SELF-EFFICACY: THE EXERCISE OF CONTROL

Albert Bandura
CHAPTER 1 - THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES (1)
People strive to control events that affect their lives.
o This need permeates everything that individuals do.
o Uncertainty in important matters is unsettling.
People's level of motivation, affective states, and actions are based more on what they
believe than on what is objectively true.
o Belief that one can produce desired effects provides incentive to act.
o Efficacy beliefs are, thus, a major source of action.
o Perceived self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one's capabilities to organize and
execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments (3).
Efficacy beliefs influence:
o courses of action
o effort
o perseverance in the face of obstacles and failures
o resilience to adversity
o whether thought patterns are self-hindering or self-aiding
o stress and depression in taxing situations
o level of accomplishment realized
The Nature of Human Agency (3)
People can exercise influence over what they do. Agency refers to acts
done intentionally.
o Beliefs of personal efficacy constitute the key factor of human agency.
o One can intentionally originate novel, coherent thoughts.
Thought processes are emergent brain activities that are not ontologically reducible.
o Thought processes exert influence.
o Once formed, efficacy beliefs regulate aspirations, behavioral courses, effort, and
affective reactions.
o thus, people bring cognitive productions into being by intentional exercise of
personal agency
Dualism
o Social cognitive theory rejects dualism.
o There is one self, not subject/object.
o In self-reflection, individuals are subject and object.
Human Agency in Triadic Reciprocal Causation (5)
Personal factors, behavior, and environmental events interact and influence each other
bidirectionally.
o Influence of each varies depending on task.
Agency works within a sociostructural influence.
o Social structures are created by human activity.
o There is variation within social structures.
o Efficacious people enforce their will within these social structures.
o Inefficacious people are less apt to exploit opportunities.
o Human behavior must be thought of in terms of self and social influences.
Determinism and the Exercise of Self-Influence (7)
Because behavior is co-determined by many factors operating interactively, given events
produce effects probabilistically, not inevitably.
o freedom is defined as the exercise of self-influence to bring about desired results
Self-Influences operate on behavior the same way external influences do. Thus, some
measure of freedom is possible through
o Alternatives we consider.

o How we foresee, weight, and visualize outcomes.

o Self-evaluations.
o How we appraise abilities to execute different options.
Individuals behave differently in an efficacious as opposed to an inefficacious frame of
mind. Nevertheless, they remain agents of thoughts, effort, and actions.
o "In short, human behavior is determined partly by the individual rather than
solely by the environment" (9).
Related Views of Personal Efficacy (10)
Self-Concept
o Composite view of oneself formed through experience and feedback from others.
o Efficacy beliefs are more complex than self-concept beliefs.
they vary across domains
vary within the same domain
vary at different levels with different circumstances
Self-Esteem - judgment of self worth.
o Efficacy judgments are judgments of capability, not judgments of self-worth.
Effectance Motivation.
o This motive is conceptualized as an intrinsic need to deal effectively with the
environment.
o The effectance motive presumably develops through cumulative acquisition of
knowledge and skills in managing the environment.
o Efficacy beliefs vary and are more conditional and contextual.
Proxy Control
o In this socially mediated mode of control, people try to get those who wield
influence and power to act on their behalf to effect the changes they desire. (17)
Price of proxy control is vulnerable security (comfort rests with others).
Efficacious people do not place their fate in the hands of others.
Type A personalities master task demands impatiently and with time
urgency.
Inadvertent Relinquishment of Control
o Many factors operate in everyday life to undermine efficaciuos use of the
knowledge and skills that people possess.
o As a result, they do not exercise the personal control that is fully within their
capabilities.
o contextual, i.e., when winners lose to inferior opponents due to settings or prior
experiences.
o Racial and gender stereotypes.
o Formidable looking opponents often lower efficacy.
Outcome Expectancy Theories
o According to expectancy-valence theories, performance is jointly influenced by
the expectancy that behaving in a particular way will lead to a given outcome and
the desirability of that outcome.
o Human behavior would be best predicted by a combination of efficacy beliefs and
types of performance outcomes.
o People's beliefs in their efficacy affect almost everything they do
how they think
motivate themselves
feel
behave (19)
Self-efficacy, Outcome Expectations, and Control
o "To claim that people visualize outcomes, and then infer their capabilities is to
invoke backward causation . . . people do not judge that they will drown if they
jump in deep water, ad then infer that they must be poor swimmers. Rather,

