Self-Efficacy BeliefsD H Schunk, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USAF Pajares

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Glossary

Outcome expectations – Beliefs about the

expected outcomes of actions.

Reciprocal determinism – Interacting influences of

cognitions, behaviors, and environmental variables.

Self-efficacy – Perceived capabilities to learn or

perform behaviors at designated levels.

Social cognitive theory – The theory of behavior

emphasizing cognitive, vicarious, self-regulatory,

and self-reflective processes in human adaptation

and change.

Overview of Social Cognitive Theory

With the publication of Social Foundations of Thought andAction: A Social Cognitive Theory in 1986, Albert Banduraadvanced a view of human functioning that accords acentral role to cognitive, vicarious, self-regulatory, andself-reflective processes in human adaptation and change(Bandura, 1986). From this social cognitive perspective,human thought and action are viewed as products of adynamic interplay among personal, behavioral, and envi-ronmental influences. How people interpret the resultsof their own behaviors informs and alters their environ-ments and the personal factors they possess that, in turn,inform and alter subsequent behaviors. The view that(1) personal factors in the form of cognition, affect, andbiological events; (2) behaviors; and (3) environmentalinfluences create interactions that result in a triadic reci-procality is the foundation of Bandura’s conception ofreciprocal determinism.

The reciprocal nature of the determinants of humanfunctioning in social cognitive theory makes it possible fortherapeutic and counseling efforts to be directed at per-sonal, environmental, or behavioral factors. Strategies forincreasing well-being can be aimed at improving emo-tional, cognitive, or motivational processes; increasingbehavioral competencies; or altering the social conditionsunder which people live and work. In school, for example,teachers face the challenge of improving the academiclearning and confidence of their students. Using socialcognitive theory as a framework, teachers can work to

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improve their students’ emotional states, correct theirfaulty self-beliefs and habits of thinking (personal factors),improve their academic skills and self-regulatory practices(behaviors), and alter the school and classroom structuresthat may work to undermine student success (environ-mental factors).

Social cognitive theory is rooted in a view of humanagency in which individuals are proactively engaged intheir own development and can make things happen bytheir actions. Individuals are imbued with certain capabil-ities that define what it is to be human. Primary amongthese are the capabilities to symbolize, plan alternativestrategies (forethought), learn through vicarious experi-ence, self-regulate, and self-reflect. For Bandura, however,the capability that is most distinctly human is that of self-reflection; hence, it is a prominent feature of social cog-nitive theory. Through self-reflection, people make senseof their experiences, explore their own cognitions andself-beliefs, engage in self-evaluation, and alter theirthinking and behavior accordingly.

Self-Efficacy Beliefs

Of all the thoughts that affect human functioning, andstanding at the very core of social cognitive theory, areself-efficacy beliefs, or individuals’ judgments of theircapabilities to learn or perform courses of action at desig-nated levels. In essence, self-efficacy beliefs are the self-perceptions that individuals hold about their capabilities.These beliefs of personal competence provide the foun-dation for human motivation, well-being, and personalaccomplishment. This is because unless people believethat their actions can produce the outcomes they desire,they have little incentive to act or to persevere in the faceof difficulties.

Self-efficacy should not be confused with constructssuch as self-concept or self-esteem, which are broad eva-luations of one’s self, complete with judgments of self-worth that accompany such evaluations. Self-efficacybeliefs revolve around questions of can (Can I write thisessay? Can I solve this problem?), whereas self-concept/self-esteem beliefs reflect questions of feel (Do I likemyself ? How do I feel about myself as a writer?). More-over, one’s beliefs about what one can do may bear littlerelation to how one feels about oneself. Many brightstudents are able to engage their academic tasks with

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strong self-efficacy even while their academic skills are asource of low self-esteem, having been labeled by theirclassmates as nerds or geeks.

Research examining the empirical properties of thesetwo constructs has shown that they differ in importantways. Self-efficacy beliefs are cognitive, goal-referenced,relatively context-specific, and future-oriented judgmentsof competence that are relatively malleable due to theirtask dependence. Self-concept beliefs, on the other hand,are primarily affective, heavily normative, typically aggre-gated, hierarchically structured, and past-oriented self-perceptions that are relatively stable due to their senseof generality. Self-efficacy acts as an active precursor ofself-concept development.

