Personal Development

Moving from Determination to Self-Efficacy with Albert Bandura

“H ire for attitude and train for skill!” This advice has served many recruiters well and has proved invaluable for companies who want to get the most out of human talent. It is candidates with a positive, can-do attitude and determination that usually go the distance in the demanding and capricious environment organisations operate in. This is particularly true in an unpredictable world dominated by digi-human competition and the likely effect of 4IR technologies on mainstream skills.

Candidates with a positive attitude make situations work to their advantage, which often includes succeeding in just about anything they are engaged in. But, even with the best attitude and determination, employees can fail. If small failures keep piling up and one proves disastrous, there may be no coming back from such setback. For those employees who soldier on, the journey may be draining and costly, leaving them with burnout or depression. So, it is important that no matter how strong one’s determination is, it is supported by valid sources of self-efficacy.

According to social scientist Albert Bandura, the founder of selfefficacy theory that was reinforced by the 1961 Bobo Doll experiments: ‘perceived self-efficacy relates to people’s beliefs in their capabilities to exercise control over their own functioning and over events that affect their lives.’ (Bandura 1998)

This differs from just a positive attitude: a willingness to try, willingness to learn, or willingness to succeed. It is confidence with a solid basis. While many motivation theorists and behavioural scientists were

Figure 1: Self-Efficacy Theory: Bandura’s 4 Sources of Efficacy Beliefs Courtesy: iedunote

focused on research to prove that behaviour (particularly relating to workplace performance) is driven by affective and cognitive stimuli such as reinforcement or punishment, Bandura conducted studies to prove that behaviour can be driven by much more than that. His theory suggests that behaviour may be motivated by four main forces: • Mastery Experience • Vicarious Experience. • Social Persuasion. • Physiological and Emotional States. (See Figure 1.)

Simply put, self-efficacy may be driven by a track record of tasks that one has mastered; an observation of people who manage task-demands successfully; affirmation or social persuasion that one has the capabilities to succeed in given activities, and finally, inferences from somatic and emotional states indicative of one’s strengths and vulnerabilities.

Founded on these identified sources, self-efficacy plays a major part in determining our chances for success. Self-efficacy increasingly gets credit as the recipe for success above mere skills or talent.

Case Study:

Consider the case of a lecturer whose course was considered ‘a terror which no one can pass’, let alone get a distinction in.

The statistics lecturer, introducing her course for the first time to a new class, she told the newbies how seriously she takes her work – availing herself beyond school hours to assist students experiencing problems.

She assured them, however that were all of them to pay sufficient attention and engage fully in class, there should be no difficulties when they have to tackle assignments or exams. She encouraged them to keep their knowledge fresh by doing daily exercises – looking for practical examples they can try out as they pace themselves towards the exams.

She assured them that if they take this advice, they won’t have any problems and no one would need to ever call her when she’s home enjoying time with her family. Not only that, but not one of them will fail!

She ended the pep talk by showing the class a graph of her class-results over the last three exams, and the gradient was one way: up. She showed them class pictures (with all the students’ faces) from the last three years, and pointed out students who got distinctions. There were more with each progressive year.

She told the students that she couldn’t or wouldn’t have it any other way. She expected no failures and hoped for even better results with more distinctions than the previous years. Challenging the now wide-eyed but excited students, she asked them who, among them would bring her straight A’s to make her track record better.

A brief silence was broken by one hand shooting up confidently, shortly followed by a second, then, slowly, more followed. At the end of the term, that class delivered three times the number of A’s than the previous year’s. Everyone who had had their hand up in that introduction session was given reason to believe in their ability to deliver a distinction. This, is in spite of having no mathematical background and having heard everyone calling Stats a killer subject.

Moral of the exercise

Analysing the sources of self-efficacy from this case, we borrow from author Mariam Akhtar’s treatment of the self-efficacy theories.

While the students had no ‘mastery experiences’ in the course, the three other factors identified by Bandura as sources of self-efficacy came to play right there in class.

At play in class were predominantly elements of “vicarious experience”, which gave the students confidence by observing others change from

being intimidated by the course and seeing that students from previous classes were able to achieve distinctions. It is an example of modelling that generate positive expectations among observers that ‘they can also improve their performance’ by focusing their learning efforts.

