(competency). Effective emotional awareness, accurate
self-assessment and self-confidence may assist an individual
to make personal adjustments on their journey
toward learning and success. Resilience is also a strong
attribute of confidence as it is the basis of self-control
(Abraham, 2004). Resilience could be a moderating
factor of confidence in the prelicensure nursing student
in the context of learning to “go with the flow” (flexibility)
because of the fact that the clinical setting is a
highly fluid situation. The ability to “bounce back” from
obstacles is resilience.
Al-Nasir and Robertson (2001) report that personal
characteristics and attitudes include confidence as an
attribute, as well as cognitive abilities that affect confidence
and may predict success. According to Belcher
and Jones (2009) a lack of confidence means that
new graduate nurses are unlikely to trust themselves.
Trust in self is an important attribute of confidence;
however, trust also overlaps into the category of a
consequence of confidence and will be discussed later.
Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s capability to
execute the actions required to attain a goal, and, as
such, is an attribute of confidence/self-confidence.
Confidence in one’s ability directly affects his/her performance
(Leigh, 2008). Perceived self-confidence is
the perception of one’s ability to successfully complete
a task. Self-efficacy provides the basis for human motivation,
well-being, and personal accomplishments
(Bandura, 1994). Self-efficacy includes an individualized
ability within the contextual condition to change
or adapt through psychological, emotional, or physiological
changes.
Koriat (2008) examined subjective confidence in
one’s own answers, and his results help reinforce the
idea that intuitive feelings (subjective convictions) do
not have privileged access to correct information.
Rather, they are based on the same processes that
underlie retrieval and decision, and when these