People’s self-efficacy beliefs should not be confusedwith their judgments of the consequences that theirbehavior will produce, or outcome expectations. Typi-cally, self-efficacy beliefs help determine the outcomesone expects. Confident individuals anticipate successfuloutcomes. Students confident in their academic skillsexpect high marks on examinations and expect the qualityof their work to reap personal and professional benefits.Conversely, students who lack confidence in their aca-demic skills envision a low grade before they begin anexamination or enroll in a course. The expected results ofthese imagined performances will be differently envi-sioned: greater academic success and subsequent careeroptions for the former and curtailed academic possibilitiesfor the latter. However, self-efficacy beliefs also can beinconsistent with the outcomes one expects. A high senseof efficacy may not result in behavior consistent with thatbelief, for example, if the individual also believes that theoutcome of engaging in that behavior will have undesiredeffects. A student highly self-efficacious in his/her aca-demic capabilities may elect not to apply to a particularuniversity whose entrance requirements are such as todiscourage all but the hardiest souls.

The notion of perceived control also differs from self-efficacy. People who believe they can control what theylearn and perform are more apt to initiate and sustainbehaviors directed toward those ends than are individualswho hold a low sense of control over their capabilities.Perceived control is generic; thus, it is meaningful tospeak of this control over learning or performing and overoutcomes. Further, it is only one aspect of self-efficacy.Other factors that influence self-efficacy include percep-tions of ability, social comparisons, attributions, time avail-able, and perceived importance. People may believe thatthey can control their use of learning strategies, effort, andpersistence, yet hold a low sense of self-efficacy forlearning because they feel that the learning is unimportantand not worth the investment of time.

Since individuals operate collectively as well as indi-vidually, self-efficacy is both a personal and a socialconstruct. Collective systems develop a sense of collective

efficacy – a group’s shared belief in its capability to attaingoals and accomplish desired tasks. For example, schoolsdevelop collective beliefs about the capability of theirstudents to learn, of their teachers to teach and otherwiseenhance the lives of their students, and of their adminis-trators and policymakers to create environments condu-cive to these tasks. Organizations with a strong sense ofcollective efficacy exercise empowering and vitalizinginfluences on their constituents.

Sources of Self-Efficacy Beliefs

Individuals form their self-efficacy beliefs by interpretinginformation primarily from four sources. The most influ-ential source is the interpreted result of one’s previousperformances, or mastery experiences. The process offorming self-efficacy beliefs from mastery experiences issimple and intuitive: individuals engage in tasks andactivities, interpret the results of their actions, use theinterpretations to develop beliefs about their capabilityto engage in subsequent tasks or activities, and act inconcert with the beliefs created. Outcomes interpretedas successful raise self-efficacy; those interpreted as fail-ures lower it.

In addition to interpreting the results of their actions,people form their self-efficacy beliefs through the vicari-ous experiences of observing others perform tasks. Thisform of efficacy information is particularly powerful whenpeople observe models who they believe possess similarcapability as themselves. Observing the successes of suchmodels contributes to the observers’ beliefs about theirown capabilities (If they can do it, so can I!). Conversely,watching models with perceived similar capabilities failcan undermine the observers’ beliefs about their owncapabilities to succeed. When people perceive the model’scapabilities as highly divergent from their own, the influ-ence of vicarious experiences is greatly minimized. It isnoteworthy that people seek out models with qualitiesthey admire and capabilities to which they aspire. Signifi-cant models in one’s life can help instill self-beliefs thatwill influence the course and direction that life will take.

Individuals also create and develop self-efficacy beliefsas a result of the social persuasions they receive fromothers. These persuasions can involve exposure to theverbal judgments that others provide. Persuaders play animportant part in the development of an individual’s self-beliefs. However, social persuasions should not be confusedwith knee-jerk praise or empty inspirational homilies.Effective persuaders must cultivate people’s beliefs intheir capabilities while simultaneously ensuring that theenvisioned success is attainable. Just as positive persuasionsmay work to encourage and empower self-efficacy beliefs,negative persuasions can work to defeat and weaken thesame. It is usually easier to weaken self-efficacy beliefs

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through negative appraisals than to strengthen such beliefsthrough positive encouragement.

