As for conditioning, Mary do you mind me asking (respectfully) what knowledge you have in the area of psychology? Confidence is not built by conditioning (in the traditional sense), as the purpose is to train someone to react in a certain way to a certain stimulus. Of course, confidence in the new ability may develop as a consequence.
Having said that, personality and motivation equally have a part to play, as does culture.
I would say that younger men typically (but not always) display more bravado and younger women typically (but not always) tend to be a little more cautious, but that is a different set of labels to confident/under confident.
Final 3 Greens, I would say, respectfully, that you're splitting hairs. Mary was using the term conditioning as it is generally used in everyday conversation. That seemed obvious to me, and by the way, I do happen to have a degree in psychology. My personal experience as an instructor is the same as Mary's - men think they'll be able to fly helicopters easily even when they're pretty hopeless; women think they can't do it even when they obviously can. And my personal observations throughout a life which, while not as long as Mary's, has been going on a while, is that little boys tend to get told they're really, really good at things, while little girls tend to be told they can't do things because they're not big enough/strong enough/ clever enough/whatever. You don't need a degree in anything to deduce that the latter might possibly lead to the former in later life. And yes, I'm making a generalisation, and there are exceptions. And yes, I do think that things are changing in the modern world. And finally, I haven't noticed any whinging on this thread, merely some discussion and a little thread drift. Why do you have a problem with that? And why should I take any notice of it if you do?