Many students focus on studies in school. In general, students who perform well have increased confidence which likely in turn encourages students to take greater responsibility to successfully complete tasks.[61] Students who perform better receive more positive evaluations report and greater self-confidence. Low achieving students report less confidence and high performing students report higher self-confidence.

1. Confidence
Confidence is a state of being clear-headed either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or
that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Confidence comes from a Latin word
'fidere' which means "to trust"; therefore, having self-confidence is having trust in one's self.
Arrogance or hubris, in comparison, is the state of having unmerited confidence—believing
something or someone is correct or capable when evidence or reasons for this belief are lacking.
Overconfidence or presumptuousness is excessive belief in someone (or something)
succeeding, without any regard for failure. Confidence can be a self-fulfilling prophecy as those
without it may fail or not try because they lack it and those with it may succeed because they
have it rather than because of an innate ability.
The concept of self-confidence is commonly defined as self-assurance in one's personal
judgment, ability, power, etc. One's self-confidence increases as a result of experiences of
having satisfactorily completed particular activities.
[1]
Self-confidence involves a positive
[2]
belief
that in the future, one can generally accomplish what one wishes to do. Self-confidence is not the
same as self-esteem, which is an evaluation of one's own worth, whereas self-confidence is
more specifically trust in one's ability to achieve some goal, which one meta-analysis suggested
is similar to generalization of self-efficacy.
[3]
Abraham Maslow and many others after him have
emphasized the need to distinguish between self-confidence as a generalized personality
characteristic, and self-confidence with respect to a specific task, ability or challenge (i.e.
self-efficacy). Self-confidence typically refers to general self-confidence. This is different from

2. self-efficacy, which psychologist Albert Bandura has defined as a “belief in one’s ability to
succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task”
[4]
and therefore is the term that more
accurately refers to specific self-confidence. Psychologists have long noted that a person can
possess self-confidence that he or she can complete a specific task (self-efficacy) (e.g. cook a
good meal or write a good novel) even though they may lack general self-confidence, or
conversely be self-confident though they lack the self-efficacy to achieve a particular task (e.g.
write a novel). These two types of self-confidence are, however, correlated with each other, and
for this reason can be easily conflated.
History
Ideas about the causes and effects of self-confidence have appeared in English language
publications describing characteristics of a sacrilegious attitude toward God the character of the
British empire,
[7]
and the culture of colonial-era American society
[8]
(where it seemed to connote
arrogance and be a negative attribute).
In 1890, the philosopher William James in his Principles of Psychology wrote, "Believe what is in
the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulled ... Have faith that you can
successfully make it, and your feet are nerved to its accomplishment," expressing how
self-confidence could be a virtue. That same year, Dr. Frederick Needham, in his presidential
address to the opening of the British Medical Journal's Section of Psychology praised a
progressive new architecture of an asylum accommodation for insane patients as increasing their
self-confidence by offering them greater “liberty of action, extended exercise, and occupation,
thus generating self-confidence and becoming, not only excellent tests of the sanity of the
patient, but operating powerfully in promoting recovery.
]
In doing so, he seemed to early on
suggest that self-confidence may bear a scientific relation to mental health.
With the arrival of World War I, psychologists praised self-confidence as greatly decreasing
nervous tension, allaying fear, and ridding the battlefield of terror; they argued that soldiers who
cultivated a strong and healthy body would also acquire greater self-confidence while fightingAt
the height of the Temperance social reform movement of the 1920s, psychologists associated
self-confidence in men with remaining at home and taking care of the family when they were not
working. During the Great Depression, Philip Eisenberg and Paul Lazerfeld noted how a sudden
negative change in one's circumstances, especially a loss of a job, could lead to decreased
self-confidence, but more commonly if the jobless person believes the fault of his unemployment
is his. They also noted how if individuals do not have a job long enough, they became apathetic
and lost all self-confidence.
In 1943, Abraham Maslow in his paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” argued that an individual
was only motivated to acquire self-confidence (one component of “esteem”) after he or she had
achieved what they needed for physiological survival, safety, and love and belonging. He claimed
that satisfaction of self-esteem led to feelings of self-confidence that, once attained, led to a
desire for “self-actualization."
[]
As material standards of most people rapidly rose in developed
countries after World War II and fulfilled their material needs, a plethora of widely cited academic
research about-confidence and many related concepts like self-esteem and self-efficacy emerge

