Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a person's belief that they can carry out the actions a particular situation requires. Bandura distinguished it from self-esteem, which is how a person rates their own worth, and from expecting a good outcome, which is a belief about the world rather than about oneself; it is specific to a task, so someone can have high self-efficacy for public speaking and low self-efficacy for arithmetic. Bandura proposed four sources: succeeding at the task before, watching similar people succeed, being persuaded by others, and how one reads one's own physical arousal. The construct is measured by self-report questionnaires, which makes it vulnerable to the circularity of asking people whether they think they can do something and then predicting whether they do it.
Why it matters
It is one of the most widely used constructs in health, education, and workplace psychology, and it is where social learning theory produced something measurable.
Also written: perceived self-efficacy, efficacy beliefs
Where it comes up
Read about Self-efficacy on Wikipedia
Sources
- Self-efficacy Wikipedia
- Social learning theory Wikipedia
- Albert Bandura Wikipedia
