The Confidence Code by Katty Kay, Claire Shipman Page A

(NIH). He is a leading explorer of the tangled, centuries-old, nature versus nurture terrain, and he commands a small empire of warehouse labs in this countryside outpost, the centerpiece of which is a five-acre playground for his subjects. The day was gloriously sunny, and many of the monkeys were scampering and swinging on equipment that looked like, well, monkey bars.
    “There are truly interesting personality differences in monkeys,” Suomi told us. “You see everything from healthy, well-adjusted individuals to monkeys prone to anxiety or depression or even autism. Where do those traits come from?”
    Suomi is making huge strides toward answering that question. His wildlife laboratory has become ground zero in the fast-expanding study of the biology of personality.
    Specifically, we were on the trail of a confidence gene, wondering whether we could find proof of what was long our gut instinct: some people are just born confident. You know the type, people who appear to glide effortlessly through life, whatever it throws at them. The people for whom no task is too difficult, no situation too agonizing, and no challenge too great. They exude an inherent, enviable, even slightly irritating, air of ease. The professional mother who juggles children, job, and spouse and never questions whether she’s doing right by either her family or her career. The young man who sets off backpacking through Costa Rica, just assuming that it will all work out. Those people who have no qualms voicing opinions in public or demanding a raise in private. Their parents, friends, and spouses say they’ve always been that way, making their seemingly unshakable confidence appear all the more unattainable.
    Did their upbringing create that confidence? Or is there a DNA sequence that hatches it? Is confidence baked into our personalities?
    Suomi has been asking the same questions and trying to find answers by studying the personalities of his monkeys. Lately, he’s been focused on the origins of anxiety, which essentially means, Suomi told us, that he’s also looking at confidence. Monkeys with confidence aren’t apt to be anxious, and vice versa.
    Based on his research and that of others in the field, Suomi has concluded that some monkeys are indeed born with the hard-wiring to be more confident than others. “We now know that there’s an underlying biology,” he told us. “Certain biological characteristics show up very early in life and, if you don’t do anything about the environment, are likely to be fairly stable throughout infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.”
    It’s an enormous help to Suomi’s research that monkeys grow up four times as fast as humans. He’s been able to observe several generations already. He and his team track the monkeys’ behavior from birth, noting parenting techniques, and marking the frequency with which the offspring socialize with others, dominate the playground, take risks, or hang by themselves.
    As we watched the monkeys more closely, with color commentary provided by Suomi and his researchers, it was indeed possible to pick out the different behavior patterns that Suomi described. Some lolled about down by the lake, while others engaged in a game of chase. Several mothers kept watch on their offsprings’ every move. We spotted a few of the young monkeys sitting more quietly, close to the adults. One showed almost no interest in even observing the nearby activity. In all, the scene was not unlike what you might see at a grade school playground: Play and interaction dominate, but a few youngsters hang back. Their behavior is typical, Suomi said, for his less confident, more anxious monkeys.
    Still, we wondered, as we examined the tableau before us, whether we could really draw conclusions about human confidence based on monkey behavior. Monkeys are our ancient ancestors, and our research had reminded us that we share 90 percent of our genetic makeup. But Suomi explained there’s