Which concept focuses on past successes?

• A. Mastery experience
• B. Self-efficacy
• C. Vicarious experience
• D. Social persuasion

Answer: (A)

Mastery experiences are about your own past performance. When you’ve successfully completed tasks before, you build a history that you can draw on, which boosts your belief that you can handle similar tasks in the future. This firsthand track record makes your sense of capability more robust than simply hearing encouragement or watching others succeed. In self-efficacy theory, the other sources—observing others (vicarious experience), verbal encouragement from others (social persuasion), and interpreting physiological or emotional states—touch on different influences, but it’s the direct record of your own past successes that most strongly centers on past performance.