- Someone's confidant is a man who they are able to discuss their private problems with.
- Someone's confidante is a woman who they are able to discuss their private problems with. (female confidant)
- If you confide in someone, you tell them a secret.
- confidence [from com- + fidere "to trust"] hi-fi: high fidelity
- confident confidently sceptical self-assured timid
- confidential confidentially confidentiality classified
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 [arrogant pride], in comparison, is the state of having unmerited confidence – believing something or someone is capable or correct when they are not. 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 used as self-assurance in one's personal judgment, ability, power, etc. One's self confidence increases from experiences of having satisfactorily completed particular activities. It is a positive 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 [effectiveness]. 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 self-efficacy, which psychologist Albert Bandura has defined as a "belief in one’s ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task" 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 [used when one situation is the opposite of another] 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 [combine into one].
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, and the culture of colonial-era American society (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 [范围] 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 fighting. At 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 [not interested in anything] 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 emerged.
六级/考研单词: confide, timid, skeptical, classify, hypothesis, thereby, excess, inborn, accomplish, evaluate, psychology, situate, converse, correlate, attribute, journal, praise, asylum, accommodate, insane, liberty, superb, potent, heal, decrease, tense, terror, cultivate, reform, depress, gradual, motive, component, esteem, physiology, attain, desire, rapid, fulfil, cite
标签：confidence,his,ability,efficacy,self,they From： https://www.cnblogs.com/funwithwords/p/16584763.html