Physiological and emotional states such as anxiety,stress, arousal, and mood states also provide informationabout efficacy beliefs. People can gauge their degree ofconfidence by the emotional state they experience as theycontemplate an action. Strong emotional reactions to atask provide cues about the anticipated success or failureof the outcome. When they experience negative thoughtsand fears about their capabilities, these affective reactionscan lower self-efficacy perceptions and trigger additionalstress and agitation that help ensure the inadequate per-formance they fear. One way to raise self-efficacy beliefs isto improve physical and emotional well-being and reducenegative emotional states. As individuals have the capa-bility to alter their own thinking and feeling, enhancedself-efficacy beliefs can, in turn, powerfully influence thephysiological states themselves.

The sources of self-efficacy information are not directlytranslated into judgments of competence. Individuals inter-pret the results of events, and these interpretations providethe information on which judgments are based. The typesof information people attend to and use to make efficacyjudgments, and the rules they employ for weighting andintegrating them, form the basis for such interpretations.The selection, integration, interpretation, and recollectionof information influence judgments of self-efficacy.

Effects of Self-Efficacy Beliefs

Self-efficacy beliefs enhance human accomplishment andwell-being in countless ways. They influence the choicespeople make and the courses of action they pursue. Indi-viduals tend to select tasks and activities in which they feelcompetent and confident and avoid those in which they donot. Unless people believe that their actions will have thedesired consequences, they have little incentive to engagein them. How far will an interest in architecture take astudent who feels hopeless in geometry? Irrespective of thefactors that operate to influence behavior, they are rootedin the core belief that one has the capability to accomplishthat behavior.

Self-efficacy beliefs also help determine how mucheffort people will expend on an activity, how long theywill persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resil-ient they will be in the face of adverse situations. Peoplewith a strong sense of personal competence approachdifficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than asthreats to be avoided. They set challenging goals andmaintain strong commitment to them, heighten and sus-tain their efforts in the face of failure, and recover theirsense of efficacy more quickly after setbacks. High self-efficacy helps create feelings of serenity in approachingdifficult tasks and activities. Conversely, people with low

self-efficacy may believe that things are tougher than theyreally are, a belief that fosters anxiety, stress, depression,and a narrow vision of how best to solve a problem. As aconsequence, self-efficacy beliefs can powerfully influ-ence the level of accomplishment that one ultimatelyachieves. This function of self-beliefs also can create thetype of self-fulfilling prophecy in which one accomplisheswhat one believes one can accomplish; that is, the perse-verance associated with high self-efficacy is likely to leadto increased performance, which, in turn, raises one’ssense of efficacy and spirit, whereas the giving in asso-ciated with low self-efficacy helps ensure the very failurethat further lowers confidence and morale.

Of course, human functioning is influenced by manyfactors. The successes and failures that people experienceas they engage in the myriad tasks that comprise their lifenaturally influence the many decisions they must make.In addition, the knowledge and skills they possess playan important role in what they choose to do. However,because past attainments, knowledge, and skills are alwaysinterpreted by the individual, it is the interpretations thatform the foundation for the beliefs that are developedabout subsequent capabilities. As a consequence, people’saccomplishments are generally better predicted by theirself-efficacy beliefs than by their previous attainments,knowledge, or skills.

Development of Self-Efficacy Beliefs

The first influences on an individual’s self-efficacy takeplace within the family. Parents and caregivers providetheir children with the first experiences that differentiallyinfluence self-efficacy beliefs. These home influences thathelp children interact effectively with the environmentpositively affect self-efficacy. When the home environ-ment is rich in activities and materials that arouse thechildren’s curiosity and offer challenges that can be met,children are motivated to work on the activities and learnnew information and skills.

