Schiller interlaced his fingers on the table and explained social confidence to Reed.
It was actually quite simple. Like ordinary confidence, it was a form of positive reinforcement: the more successful you were, the more confident you became. The greater the benefits you gained through success, the more solid that confidence became.
For example, if something had originally been difficult to accomplish, but you went to negotiate with someone and made it easier—or simply got it done outright—that counted as social success.
More than that, maintaining a fairly harmonious relationship with your roommate over a long period, having influence in an online interest group, or communicating effectively with strangers in an emergency could all help build social confidence.
The earlier social confidence was established, the better. Being a group leader in kindergarten, becoming the ringleader among neighborhood kids, receiving praise after speaking in public, or successfully going out to buy something alone—all of these built social confidence.
To put it bluntly, kids needed to be open and outgoing.
Research had shown that many introverts were not truly introverted; they simply had low social confidence. Their rate of social success during childhood had been too low, leading them to believe socializing was completely pointless. Or they had repeatedly suffered setbacks in a particular kind of social interaction, causing them to reject it altogether.
A clear example was someone who was lively and cheerful on the Web but could not open their mouth in real life. They might get along perfectly well with classmates at college, yet turn into a wooden puppet whenever they went home and saw relatives. Most of the time, that was because they had suffered social setbacks in that area and lacked social confidence.
Reed had suffered social setbacks across the board, which made building his social confidence