What is Self Efficacy?

Self efficacy is a self evaluation of whether a person feels they can accomplish a certain task or not. Even though self efficacy is a concept that is important for all ages, this discussion focuses on self efficacy in children. This discussion covers the history of self efficacy, self efficacy vs. self esteem, it's affect on children, and four main factors.

Albert Bandura, a theorist at Stanford University, wrote an article in 1997 addressing the topic of self efficacy. He stated that self efficacy is people's beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance for assigned tasks. The outcome of this, exercises influence over events that affect individual's lives.

Self efficacy determines how people think, feel, behave and motivate themselves. There are several differences however, between self efficacy and self esteem. Self efficacy is the evaluation of whether one can accomplish a task or not, a judgment of confidence. Examples may include: a child asking themselves if they can do a math problem, or get a good grade in a certain class. Self esteem on the other hand, is a global evaluation of one's self worth, a judgment of self worth. (i.e., Do I like myself?)

Self efficacy not only affects children's level of confidence and how they feel about themselves, but also choices children make, as well as effort that is put out with specific tasks (e.g., how long a child will study.) Self efficacy also affects how long a child will continue trying when they run into challenges. If they fail a class how long will they keep trying? Will they give up or not? Self efficacy is a partial answer to those questions.

Self efficacy is comprised of four main factors. The first is mastery, or successful experiences. The higher the number of successful experience the higher the level of confidence, an important factor regarding self efficacy. The second factor is vicarious experiences, which are the experiences children get while observing others. The child, in looking up to their role models, and seeing them have successful experiences, may equate that with their own, and look to the model as an inspiration. The third factor, social persuasion, is another way to strengthen self efficacy in a child. If a child is persuaded that they can do something, they will believe it, and may work harder, which causes more skills to develop, thus increasing self efficacy. The final factor of self efficacy is physiological states. People, and children especially, use physiological and emotional states to judge their abilities. That is, when a child is nervous, sleepy, hungry or tired, they will not feel up to par, and are less likely to succeed, which will decrease self efficacy.

Self efficacy is an important matter, and one needs to take into account all of the information presented here. The definition of self efficacy, the history, examples of how it affects children and the four main factors all will help a person to better understand the concept.