3. https://www.digistore24.com/redir/415463/mahinda/
Self-confidence as an intra-psychological variable]
Social psychologists have found self-confidence to be correlated with other psychological
variables within individuals, including saving money, how individuals exercise influence over
others, and being a responsible student. Marketing researchers have found that general
self-confidence of a person is negatively correlated with their level of anxiety.
]
Some studies suggest various factors within and beyond an individual's control that affect their
self-confidence. Hippel and Trivers propose that people will deceive themselves about their own
positive qualities and negative qualities of others so that they can display greater self-confidence
than they might otherwise feel, thereby enabling them to advance socially and materially.
]
Others
have found that new information about an individual's performance interacts with an individual's
prior self-confidence about their ability to perform. If that particular information is negative
feedback, this may interact with a negative affective state (low self-confidence) causing the
individual to become demoralized, which in turn induces a self-defeating attitude that increases
the likelihood of failure in the future more than if they did not lack self-confidenceOn the other
hand, some also find that self-confidence increases a person's general well-being
]
and one's
motivation
]
and therefore often performance It also increases one's ability to deal with stress and
mental health.
A meta-analysis of 12 articles found that generally when individuals attribute their success to a
stable cause (a matter under their control) they are less likely to be confident about being
successful in the future. If an individual attributes their failure to an unstable cause (a factor
beyond their control, like a sudden and unexpected storm) they are more likely to be confident
about succeeding in the future. Therefore, if an individual believes he/she and/or others failed to
achieve a goal (e.g. give up smoking) because of a factor that was beyond their control, he or
she is more likely to be more self-confident that he or she can achieve the goal in the future.
Whether a person in making a decision seeks out additional sources of information depends on
their level of self-confidence specific to that area. As the complexity of a decision increases, a
person is more likely to be influenced by another person and seek out additional information.
]
However, people can also be relatively self-confident about what they believe if they consult
sources of information that agree with their world views (e.g. New York Times for liberals, Fox

4. News for conservatives), even if they do not know what will happen tomorrow.
]
Several
psychologists suggest that people who are self-confident are more willing to examine evidence
that both supports and contradicts their attitudes. Meanwhile, people who are less self-confident
about their perspective and are more defensive about them may prefer proattitudinal information
over materials that challenge their perspectives.
]
(see also Byrne, 1961; Olson & Zanna, 1982b;
for related views in other domains, see Tesser.
Students
Many students focus on studies in school. In general, students who perform well have increased
confidence which likely in turn encourages students to take greater responsibility to successfully
complete tasks. Students who perform better receive more positive evaluations report and
greater self-confidence.
]
Low achieving students report less confidence and high performing
students report higher self-confidence.
Extracurricular activities can boost confidence in students at earlier age only in school. These
include participating in games/sports, visual and performing arts, and public-speaking among
others.
Teachers can greatly affect the self-confidence of their students depending on how they treat
them. In particular, Steele and Aronson established that black students perform more poorly on
exams (relative to white students) if they must reveal their racial identities before the exam, a
phenomenon known as “stereotype threat. Keller and Dauenheimer find a similar phenomenon in
relation to female student's performance (relative to male student's) on math tests.Sociologists of
education Zhou and Lee have observed the reverse phenomenon occurring amongst
Asian-Americans, whose confidence becomes tied up in expectations that they will succeed by
both parents and teachers and who claim others perceive them as excelling academically more
than they in fact are.
In one study of UCLA students, males (compared to females) and adolescents with more siblings
(compared to those with less) were more self-confident. Individuals who were self-confident
specifically in the academic domain were more likely to be happy but higher general
self-confidence was not correlated with happiness. With greater anxiety, shyness and
depression, emotionally vulnerable students feel more lonely due to a lack of general
self-confidence.
]
Another study of first year college students found men to be much more
self-confident than women in athletic and academic activities. In regards to inter-ethnic
interaction and language learning, studies show that those who engage more with people of a
different ethnicity and language become more self-confident in interacting with them.