If a person goes out of their way to brag about a particular personality trait, skill, or talent, it usually indicates a lack of genuine proficiency in that area.

I think this is somewhat true, but tricky. The word "brag" sort of predisposes toward the view that the person feels a need to puff up their accomplishments. But there might be reasons to assert one's competencies. For example, if you are working on a project where someone is making a total mess of it, you might try to establish yourself as better suited to making various decisions to prevent problems from occurring. While superior competence is often recognized and does not need to make a show of itself, it is certainly not always the case that the person with more ability is recognized as such.

But I do think that generally a need to specify your own strengths is a problem. Although I think sometimes it may be indicative of a lack in a different area. Someone may focus on trying to make everyone pay attention to what they are good at to compensate for serious lack of competence in other areas.

Yet, generally if you are truly good at something, you do not need to tell people. You can simply demonstrate your ability, which works better and is less annoying.

I am unsure on this claim. I think it is probably true, and that a broader claim about displaying a lack of ability in some area is almost definitely true. But I don't know the statistics nor feel I have enough experience to guess.

I make no causal claim. Correlationnally and anecdotally, however, the more someone insists on telling the world that he rocks at X, the more he sucks at X.

D'A

This sounds like a resume.

On the other hand, having read a few resumes, maybe that supports this claim...

Rachel: That's a valid point, and it's part of the reason I phrased this claim in a fairly weak manner, i.e. using "usually" instead of "almost always" or something similar. I agree that there are many instances where "bragging" of sorts is acceptable, or even necessary. On a résumé, as Slarti (somewhat tongue-in-cheekly?) points out, bragging about one's skills is often the only hope a person has of convincing potential employers that he or she actually possesses the requisite skills for a job. Also, there's a sort of playful bragging among close friends that doesn't necessarily imply a desire to really overexaggerate a person's skill-set.

Actually, I think part of what bothers me about the inspiring comment is not that the poster is bragging, but that he's citing other people's complements to back this up. In my experience, if someone says their professors have complemented extensively them on a subject, they're usually just BSing. I'm not say that's what the inspiring poster is doing, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case.

*wince* It's "compliments" with an I, bcat.

D'A
... thus endeth the lesson

I wouldn't know; I'm very humble, myself, and fastidiously ignore the shortcomings of others.

D'A: Gah! I'm got too much set theory on my mind, I guess. That's what a proofs course does to you!

s/I'm/I've/

Jonathan Rascher: The argument that "everyone I know says I'm good at Y" isn't a very good argument to begin with. I mean I know one Jyter that would call him out on his "appeal to authority" in a heartbeat. (Lookit, I made a funny!)

Are we intentionally avoiding using Violaine's alias or OpenID for some reason that I missed? I mean I realize that you're trying to generalize with this claim, and I support that, but if you're going to make a reference directly to him...

I was trying to avoid calling Violaine out by name, but it's not really a big deal. I haven't directly interacted with him in a negative way, so I don't want to be seen as instigating any flamewars with him. On the other hand, I do view his behavior on many recent claims as bad, particularly the aforementioned "bragging". However, I was indeed trying to focus on such behavior in general. Violaine just provides a convenient example, that's all.

I definitely think that someone who goes out of their way to mention praise other people have given them is likely to not actually be very skilled at whatever it is. That seems to fit with my experience. I think that's a narrower set than just bragging.

And I am reminded of the cartoon with the complimentary coffee (With the coffee telling the woman that she looks lovely today).

Jonathan Rascher: That's fair, and I understand that. I just wanted to make sure that we weren't unnecessarily sacrificing clarity.

So, then, a negative evaluation of myself is admittance whereas a positive evaluation based on the evaluation of others is bragging. There is no logic behind this, so I won't ask you to posit a rational exposition to justify your idiocy.

OK, then I won't attempt to justify it to you. Thanks!