Parents who provide a warm, responsive, and supportivehome environment, encourage exploration and stimulatecuriosity, and provide play and learning materials, acceler-ate their children’s intellectual development. Parents alsoare the key providers of self-efficacy information. Sincemastery experience is the most powerful source of self-efficacy information, the parents who arrange for theirchildren to experience varied mastery experiences developmore efficacious youngsters than do parents who arrangefewer opportunities. Such experiences occur in homesenriched with activities and in which children have thefreedom to explore. With respect to vicarious experiences,parents who teach children diverse ways to cope withdifficulties and model persistence and effort strengthentheir children’s self-efficacy. Family members are also

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prime sources of persuasive information. Parents whoencourage their children to try different activities andsupport and encourage their efforts help to develop chil-dren who feel more capable of meeting challenges.

As children grow, peers become increasingly important.Parents who steer their children toward efficacious peersprovide further vicarious boosts in self-efficacy. Peersthemselves influence children’s self-efficacy in variousways. One means is through model similarity. Observingothers, who are similar to the observers, succeed can raisethe self-efficacy of the observers and motivate them toperform the task if they believe that they, too, will besuccessful. Conversely, observing others fail can lead stu-dents to believe that they lack the competence to succeed,and dissuade them from attempting the task.

Self-efficacy beliefs tend to decline as studentsadvance through school. There are several reasons forthis, including greater emphasis on competition, morenorm-referenced grading, less teacher attention to indi-vidual student progress, and the stresses associated withschool transitions. These and other school practices canweaken academic self-efficacy, especially among studentswho are less academically prepared to cope with increas-ingly challenging academic tasks. Lock-step sequences ofinstruction frustrate some students who fail to grasp skillsand increasingly fall behind their peers. Ability groupingscan lower self-efficacy among those relegated to lowergroups. Classrooms that allow for much social comparisontend to lower the self-efficacy of students who find theirperformances inferior to those of their peers.

Periods of transition in schooling also bring other fac-tors that affect self-efficacy into play. As elementary stu-dents remain with the same teacher and peers for most ofthe school day, children receive much attention, and indi-vidual progress is stressed. Typically, however, severalelementary schools feed into the same middle school,and children begin to move from class to class for specificsubjects. Thus, middle school students become exposed topeers whom they do not know. Evaluation becomes nor-mative, and there is less teacher attention to individualprogress. The widely expanded social reference group,coupled with the shift in evaluation standards, requiresthat students reassess their academic abilities. As a conse-quence, perceptions of academic competence typicallybegin to decline during middle school.

In self-efficacy research, it is not uncommon for childrento report overconfidence about accomplishing difficulttasks. Even being provided with feedback indicating lowperformance may not decrease self-efficacy. The incongru-ence between children’s self-efficacy and their actual per-formance may be due to various causes. Children often lacktask familiarity and do not fully understandwhat is requiredto execute a task successfully. As they gain experience, theiraccuracy improves. Children may also be unduly swayed bycertain task features and decide based on these that they can

or cannot perform the task while ignoring other features.In subtraction, for example, children may focus on howmany numbers the problems contain and judge longerproblems to be more difficult than those with fewer num-bers, even when the longer ones are conceptually simpler.As their capability to focus on multiple features improves,so does their accuracy.

Children sometimes do not know what they are capableof accomplishing. In writing, for example, it is difficult forthem to know how clearly they can express themselvesor whether their writing skills are improving. A teacher’sfeedback – especially at the elementary level – is intendedto encourage and stress what children do well. Childrenmay believe theycanwritewellwhen, in fact, theirwriting isbelow normal for their grade level. As they develop, chil-dren gain task experience and engage more often in peersocial comparisons, which improve the accuracy of theirself-assessments. The correspondence between self-efficacyand performance also can be increased by providing chil-dren with instruction and opportunities to practice self-evaluation and with instructional interventions that conveyclear information about children’s skills or progress.

