Bluffing your way through life

Malcolm Gladwell has written on the topic of the hour - our financial crisis in The psychology of overconfidence: newyorker.com.

The article answered a question that I had been wrestling with for years - but only answered it partially. As a female in the first wave of boomers, I was never indoctrinated into the ways of the business world - I just naively arrived on the scene. In my sales career, I understood the part about having confidence well enough, I just never understood the part about bluffing the numbers... And how did the guys all know to bluff by exactly the same percentage? Was there a set number? Did they learn it from their fathers? On the golf course? Is it industry specific?

I knew everyone's numbers, (I had my ways, that is what females know how to do -female survival instincts) bluffing the numbers never changed anything - it didn't make them any bigger in reality. Indeed Gladwell discovers that if one party to a transaction bluffs, there is some competitive advantage in the confidence that person exudes, but if both bluff there is absolutely none. That is also what my anecdotal evidence told me during my selling years - but the mystery of the percentage remains.

Added 8/13: According to research by Robert Feldman, a professor of psychology at U of MA at Amherst, we lie about 3 times in 10 minutes even in our casual conversations. Read an excerpt from his book The Liar in Your Life: The Way to Truthful Relationships that recently ran in the Guardian.