Albert bandura – psychologist who was important about his social learning theories
Created the bobo doll experiment where they had adults perform actions with the bobo clown and
showed children modeled the actions of the adults
Showed children will model adults actions
Albert bandura studied self-efficacy
self-efficacy – an individuals belief in their ability to execute behaviors to produce outcomes
self-efficacy is not based on ones actually abilities but it is a predictive factor for completing tasks
Self concepts and self efficacy are both self beliefs
Self-concepts ask the question of who am I (how do I feel)
Self-efficacy ask the question of what am I good at (can I do this)
Self-concept is tied to self esteem and self worth
Self-efficacy is very context sensitive where if you do not care about the task at hand than it does not
impact ones self worth
Self-concept is not context sensitive very generalized
How does self-efficacy affect our behavior
If you have higher expectations than you may choose more challenging aspects
if you are confident than you will be more persistent and put more effort in
low self-efficacy leads to more negative emotions associated with a task
sources of self-efficacy
1. Mastery experience
2. Vicarious experious
3. Social persuasion
4. Physiological states
Mastery experience
The most influential source
Through successful experiences it will lead to strong beliefs of self-efficacy
After repeated success it can lead to stronger sense of self-efficacy where occasional failures will have
little affect
Sense of self-efficacy can generalize to similar tasks
Vicarious experience
Not as strong as mastery experience but still powerful
Observing an experience of another person
Some factors that makes individuals more sensitive to vicarious experience
1. Uncertainty about ones own abilities
2. Limited prior experience
Social persuasion
Social messages from others rude comments
Much weaker than mastery or vicarious experience
Positive social persuasion increases self-efficacy while negative persuasion weakens self-efficacy
On the other hand empty praises do not increase self-efficacy (social persuasion must be genuine)
Physiological state
The emotional and physical cues from your body which provide information about your self-efficacy
Anxiety, stress, sweating, uncomfortable feelings can lead to weakened self-efficacy
Variability of self-efficacy (how does self-efficacy varies)
1. Magnitude (difficulty of the task, the easier the task the higher the self efficacy)
2. Generality (self-efficacy can generalize to other tasks)
3. Strength (depending on the situation you can either have strong or weak self-efficacy)
