When working towards a goal, why do some people give up in between and only few make it. Alternatively, why do some people keep challenging themselves by assigning goals throughout their lives, and other half practice complacency. And again, goal can be anything, from learning to play guitar, learning to ride a bicycle, finishing a course that you enrolled in or an important assignment at work.Well at superficial level, answer could be motivation, persistence, assiduous or sense of supremacy. However Psychology explains it with Self System which is central to Albert Bandura’s “Social Cognitive Theory” and is specific to a personality. He emphasizes the role of observational learning, self system, and reciprocal determinism in developing a personality.Let’s understand how these determinants contribute in shaping the personality, briefly touching the other two determinants.
Observational Learning : Bandura emphasizes that learning occurs simply through observation of models and in the absence of reinforcement. Largely people learn through observation.
Reciprocal Determinism : Bandura explains that human behaviour is shaped and controlled by personal factor (cognitive, affective and biological events) and external environment by assigning these three parameters in bidirectional relationship.The model states that all three components are in direct interaction and can have a reciprocal effect on each other. Just as much as the environment plays a significant role in influencing the behavior of a person, similarly the behavior of a person can influence the environment.
Self System : It is a cognitive structure that provide reference mechanism to a set of functions for perception, evaluation and regulation of behaviour. It is the basis why an individual involves himself in self regulation by imposing self prescribed contingencies. The three components involved in processing self System are
- Self Observation : Every individual keeps a tab on their behaviour and regulates it basis situation.
- Judgement : We have a mental comparison with what we set as standard or see as standard. It could be comparing our behavioral performance with “rules of etiquette” or creating one of our own. For instance, “I will get up early”, “I will refrain myself from smoking”.
- Self Response : Third component is rewarding/punishing oneself as positive/negative self response if we did great/poor in comparison with our standard. These self responses could be in various nature, from obvious( treating yourself or stretching yourself) or to the more covert (feelings of pride and shame).
- Self Efficacy :It is an intrinsic part of self system and critical determinant in self regulation. You are considered to bear a strong sense of self efficacy if over the years, you find yourself meeting your set standards and low if you failed to meet them. According to Bandura, self efficacy is “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations” meaning it is an individual’s belief in his/her ability to succeed in particular situation.Bandura and other researchers have demonstrated, self-efficacy can have an impact on everything from psychological states to behavior to motivation.It also determines what goals we choose to pursue, how we go about accomplishing those goals, and how we reflect upon our own performance.
Role Of Self Efficacy : Each individual identifies goals they would like to assign, things they want to change or things that they want to achieve and this process of accomplishing or even the approach is based on individuals’s self-efficacy. The individuals’ with strong/weak sense of self efficacy bears atypical characteristics which can be categorized as
Traits of individual with strong sense of efficacy
- Develop deeper interest in the activities in which they participate
- Form a stronger sense of commitment to their interests and activities
- Recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments
- View challenging problems as tasks to be mastered
Traits of individual with weak sense of efficacy
- Avoid challenging tasks
- Believe that difficult tasks and situations are beyond their capabilities
- Focus on personal failings and negative outcomes
- Quickly lose confidence in personal abilities
Sources Of Self Efficacy : So how does this self efficacy develop? These beliefs begin to form in early childhood from the varied experiences or events and continues to evolve throughout life as individual acquire novel skills, experience and understanding. However there are four primary sources of self efficacy.
- Mastery Experiences : The most effective way of developing a strong self efficacy is through completing a task successfully. Every time we meet our set goals/standard we layer our self efficacy with more confidence and contradictory to it weakens the self efficacy.
- Social Modeling : Witnessing other people accomplishing their task successfully is another source of achieving self efficacy.It is when people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort, it raises observers belief that they too possess the capabilities to master comparable activities to succeed.
- Social Persuasion :Social persuasion, when people are persuaded to believe that they have adequate skills and capabilities to succeed.More often than not, getting verbal encouragement from others helps people overcome self-doubt and instead focus on giving their best effort to the task at hand.
- Psychological Responses : It is observed that our own responses and emotional reactions to situations also play an important role in self-efficacy.For instance our moods, emotional state, physical reactions, and stress levels also impact how we feel about our personal abilities in a particular situation. For instance, if we do fairly bad in interviews, then we develop a weak self efficacy for interviews and try to avoid at all cost. However by learning how to minimize stress and elevate mood when facing difficult or challenging tasks, people can improve their sense of self-efficacy.
Challenges of having low efficacy : People who are low in self-efficacy tend to see difficult tasks as threats and avoid. Hence they tend to avoid setting goals and have low levels of commitment to the ones they do make.In challenging times, they tend to give up quickly. Because they don’t have much confidence in their ability to achieve, they are more likely to experience feelings of failure and depression. Individual with weak self efficacy hard to deal with stressful situations and are less resilient and less likely to bounce back.Which gets reflected in their personality affecting their life adversely.
Building Self Efficacy : Fortunately, self-efficacy is a psychological skill that one can foster and strengthen and as stated by Bandura, one can leverage the sources. To begin with, assign yourself achievable goal in the field of interest and accomplish it.When you succeed at something, you are able to build a powerful belief in your ability. Failure, on the other hand, can undermine these feelings, particularly if you are still in the early phases of building a sense of personal efficacy. Align yourself with people who have high sense of self efficacy. It will seep in you the aptitude for improvising oneself.
Developing a strong sense of self-efficacy is vital as it plays an important role in almost every aspect of your life. It prepares us to deal with the challenges more effectively. Most importantly, your belief in your abilities determines how motivated are you, how you feel about yourself and the confidence you have in yourself to influence your situation.