Self-Efficacy: Definition, Sources, and Impact - Psychology Essay

This essay delves into the concept of self-efficacy, defining it as an individual's belief in their ability to succeed and achieve goals. It explores the importance of self-efficacy in shaping thoughts, feelings, and motivations, highlighting its influence on cognitive, affective, selection, and motivational processes. The essay examines the different sources of self-efficacy, including mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and emotional states. Furthermore, it reviews relevant literature, discussing the role of self-efficacy in various contexts, such as education and health. The essay concludes by emphasizing the significance of self-efficacy as a key psychological model for achieving successful outcomes and the importance of setting goals aligned with efficacy beliefs. The essay references key researchers and their findings to provide a comprehensive understanding of self-efficacy.

Running head: SELF-EFFICACY
Self-Efficacy
Name of Student-
Name of University-
Author’s Note-

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Abstract
The other word by which self-efficacy can be defined is confidence. Confidence among
the people defines weather the person will be able to complete the project or not. Self-efficacy
can also help the individual to influence their actions, successes, and goals. Self-efficacy can also
determine the rate of failure by demotivating the individuals. If the level of self-efficacy in a
particular area is low, the person usually does not take challenge to complete the task. If there is
no confidence within the individual, then he will not get the motivation to improve themselves.
Having a high self-efficacy helps a person to have high set of goals and certain tasks generally
have a successful completion. This report gives a details of self-efficacy for a successful
completion of a task.

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Introduction
The word self-efficacy can be defined as the belief of people regarding their capabilities
for producing certain level of their performance that are designated and also the capabilities that
exercise influence on certain events which may affect their lives (Schwarzer, 2014). It is believed
that self-efficacy has the ability to determine how the people think, about people’s feelings, and
also motivate them. These are usually done through major four processes which involve
cognitive, affective, selection processes, and also motivational processes. In this report,
definition of self-efficacy is defined in a details way and why self-efficacy is important in human
life (Piperopoulos & Dimov, 2015). This report also illustrates how self-efficacy is different
from other factors which contribute to efficacy. There is a literature review of self-efficacy
which states many information of self-efficacy reviewed from different literatures.
Self-Efficacy
The term self-efficacy is defined as belief of an individual’s capability for achieving a
successful outcome or reach to a goal. Individuals who have a great sense of efficacy mostly
challenge themselves with all the difficult tasks and can be intrinsically motivated (Skaalvik &
Skaalvik, 2017). The individual who challenges themselves has to put more effort to meet the
commitments and thus have to put high degree of efforts. The individuals also have to attribute
the failures that are in control of them without blaming others for the failures. If individuals fail
in some tasks, they can recover from their setbacks if they are self-efficacious. The self-
efficacious individuals are determined to achieve their goals (Ritter & Lorig, 2014). The person
having low self-efficacy does not believe in themselves and thinks that they cannot be successful
in any of their tasks. Low self-efficacy persons make an extended and concerted effort and thus

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they considers the tasks that are challenging as a threat and avoid such tasks. The persons with
low self-efficacy thus have low aspirations that results in much disappointing performance.
Another definition of self-efficacy is defined by Albert Bandura. This is known as
Bandura’s Self-Efficacy. Albert Bandura is a psychologist who has defined self-efficacy as owns
belief to complete a task successfully. Bandura believed that to complete a task, the overall thing
that is needed by an individual is the confidence within them (McCarroll et al., 2014). The self-
efficacy is referred by Albert Bandura as the self-regulatory function of an individual’s mind to
complete a particular task. The self-regulatory function instructs the individual when to try for
the task and the time to stop trying. If one believes that the task is not possible to do, then the
individual is interested to attempt the task and can give up the task very soon.
Mainly four sources of self-efficacy are available. A teacher uses many different
strategies so that they can build self-efficacy (Williams et al., 2017). The different sources of
self-efficacy are:
Mastery Experiences - Master experience mainly happens when individuals experience
self-efficacy boost. The working of an individual increases when there is successful completion
of the task and failure also decreases the self-efficacy of an individual.
Vicarious experience - To have a peer success on a task enhances the beliefs and
strengthens the confidence among the individuals.
Verbal persuasion - Credible communication is the best way to increase the self-efficacy
of an individual. Teachers boost the self-efficacy and give feedback to guide their students and
then motivate them to give their best.

