More specifically, however, recent studies have discovered self-referential signals in pgACC that relate to what might be described as self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a classical psychological concept that refers to the subjective belief that one will succeed in upcoming endeavours and overcome challenges (Bandura, 1977). Self-efficacy can have different sources. One way to increase self-efficacy is through positive feedback from other people. A role of pgACC in mediating this is in line with the finding from Will et al’s (2017) that pgACC computes updates in self-esteem based on how positively oneself is evaluated by other people (Will et al., 2017). PgACC indexes how approval by other people affects how good we feel about ourselves and our self-esteem is particularly boosted if we receive positive feedback from people that have evaluated us negatively in the past. Note that self-efficacy and self-esteem, although related, are clearly different psychological constructs (approximate correlation r = 0.8; Chen et al., (2004)) with distinct associations to being valued by others. While self-efficacy is more related to motivational variables and the belief to succeed in specific situations, self-esteem is rather related to emotional variables and a general self-worth.
