Why Is It So Hard to Get People to Shut Up and Listen?
Mojonomics: We say what we need to hear to maintain our self-confidence.
Posted February 11, 2026 | Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
Behavioral economics applies economic modeling to resources other than money. Economic modeling is a way of tracking and predicting changes in the distribution of anything we value—the give and take, ebbs and flows, supplies and demands, cooperations and competitions over any limited resource that people desire.
For example, attention . People want it. There’s a limited supply. “Attentionomics” is big business these days, tracking the supply of and demand for attention.
Why do we want attention? Large corporations want it because it makes money. People will pay to get attention.
But why will we pay? Why do we value attention? Lots of reasons, but one I track closely points to another resource modeled in behavioral economics, a core resource that all humans appear to need: self-confidence .
Call it “mojonomics,” the study of the supply of and demand for self-confidence.
Why do we share on social media ? Why do we care who loves us? More generally, why do our spirits go up and down? What is this elephant in the room that can elevate or diminish us? A good bet is that it’s this natural, universal human need for self-confidence. When we have it, we feel good. When we have lots of it, we feel better. When we lack it, we feel bad. When our self-confidence vaporizes, it’s downright excruciating.
When seeking self-confidence, we call it prettier names—our need for love, connection, respect, meaning, or empathy. When we’re embarrassed about wanting it, or disdainful of others for wanting it, we spin it with less flattering names: neediness, egotism, narcissism, greediness, thirstiness.
As a discipline, mojonomics is spin-free. Our need for self-confidence is neither admirable nor shameful. It’s just something humans need, and understandably so. We, humans, are burdened by self-awareness that other creatures lack. Self-confidence feels better than self-consciousness. No wonder we seek self-confidence.
If you want to track, predict, and understand what’s happening in your social life , in social media, and culture, the supply of and demand for self-confidence is well worth tracking. Obviously, getting attention is pretty important to our self-confidence.
To illustrate, I’ll focus here on a confidence currency I’ll call gabbing rights —the right to talk, gab, gossip, share stories, explain, and teach. It’s not a natural or formal right. It’s a right we try to earn, or simply demand, claim, and assume.
“Mansplaining,” for example, is an assumed entitlement that men might claim—the right to explain to women the ways of the world. That’s an obvious case of demanding attention for the self-confidence it provides to the guy. But it’s not just guys. All humans vie for the gabbing rights to boost self-confidence. Women and children, too.
“Mommy, mommy, look at me!!” “Husband, put down your phone and listen to me.”
Mojonomics tracks humansplaining in all its manifestations. When we’re communicating ideas, the ideas are often secondary to the effect we’re trying to achieve, the confidence boost we get from sharing them, especially if people like them, or like us for sharing them, but even short of that, the self-confidence we can give ourselves by sharing the ideas regardless of how they’re received.
You can hear it in the giddy enthusiasm with which people express their proud beliefs and values, giving themselves a boost in self-confidence. We second-guess ourselves, but second-yessing ourselves is usually more self-satisfying:
“I ask myself, do I really believe it? Yes! Yes! I really do! I agree with myself wholeheartedly! And proud of it!!”
Indeed, belief might not be the accurate term for everything we gab about, since it’s often more about relief than belief—the relief from self-doubt and anxiety , relief into self-confidence.
Who, then, do we listen to other than ourselves? Tracking gabbing rights, it seems we lend our ears most readily to those we can learn from, though not necessarily out of intellectual curiosity. Rather, we might listen for ideas we’ll be able to share, thereby earning ourselves gabbing rights elsewhere.
See if this is familiar: You meet someone and enter a friendly conversation. You might try sharing some of your ideas, beliefs, and values, or just whatever stories and gossip might boost your confidence, ideas they might like, or agree with, thereby giving you a confidence boost.
You wait your turn to talk while they do the same. Maybe you start to wonder whether they’re talking too much. Are they humansplaining for their own self-confidence like narcissistic egomaniacs? When do you get your turn to show-and-tell back at them?
Or maybe they’re worth listening to. Is this an opportunity for you to show what you know or to learn more things you can use to impress others elsewhere?
In a way, gabbing rights are a natural extension of the kind of territorial competition we see in other species—plants vying for sunlight, animals marking their territory. In another way, it’s an altogether unique and species-specific trait to humans.
We humans live in two worlds, the real and the imaginable. In both worlds, there’s stuff that lifts or sinks our self-confidence. We prefer what boosts it. We may not be able to control how much confidence we can harvest from reality, but we can cultivate self-confidence through imagination and our shared “beliefs” as relief from self-doubt.
This mojonomic perspective may seem cynical, as if people care only about their egotistical self-confidence. I find mojonomics a compassionate and strategic perspective—compassion for ourselves and for others, all of us trying in our own way to keep from sinking into the undertow of self-doubt and anxiety. And strategic, because it really explains a lot, including why people get so passionate about ideas that don’t seem to hold much water but sure feel good to spout as a way to keep their heads above water.
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Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D., MPP, has a wide research agenda — psychology from cradle to grave, life’s origins to our grave situation, grounded in a 25-year close collaboration with Berkeley neuroscientist, biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.