Personal Control Beliefs Flashcards
(12 cards)
Expectancy
Looking into the future - the likelihood that something will happen
Two Types of Expectancy
- Efficacy: judgment about one’s capacity to execute a course of action
Ex: can I make the time to show up to office hours? - Outcome: judgment that a given action, once performed, will cause a particular outcome
Ex: Even if you did what you needed to do, would it work, would your teacher change my grade?
What did Bandura say?
- want to have positive expectancies on both sides
- efficacy and outcome expectations are separate causal determinants of behaviour
- Both should be high for behaviour to be energized, goal-directed, and sustained
Self-efficacy
Overall judgment about how well (or poorly) one will cope with a situation given the skills one possesses and the circumstances one faces
- not the same as efficacy expectations
- more general: made up of little efficacy expectations
- it is not the same as ability (but both ideally should be high)
- not global - specific to a domain/task
- low self-efficacy = self-doubt (anxiety, confusion, aversive physiological arousal and bodily tension)
Developing self-efficacy: personal behaviour history
- Past experiences with a task; have you built up a strong record of having been able to do the task?
- Long vs. short history of competent performance
Ex: riding a bike - short history of competent performance -> low self-efficacy - However, a long history of success is no guarantee; attribution of success matters (locus of control and stability)
attribution of success
How to make sense of why you succeeded
- understanding that they are the ones who caused the success matters for self-efficacy
- internal locus of control
- stability: in the long run, conditions will be similar (studying very well and succeeding on a midterm will indicate you will be successful on the final)
Developing self-efficacy: vicarious experience
(living through the experiences of someone else)
- Similarity of model and observer is important
- Observer’s level of experience must be considered - most successful when experience is low
Experiment:
- Group 1 (vicarious experience): listened to a previous stats student who told them what they did to be successful (they had an increase in self-efficacy)
- Group 2 (control - writing group): had to write down what makes a good stats student (no changes in self-efficacy)
Developing self-efficacy: verbal persuasion
- Verbally boost their confidence - pep talks
- The environment can redirect attention from weaknesses/deficiencies to strengths/potentials
- Effectiveness based on actual experience of performer and credibility, expertise, trustworthiness of persuader (the person themselves can be the persuader)
Effects of Self-efficacy
- Choice of activities and environments
- Effort and persistence: Self-efficacy = quicker recovery in the face of failure
- Thinking and decision-making: Self-efficacy = greater focus on task, despite stressors
- Emotionality: Low self-efficacy = appraising challenges as threats, causing distress
- Learning, coping, performing, and achieving
Learned Helplessness
- when people expect that outcomes are independent of their behaviour
- can be learned in one context, but generalize to others
- No matter how hard you try or the strategies you use, chances are it’s out of your control, so motivation dips
- outside uncontrollable influences are determining the outcome, not me
ex: dog shock experiment
- dogs that were shocked laid on the shock side without attempting to cross the barrier like the dogs that weren’t shocked
Learned Helplessness: Sources
- Contingency (relationship between 2 events): Outcomes can range from being purely random to fully controllable:
- If outcomes feel random or uncontrollable, people start to believe their actions don’t matter.
- Example: A student keeps failing no matter how much they study — they might start believing success is just luck or fate.
- Cognition: Mental events (biases, attributions, expectancies) influence the relationship between objective contingencies and subjective control
- Example: Thinking “nothing ever works out for me”
Learned Helplessness: Effects
- Motivational deficits: Why try?
- Learning deficits: Pessimism interferes with learning new response-outcome contingencies
- Emotional deficits: In situations that call for active, assertive emotions, affect is lethargic, depressive; Fear-mobilized emotions believed to be unproductive
