• UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Not quite. It certainly inspires it, but it’s more like seeing and knowing you can do something - as opposed to just beliving that you could if you wanted to or tried really hard.

    Psychologically this distinction is kinda important, because doing something lowers the mental burden of doing it again. If you are very self confident you are more eager to try stuff, but you may still fail and never touch it again. That is precisely because you didn’t get to experience that self-efficacy, or even worse: failure (which is kind of anti-self-efficacy).

    • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      So this study says that if you have already successfully done something before that you will be better at doing it again?

      • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I think the important bit here is that solving any math problem makes you ‘less afraid’ of math and more likely to seriously engage new problems.

        I think it makes a ton of sense that this improves grades in college/university, because people tend to procrastinate when facing something that seems difficult and scary. If they were less reluctant to give it serious thought, they would have much more time to study