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Emotional state - Only a positive mood can enhance the belief of an individual to
increase the self-efficacy and the anxiety can be undermined. There is a particular level of
stimulation emotionally which gives an individual the energy and strong perseverance to
complete the task. Stressful situations and lower anxiety can be mitigated by have a talk with
them.
Literature Review
Farrell et al. (2018) showed that there are many sources of self-efficacy. The processes
that are involved in increasing the self-efficacy are:
 Cognitive Processes - It is considered that the effects that arise from self-efficacy
depended on cognitive process usually has many different forms. Most of the human
behaviors that are purposive are being regulated by embodying the goals that are valued.
There are also goal setting which are personal. The personal goal settings are mostly
influenced by the self-appraisal capabilities. With the increase of perceived self-efficacy,
the goal challenges that an individual sets also increases. With the perceived self-efficacy
the commitment of an individual also becomes firmer.
 Motivational Processes - There is a self-regulation motivation of which is known as
self-beliefs. The motivational factor of self-belief is considered as one of the key role in
self-efficacy (Bullough, Renko & Myatt, 2014). Most of the human motivation is
generated cognitively. Individuals motivate themselves and then guide their own actions
anticipatorily.
 Affective Processes - People try to copy the capabilities of others which lead to difficult
situations and threatening and also decrease their motivation level. The perceived self-
efficacy helps to control the stress in an individual. Those people who believe that they

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are able to excise control over the threats mainly do not conjure patterns that are
disturbing. If the sense of self-efficacy regulates the avoidance behavior and arise of
anxiety.
 Selection Processes - The personal efficacy of a person helps to shape the life of a course
that can influence the activity types and also the environment that people choose. People
generally avid such activities and the situations they usually believes their exceeding
coping capabilities. Challenges are undertaken by an individual and select the situations
which judge themselves in capable of handling. People are made to cultivate the different
level of competencies, social networks, and interests which determines the life courses.
Komarraju, Swanson & Nadler (2014) illustrated that there is a strong self-efficacy in
between the nurse educators and their students. There are many evidence that the educators of
nurse play a very important role in the enhancement of self-efficacy of their students for nursing
practice in future. There must be commitment and courage for all the registered nurses for
educating them. There must be accurate analyzing of all the situations in their practice.
According to (Wang, Hall & Rahimi, 2015), there is a health promotive role in the area of
self-efficacy. There is a conception of the human illness and health which has gone some main
changes in the recent years. There are many traditional approaches that are depended on the
biomedical model. This has a strong emphasis on the infectious agents, repairing of physical
impairments, and ameliorative medications. There are many new conceptions that are adopted
for a wider bio-psycho social model. The self-efficacy of health is not considered as the absence
of physical disease and impairment (Sachdev et al., 2014). There are much emphasize on the
self-efficacy of bio-psycho social model which increases the enhancement of health and the
prevention of diseases. There are certain habits of life style which can enhance and also impair

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the health. This life style habits can help the people to have some extra behavioral control on the
quality of their health.
Albert Bandura stated that to develop the self-efficacy in an individual, there should be a
mastery on the subject (Malik, Butt & Choi, 2015). Additional success can be achieved from
success and failure can rise doubt on the outcome of the future attempts. When an individual
successfully delivers a task, it is more likely that he will attempt the task repeatedly.
Conclusions
The word self-efficacy is most commonly known as the confidence which is considered
as the most psychological model that is adopted to positive psychology. Self-efficacy is
considered as a self-belief optimistic in the level of competence or the changes that are needed to
accomplish the task successfully and also produce favorable outcome accordingly. There are
some important roles that are played by self-efficacy which helps to determine the chances for
the successful completion of the task. There are also some psychologists who rate the self-
efficacy above the talent of the individual in the way of success. The psychologists suggest that
the person has to pay some special attention to the self-efficacy particularly when there is an
opportunity to set goals. The goals those are set helps to make sure the efficacy beliefs that come
in the line of their aims and also work with the goals accordingly. The detailed study of self-
efficacy is defined in this report from different literature reviews. From this report, the self-
efficacy can be well understood that is mainly needed to in completion of successful projects.

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References
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