in others.
Your research shows how confident individuals are perceived as more competent or dominant in the workplace. What factors may lead to these perceptions? How does that play out in the workplace?
We found that the felt competitiveness between the two parties really mattered for how expressed confidence was perceived. Expressing confidence can be a way in which we signal that we know what we’re talking about and we have some expertise. But when we’re confident, we can also downplay others’ thinking and try to push our own thoughts through. We found that when a perceiver felt competitive with an expresser, their goals were in opposition, and the situation was zero-sum. That felt competitiveness neutralized how competent the expresser seemed and instead emphasized how dominant they seemed.
Both competence and dominance are likely to influence others, and there is a lot of research examining when and why these effects happen. However, we found that dominance did not consistently predict persuasiveness, whereas competence does. So if you want to persuade someone, it’s more useful if they see you as competent. This may have the added benefit of helping the person see why they should go along with your thinking, which is more helpful for long-lasting change than if they simply feel that they must go along.
When we feel competitive with others, we tend to view the situation as zero-sum, assuming our goals are in opposition — that one of us succeeds only at the expense of the other.
How might your research inform strategies for conflict resolution in the workplace?
One of the most critical takeaways from this research is that we should be mindful of “reading the room,” so to speak when we have disagreements. Sometimes, doubling down on our own ideas and continuing to express those very confidently can lead to a stalemate and escalation of the conflict.
Taking time to notice if another person seems to feel highly competitive with us can help us better adapt how we express our own ideas to maximize our persuasiveness. If it seems very competitive, tone down the expressed confidence and find other ways to emphasize your competence and that everyone is in this together.
Managers also have an important role in disagreements. As we note in the paper, one way for managers to mitigate competitiveness is by emphasizing that each employee is working toward the same goals. Implementing incentives that reward joint work, rather than individual employees, could also help bolster the links between expressed confidence and perceptions of the expresser’s competence.
What are the next steps or future directions for research in this area? Do you have any upcoming projects?
It would be interesting to examine these effects over time. How do the effects change if a coworker consistently displays high confidence? Or what happens when someone’s expression is unexpectedly surprising or out of character? This is likely to be a stronger signal to perceivers, but it would be interesting for research to unpack these differences.
Overall, our findings suggest expressing confidence influences persuasion in disagreements by signaling competence or dominance, depending on felt competitiveness. In climates where people tend to feel competitive with each other, it tends to signal dominance, while in non-competitive climates, it signals competence. Notably, expressed confidence is most persuasive when it conveys competence in non-competitive situations. This highlights the importance of adapting communication strategies for conflict resolution and negotiations.