The other aspect at play was “social persuasion”. This led the students, through suggestion, into believing that they can cope successfully with the different tasks and demands of the course. Subsequent coaching and evaluative feedback on the students’ performance helped them to ultimately ace something they initially perceived as a terror.

During the course of the term, as they applied the lecturer’s advice - doing exercises and widening their reading, the students also built proficiency that led to “mastery experiences” and of course, the excellent results.

As far as the ‘emotional and physiological states’ Akhtar’s advice is: ‘When setting ourselves goals, self-efficacy plays a significant role, so we need to make sure that our efficacy beliefs are in line with our aims and not working against them.’

Self-Efficacy through Life-stages

According to Bandura, beliefs in personal efficacy not only contribute to outcomes in education and personal development. They affect life choices, level of motivation, quality of functioning, appetite for accomplishment, response to challenges, resilience to adversity and vulnerability to stress and depression.

Considering the challenging times that the world is going through, people are further confronted with various ‘impediments, adversities, setbacks, frustrations and inequities’. Against this backdrop it is imperative that individuals develop a robust sense of efficacy to sustain the perseverant effort needed to succeed.

Varying nature and scope

Even as we clear current hurdles, life will keep throwing curveballs such that as we progress in our careers and advance in age, it presents us with ‘new types of competency-demands, requiring further development of personal efficacy for successful functioning. The nature and scope of perceived self-efficacy undergo changes throughout the course of the lifespan’. The different sources influencing self-efficacy may grow or diminish with one’s career stages.

There may also be variants outside the four main sources, which in turn may be influenced by other cultural or demographic factors.

‘Imaginal Experiences’

Already, one social scientist adds to Bandura’s four, a fifth distinct source of self-efficacy: Imaginal Experiences. According to James Maddux, ‘the art of visualising yourself behaving effectively or successfully in a given situation contributes to positive self-efficacy’.

The self-efficacy theories give credence to Mahatma Ghandi’s words:

‘Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.’

It stands to reason that a positive attitude and determination set one on the winning path. On observing role models - seeing/ learning of peers succeeding, imaginal experiences are created and confidence increases. How one puts belief into actions throughout life builds incremental affirmation and mastery experience, which, with further social persuasion, increases success in just about any aspect of life.

People seek proficient models who possess the competencies to which they aspire. Through their behaviour and expressed ways of thinking, competent models transmit knowledge and teach observers effective skills and strategies for managing environmental demands. - Says Bandura

Benefits of strong self-efficacy

With the benefits that Bandura attribute to self-efficacy, it is worth having everyone giving this subject his/her attention. According to Bandura, a strong sense of efficacy enhances human accomplishment and personal well-being in many ways: 1. It builds high assurance in one’s capabilities even when approaching unchartered territory 2. It helps one to approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided 3. It fosters intrinsic interest and deep engrossment in activities 4. It helps people set themselves challenging goals and maintain strong commitment to them 5. It builds resilience to heighten and sustain efforts in the face of failure 6. It helps people bounce back and attribute failure to insufficient effort or deficient knowledge and skills - which are acquirable 7. It builds confidence to approach threatening situations with assurance that they can exercise control over them 8. It feeds a hunger for new challenges that will translate into more personal accomplishments 9. It helps to reduce stress 10. It helps lower vulnerability to depression

Advice to Line Managers

To get the most out of your team, it is worth determining the level of perceived self-efficacy for each team member and identify the most potent contributors in order to give employees access to those. A critical contribution that leaders, line managers, coaches, teachers and lecturers make to build self-efficacy among their subordinates, is having a positive impact as role models.

Sources: 1. Bandura, Albert (1997). Self-Efficacy in Changing Societies.

Cambridge University Press. 2. Akhtar, Mariam (2012), Positive Psychology for Overcoming

Depression (2012) positivepsychology.org 3. Bandura, Albert (1994). Self-efficacy. In V. S. Ramachaudran (Ed.),

Encyclopaedia of Human Behaviour (Vol. 4, pp. 71-81). New York: Academic Press. (Reprinted in H. Friedman [Ed.], Encyclopaedia of Mental Health. San Diego: Academic Press, 1998).