Self-Efficacy, Motivation, and AcademicAchievement

Bandura situated self-efficacy within a social cognitivetheory of personal and collective agency that operates inconcert with other sociocognitive factors in regulatinghuman well-being and attainment. He also addressed themajor facets of agency – the nature and structure of self-efficacy beliefs, their origins and effects, the processesthrough which such self-beliefs operate, and the modesby which they can be created and strengthened. Bandurahas reviewed a vast body of research on each of theseaspects of agency in diverse applications of the theory.Researchers have demonstrated that the self-efficacybeliefs of individuals powerfully influence their attain-ments in diverse fields.

A search for the term self-efficacy in most academicdatabases reveals that, at the start of 2007, nearly 4 000articles have been written on this important psychologicalconstruct. In a Google Internet search, the term returnedover 1 million webpages. Self-efficacy has generated re-search in areas as diverse as life-course development, edu-cation, business, athletics, medicine and health, mediastudies, social and political change, moral development,psychology, psychiatry, psychopathology, and internationalaffairs. Self-efficacy has been especially prominent in stud-ies of educational outcomes such as academic achievement,attributions of success and failure, goal setting, social com-parisons, memory, problem solving, career development,and teaching and teacher education. Researchers haveestablished that self-efficacy beliefs and behavior outcomes

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are highly correlated and that self-efficacy is an excellentpredictor of academic motivation and performance.

Researchers also have demonstrated that self-efficacybeliefs mediate the effect of skills, previous experience,mental ability, or other motivation constructs on sub-sequent achievement, which implies that they act as a filterbetween prior determinants and subsequent accomplish-ments. Meta-analyses have found that the average weightedcorrelation between self-efficacy and work-related perfor-mance was (G)r ¼ 0.38, which transforms to an impressive28% gain in task performance. In education, a meta-analysisof studies published between 1977 and 1988 revealed thatefficacy beliefs were positively related to academic ac-hievement. Self-efficacy beliefs were related to academicoutcomes (ru¼ 0.38) and accounted for approximately14% of the variance. Correlations between self-efficacyand academic performances in investigations, in whichself-efficacy is analyzed at the item- or task-specificlevel and corresponds to the criterial task, have rangedfrom 0.49 to 0.70; direct effects in path analytic studieshave ranged from b ¼ 0.349 to 0.545. Self-efficacy beliefshave also been found highly predictive of college students’selection of majors and career choices. Variables such asperceived control, outcome expectations, value, attribu-tions, and self-concept are types of cues used by indivi-duals to assess their efficacy beliefs.

In general, empirical evidence amply supports Bandura’scontention that self-efficacy beliefs touch virtually everyaspect of people’s lives – whether they think productively,self-debilitatingly, pessimistically, or optimistically; howwell they motivate themselves in the face of adversities;their vulnerability to stress and depression; and the lifechoices they make. Self-efficacy is also a critical determi-nant of how individuals regulate their own thinking andbehavior. Particularly in psychology and education, self-efficacy has proven to be a more consistent predictor ofbehavioral outcomes than have other motivational variables.

Summary

Bandura’s social cognitive theory of human functioningemphasizes the critical role of self-beliefs in human cogni-tion, motivation, and behavior. Social cognitive theory givesprominence to a self-system that enables individuals toexercise a measure of control over their thoughts, feelings,and actions. In putting forth this view, Bandura reinvigoratedthe nearly abandoned focus on the self in the studyof humanprocesses that William James initiated nearly a centuryearlier. Social cognitive theory is an agentic and empoweringpsychological perspective in which individuals are proactiveand self-regulating rather than reactive and controlled eitherby environmental or biological forces. Instead, the beliefsthat people have about themselves are key elements in their

exercise of control and of personal, cultural, and socialachievement. It is because of their beliefs about their owncapabilities – their self-efficacy beliefs – that people are ableto exercise the self-influence required to contribute to thetypes of persons they become and their achievements.

See also: Anxiety; Attribution Theory; Motivating Stu-dents in Classrooms; Peer Learning in the Classroom;Self-Regulated Learning and Socio-Cognitive Theory.

Bibliography

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Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York:Freeman.

Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G. V., and Pastorelli, C. (1996).Multifaceted impact of self-efficacy beliefs on academic functioning.Child Development 67, 1206–1222.

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Relevant Website

http://des.emory.edu – Self-Efficacy: A Community of Scholars.