SELF-EFFICACY

Self-efficacy is the belief we have in our own abilities, specifically our ability to meet the challenges ahead of us and complete a task successfully. General self-efficacy refers to our overall belief in our ability to succeed, but there are many more specific forms of self-efficacy as well (e.g., academic, parenting, sports).

There are many reasons for people to believe in themselves and feel a sense of control. Research shows that self-efficacy beliefs are associated with beneficial aspects of human functioning. 

The belief that self-efficacy can control stressful events is related to emotional well-being, successful coping, health behaviours, better performance on cognitive tasks, and a good health. It has even been linked to a lower risk of mortality. 

Finally, research shows a link between self-efficacy beliefs and the initiation and maintenance of health behaviour. When we form self-efficacy beliefs, we use information from various sources. We may, for example, form perceptions about ourselves by comparing us with others. However, the development of self-efficacy beliefs seems to be more influenced by mastery experiences than information formed by social comparisons.

People who have a low sense of efficacy in a given domain may withdraw from difficult tasks. They have lower aspirations and a weaker commitment to the goals they choose to pursue. They do not concentrate on how to perform well. Instead they spend much of their energy on focusing on limitations and failures. When faced with difficult tasks, they are plagued by their personal deficiencies and the obstacles they might encounter. They decrease their efforts and quickly give up in the face of challenges. They are slower to recover their sense of efficacy following failure or setbacks because they perceive their insufficient performance as an expression of their insufficient capabilities. 

On the contrary, people with high efficacy beliefs may approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than see all the limitations. This approach may foster intrinsic interest in activities. They set themselves perfectly challenging goals and maintain strong commitment to accomplish them. They sustain their efforts in the face of failure, and they attribute failure to insufficient effort or deficient knowledge and skills that are achievable. They quickly recover their sense of efficacy after failures or setbacks. 

Self-efficacy beliefs begin to form in early childhood as the child deals with a variety of experiences, tasks and situations. The development of self-efficacy beliefs continue throughout life as people learn, experience and develop into more complex human beings. There are four major sources that contribute to the development of self-efficacy beliefs.

The four ways to develop self-efficacy beliefs are:-

• Performance accomplishments: The experience of mastery influences your perspective on your abilities. Successful experiences lead to greater feelings of self-efficacy. However, failing to deal with a task or challenge can also undermine and weaken self-efficacy. 

• Vicarious experience: Observing someone else perform a task or handle a situation can help you to perform the same task by imitation, and if you succeed in performing a task, you are likely to think that you will always succeed in performing the same task. Observing people who are similar to yourself succeed will increase your beliefs that you can master a similar activity.

• Verbal persuasion: When other people encourage and convince you to perform a task, you tend to believe that you are more capable of performing the task. Constructive feedback is important in maintaining a sense of efficacy as it may help overcome self-doubt. 

• Physiological states: Moods, emotions, physical reactions, and stress levels may influence how you feel about your personal abilities. If you are extremely nervous, you may begin to doubt and develop a weak sense of self-efficacy. If you are confident and feel no anxiety or nervousness at all, you may experience a sense of excitement that fosters a great sense of self-efficacy. It is the way people interpret and evaluate emotional states that is important for how they develop self-efficacy beliefs. For this reason, being able to diminish or control anxiety may have positive impact on self-efficacy beliefs.

A meta-analysis of over 100 separate studies on the relationship between self-efficacy and job performance produced some ground-breaking results. They found that there was a correlation between self-efficacy and work-related performance. It indicates that there is a strong linkage between self-efficacy and job performance. Certainly, some portion of this relationship is explained by successful performance influencing self-efficacy, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite is a significant relationship as well: that increasing self-efficacy results in better job performance, on average.

Another meta-analysis was conducted a few years later, and found results that were just as significant - self-efficacy was found to relate to job performance as well as job satisfaction. This indicates that not only do those with high self-efficacy tend to perform better in their jobs, they also tend to like their jobs more. In addition, the study found evidence that self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability were all related, and all positively influenced job performance and job satisfaction.

This relationship between self-efficacy and performance seems especially important in the context of startups and entrepreneurial endeavours.

Students with high self-efficacy also tend to have high optimism, and both variables result in a plethora of positive outcomes: better academic performance, more effective personal adjustment, better at coping with stress, better health, and higher overall satisfaction and commitment to remain in school.

For students who struggle with reading, self-efficacy is both an outcome and a key to their continued success. Teachers who promote self-efficacy in struggling readers are apt to find that those students are more enthusiastic about and more committed to learning than those who have not received encouragement through gradual progress.

Teachers usually focus on boosting students’ self-efficacy through three sources of self-efficacy:-

1. Enactive mastery.
2. Vicarious experience.
3. Verbal persuasion.

By giving students the opportunity to experience small wins, celebrating even the little successes, modelling motivation and hard work, and offering verbal encouragement, teachers can help their students build the self-efficacy that will serve them throughout their academic career and beyond.

Every student can benefit from a healthy level of self-efficacy, but those that go into a healthcare field may enjoy some added advantages.

If you already have a strong belief in your ability, remind yourself that you can do it. If you are uncertain about your capacity for success, tell yourself that you can do it.

If you are positive that there is no way you could achieve the goal you set for yourself or overcome the obstacle in your path, give yourself a stern but encouraging pep talk like “You can surely do it!”.

We know that a person’s belief in their own abilities is a strong predictor of motivation, effort expended, and success; there is no downside to encouraging yourself, and working on believing in yourself.

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