Everybody thinks you should act

To add some to the other girls' comments, it's definitely about a belief in yourself. You don't necessarily have to be obnoxious about thinking you're smarter than everyone - it's more about being happy with being how intelligent you are. To take an example from pop culture, in the movies "Meet the Parents" and "Meet the Fockers", Gary is a male nurse. Toward the end of the first movie, he admits that he's a male nurse, even though his MCATs were high enough to get him into med school, because that's what he enjoys. Be happy with who you are, rather than how you compare to other people.

This sort of confidence tells a girl that you're at least somewhat emotionally stable. To me, specifically, that sort of confidence tells me that you're not going to be totally dependent on me for your emotional well-being and thus need to be pried off by the police when it ends (which it will, because few, if any, people like being strangled).

Think of it more as belief in yourself, then, rather than 'confidence'. Go into asking a girl out knowing that you'd *like* it to end with her saying yes, but with the knowledge that if she doesn't, the world doesn't end, and another girl will come your way eventually.

I agree with LadyLush. Confidence is when you believe in yourself and don't care about what people say or think about you. Lying is when you don't have confidence and you don't believe in yourself, so you make up random things that aren't true. Posers (this is what we call liars who make their life up because they don't have confidence) are the worst people you could meet, or be, or become. Posers could be spotted very quickly, and so can people with confidence. And just to let you know, some people with too much confidence become mean, snotty, slutty, and not very nice people, overall.

First of all there is a huge difference between lying and being confident...confidence is when you know exactly who you are and what you want and your proud of that and it shows in everything that you do... lying is when you do not have a clue so you go on pretending to be something you're not which I agree can be spotted a million miles away that is the difference it is a very distinct one I consider it to be huge in how much a person loves themselves cause only if they love themselves can they love me.

Confidence is a huge role in life.

This is a total mischaracterization of true confidence. Self confidence is much more about recognizing your own weaknesses and accepting them, not as debilitating flaws in yourself, but as a part of your whole personality. It's not about overestimating yourself, it's about knowing yourself, being comfortable with yourself, and not being overly concerned what other people think of you.

That's what I've said: you can't know exactly, so being confident means to lie. I know what you mean with that, and theoretically that is true, but practically, that's impossible. And beside, being confident in yourself means that you think something about you, and that is just your (subjective) opinion. You may say you are smart(you are confident in your intellectual abilities) for example, but someone may not agree with it, and that wouldn't mean he/she has something against you.