Confidence and Self Belief Statistics UK 2021 - 2022

Key Findings

We’re really passionate about this issue, which is why we conducted the following research to find out how confident people feel right now in the UK.

To do this, we surveyed 2,000 UK adults in February 2021 using the research company Censuswide. Our key findings revealed that:

• 85% of women do not believe they are attractive
• Only half of men believe they are intelligent
• More than half of young people often worry about what other people think of them

Men: Self Confidence Statistics

More often than not, men find it difficult to talk about their mental health, with various campaigns being run over the last few years to help encourage men to come forward and seek help when they’re struggling.

To find out a bit more about how men in the UK are feeling in 2021 - 2022, we asked them to select the statements they agree with most from the above options.

The answers revealed that:

• Only 45% of men said they believe other people generally like them, meaning that 55% of men do not think they are liked by others.

• Just 19% of men say they think they are attractive, meaning that 4 in every 5 men do not believe they are attractive.

• Only 42% of men feel self-confident in their ability to do their job. This means that almost 60% of men are not confident in their ability to do their job.

• Just half of men believe they are intelligent

In a separate study conducted by us at Gee Hair, we discovered that the term 'Imposter Syndrome' was searched a huge 700,000 times in the last 12 months!

When defining the term imposter syndrome, it is often described as not feeling as competent as you think others may perceive you to be. There are many reasons why imposter syndrome could develop - it may be due to a lack of confidence in one's abilities, general low self esteem, being a perfectionist or even having very high expectations from family members. Regardless of the case, it appears that this is a feeling that many people can resonate with and may be a key reason why men are doubting their intelligence or ability in the workplace.

Women: Self Confidence Statistics

In this section we take a look at womens’ responses to our survey, to find out a little more about the self confidence of women in 2021 - 2022.

The key findings were as follows:

• A staggering 85% of women do not believe they are attractive.

• Only 23% of women say they feel confident in their appearance, meaning that 4 in every 5 women do not feel confident in the way they look.

• Almost two thirds of women are not confident in their ability to do their job.

• The majority of women do not believe they are intelligent (62%)

• More than half of women do not think they are liked by others (56%)

Gee Hair also conducted a separate study in 2022 which revealed that there was a staggering total of 27,400 google searches (in the past 12 months) of how to 'loose weight fast'. As highlighted in the above infographic, many women don't feel confident in their appearance, studies have shown us that weight can have a big impact on the way women perceive themselves. This further demonstrates that at times, women may equate the appearance of their bodies to self worth which affects overall confidence.

Self Confidence & Age

So now we know how confidence levels differ between men and women in 2021 - 2022. But how does our age influence the way we feel about ourselves?

Our study revealed that:

• More than half (50.6%) of 16-24 year-olds often worry about what others think of them

• The vast majority of people aged 35-54 don't feel confident in the way they look, as 80% say they’re not confident in their appearance.

• 1 in every 3 of young people feels they are generally disliked by others (30.34%).

• Only 1 in every 10 people over 45 thinks they are attractive. Meaning that 90% of over 45s don't think they are attractive.

Adding to this, Gee Hair discovered that the search term 'How to be more confident' was searched a number of 27,000 times since last year. It seems that regardless of age and gender - feelings of doubt and insecurity are something many of us can relate to.

Study Methodology

To obtain this data, we surveyed 2,000 UK adults using Censuswide. The raw data we collected can be found here.

We hope these self confidence statistics have been useful in shedding some light on how people in the UK feel about themselves. If you’re ever feeling down, we want you to know that you’re not alone and things will get better.

The Samaritans

Free Phone: 116 123 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)

Website: http://www.samaritans.org

Email: jo@samaritans.org

MIND

Free Phone: 0300 123 3393 (9am-6pm Monday to Friday)

Website: https://www.mind.org.uk

Shout Crisis Text Line

Free Text: "SHOUT" to 85258 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)

Website: https://giveusashout.org/