Introduction
Self-efficacy is a person’s belief that he or she can (or cannot) successfully
organize and execute an action to achieve a desired outcome in a particular
situation. According to psychologist Albert Bandura, a person’s
self-efficacy will strongly influence how that person approaches a task or goal.
For example, if a woman has a strong belief that she can learn new dance steps,
she will be more likely to say yes when asked if she wants to learn a new dance.
She will also be more likely to persevere if at first she is not successful.
However, if her belief in her ability to draw is weak, she will be less likely to
say yes when asked if she wants to draw some pictures with her friends, and even
if she agrees to try, she will be more likely to become frustrated and quit if she
encounters difficulties. Thus, self-efficacy is situation specific. Although
self-efficacy is situation specific, Bandura refers to a person’s total set of
self-efficacies as an individual’s coping self-efficacy. Individuals with a strong
coping self-efficacy will persevere even when faced with the most difficult
circumstances because they have learned how to cope with initial failure.
Learning Theory History
During the first half of the twentieth century, the psychological study of
learning yielded three major principles: contingency, effect, and expectancy.
Contingency was first demonstrated in Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s study, in which
a dog learned to salivate at the sound of a buzzer that preceded the release of
food. The law of
effect was initially formulated by Edward L.
Thorndike, when he noticed that the animals he studied would
learn to repeat the behaviors that were rewarded.
Unlike contingency and effect, expectancy provides a cognitive
explanation for behavior. Its initial proponent was Edward C.
Tolman, who believed that an organism’s behavior is based on
what it expects to happen if it performs a particular action. Tolman believed that
the simple stimulus-response connections that Pavlov and Thorndike used to explain
behaviors were inadequate to explain complex behavioral choices. Tolman did not
believe that organisms just reacted to a situation based on their past learning
history. Instead, he argued that an organism’s behavior is guided by its beliefs
about the best way to achieve a desired goal, although the organism’s beliefs are
informed by its past stimulus-response history.
Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy is a descendent of Tolman’s expectancy
principle. Bandura’s social cognitive theory has become one of the most researched
learning theories. According to his theory, although people can learn through
direct experience, they also learn by observing the consequences of the behaviors
of others and through symbolic modeling, such as when they read about characters
in a book. From these direct and vicarious experiences, people learn abstract
rules, such as “It is not good to hurt other people,” that they can generalize to
use in entirely new situations. This can lead to unpredictable, creative solutions
to new situations.
Self-efficacy is an important part of Bandura’s social cognitive theory. People
with high self-efficacy for a particular action believe that they have the ability
to exert control over their environment, at least in a particular situation.
People’s self-efficacies will affect what they choose to learn, how well they will
learn it, and whether they will stick with it or give it up. In other words, these
self-efficacies will affect how people interact with their world
Causes of Self-Efficacy
According to Bandura, experiences of personal mastery most enhance the development of self-efficacy. The experience of having successfully learned something in the past will most likely cause people to believe that similar learning can be done again.
Another source of acquiring self-efficacy comes from observing others. The act of observing another person successfully complete a task causes people to believe that they can also learn to do the task. A third source of acquiring self-efficacy comes from other people’s verbal encouragements or discouragements. If people who have no experience at a particular task are told by others that they can (or cannot) do the task, they tend to believe what they are told and develop a high or low self-efficacy in response.
Physiological factors can influence self-efficacy. For example, when people with low self-efficacy regarding a specific task attempt to accomplish that task, they may experience fear or anxiety, plus accompanying physiological symptoms such as nausea or shaking of the hands. These negative signals from the body may further reduce their self-efficacy. However, in a situation in which people have strong self-efficacy, they may ignore similar symptoms because they know that these symptoms will not prevent successful learning.
Self-Efficacy and Thought Patterns
A person’s self-efficacy can influence the individual’s thoughts. For example, if people with low self-efficacy visualize failing at a particular task, their already low self-efficacy may fall further. When these people are faced with the actual task, their lowered self-efficacy ensures defeat, acting like a self-fulfilling prophesy brought about by self-doubts.
Self-efficacy can be influenced by a person’s understanding of the concept of
ability. For example, if people believe that ability is an acquirable skill, they
will be more likely to take on a challenging task. Mistakes do not deter them
because they think of mistakes as part of the learning process. However, if people
believe that ability is inherited or innate, they will be less likely to take on a
task because each mistake confirms their lack of ability. It would be easier to
simply avoid such ego-threatening experiences.
The feedback that people receive about their performance affects their understanding of ability. When people are told that they did not perform as well as others, their self-efficacy drops, but when people are told that their performance improved, their self-efficacy increases.
Self-Efficacy, Motivation, and Coping
People are more likely to pursue and spend time and effort on goals for which they have high self-efficacy. Also, people are more likely to persevere in the face of failure when they have high self-efficacy.
When a person with low self-efficacy experiences difficulties, stress and
anxiety may ensue. Stress and anxiety can impair
performance, lowering self-efficacy even more. However, people who are high in
what Bandura called coping self-efficacy are more capable and comfortable taking
on threatening tasks, in which they will probably experience a great deal of
failure, because they are not overcome by anxiety. They are confident in their
ability to cope with difficult situations. These people believe that they are in
control of their lives, while the people with low coping self-efficacy believe
that their lives are out of their control. These beliefs become self-fulfilling
prophesies because they influence how each person interacts with the world.
The Impact of Self-Efficacy
People select activities and situations they believe that they can handle. Therefore, self-efficacy plays an important role in the competencies people develop, the interests they pursue, and the social networks they grow—in short, self-efficacy plays a crucial role in who people become. Bandura and others have written extensively about the impact of people’s self-efficacy on their achievement in academics, sports, and business; on their career choices; on their physical and mental health; and on their personality development over their life spans.
Many useful interventions have been created by Bandura and others that can be
used to increase a person’s self-efficacy. These interventions improve the quality
of the recipients’ lives by allowing them to achieve more and to feel better about
themselves and more confident in their abilities.
Possible Cultural Differences
Bandura makes a distinction between personal efficacy and collective efficacy.
The former refers to an individual’s belief in the potency of his or her own
actions, while the latter refers to a group’s belief in the potency of its
actions. According to Bandura, group success depends on high collective efficacy.
If group members do not believe in the group’s capacity to succeed, they will not
be motivated to act.
Although people may work more for group goals in collectivist societies,
Bandura believed that beliefs in personal efficacy are as just as important for
productivity in collectivist societies as they are in individualistic societies.
In either type of society, if someone has low self-efficacy, Bandura believed that
person will exert less effort.
However, four studies in 2001 conducted by Steven Heine and his associates
suggest that self-efficacy may operate differently in traditionally collectivist
cultures. In their studies, Japanese participants who failed at a task persisted
much more than those who had succeeded at the same task. The American and Canadian
participants who failed, however, showed less persistence, as predicted by
previous self-efficacy research.
To explain these results, the authors suggested that Westerners selectively
attend to the positive aspects of themselves and work hard on improving them,
while Easterners selectively attend to the negative aspects of themselves and work
hard on improving them. For example, if an Asian woman believes she is a capable
dancer, she may choose to invest less energy in dancing so as not to stick out.
There is an old Eastern saying that the tall flower gets cut down. However, if the
Asian woman’s class at school is working on a mural and the woman does not believe
that she is good at drawing, then she may feel that her poor drawing efforts are
letting her classmates down. Subsequently, she may work extra hard on her drawing.
It appears that more cross-cultural research is needed to uncover how
self-efficacy operates in different cultures.
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