people who judge themselves poor swimmers will visualize themselves drowning
if they jump in deep water" (21).
o Performances versus Outcomes
A performance is not an outcome. Performance is an accomplishment.
Outcomes follow from performances.
exercise: A, B, C, D, & F are markers for various levels of performance;
harassment, praise, etc. . . are outcomes
"When performance determines outcomes, efficacy beliefs account for
most of the variance in expected outcomes" (24).
Possible Selves.
o People conjure up specific self images of future successes and failures. These
possible selves are constructed from
personal experiences,
actual and symbolic models,
sociocultural influences that
provide a framework to interpret experience
influence how we think about potential and options
guide action
motivate us toward selected goals (25)
positive selves guide and motivate while unwanted selves block
action and prompt avoidance
Control Beliefs
o A control event consists of an agent using certain means to give rise to outcomes.
Three sets of beliefs about the exercise of control
Agency beliefs refer to whether one possesses the appropriate
means
Effort
Ability
Luck
Unknown factors
Means to ends beliefs refer to whether these means are effective in
producing desired events and preventing undesired ones
Control beliefs refer t whether one can produce desired events and avoid
undesirable ones independent of any means
*Means do not operate on outcomes directly, thus, this tripartite model is
missing performance. Means do not operate on outcomes directly, rather
they give rise to certain performances then produce outcomes (27).
Primary versus Secondary Control (29)
o Primary control - efforts to change existing realities.
o Secondary control - accommodation to environment.
Adapting to existing realities.
Ameliorating distress over realities.
o As in Piaget's theory of cognitive development
Cognitive incongruities are resolved by assimilation or accommodation.
Assimilation - people interpret reality in ways that fit their beliefs.
Accommodation - change beliefs to fit reality.
"in short, human functioning is not compartmentalized into changing the
environment or changing oneself . . . human adaptation and change are
better explained by the dynamic interplay of different coping strategies
then by categorizing them into types" (31).
Self-Efficacy in Individualistic and Collectivistitic Social Systems (31)
o Global classifications mask diversity within systems.
Individualistic cultures differ.
Collectivistic systems differ.

East Asian cultures founded on Buddhism or Confucianism have

particular values, meanings, symbols
Within the United States
New England individualism is different from the Californian
version.
Cultural orientations must be treated as multifaceted dynamic influences
in exploring how efficacy beliefs affect functioning. "People live their
lives neither entirely autonomously nor entirely interdependently in any
society" (32).
Group achievements and social change are rooted in self-efficacy
In collective systems, people work together to produce benefits
they seek
Inveterate self-doubters are not easily organized into a collectively
efficacious force
Enablement versus Moralization (33)
o "Self-efficacy is concerned with human enablement, not with moral judgments"
(33).
o "People make causal contributions to their lives, but they are not the sole causes
of their destinies" (33).
The Self-Efficacy Component of Social Cognitive Theory (34)
o Self-efficacy works in concert with other determinants within social cognitive
theory to govern human thought, motivation, and action.
Cognitive guidance is especially influential in the early and intermediate
phases of skill development.
Behavior becomes routinized (James's habit?) and no longer needs higher
cognitive control. Execution can be regulated by lower level sensory
motor systems.
Tending to mechanics of what one is doing after proficiency is
achieved is likely to disrupt performance.
Partial disengagement of thought from proficient action has
considerable functional value.
When situations change, personal efficacy is promptly reappraised
as the guide for action.
As long as people believe in their ability, they act habitually.
Routinization is advantageous when the skills that have been
acquired are optimal ones.
Routinization is self-limiting when people settle for low level
pursuits on the basis of self-doubts and no longer reappraise their
capabilities.
"Insidious self-doubts can easily overrule the best of skills" (35).

CHAPTER 2 - THE NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF SELF-EFFICACY (36)

Self-efficacy is a differentiated set of beliefs linked to distinct realms of functioning, concerned
with
self-regulation of thought processes
motivation
affective and physiological states
Perceived Self-efficacy as a Generative Capability (36)
"Perceived self-efficacy is concerned not with the number of skills that you have, but
with what you believe you can do with what you have under a variety of circumstances"
(37).
o Different people with similar skills often perform differently.

o Same person may perform poorly or extraordinarily depending on fluctuations in

beliefs of personal efficacy.
o Example: Driving Efficacy
Do not ask questions about decontextualized perceived efficacy for
subskills:
Can you turn an ignition key?
Can you shift that automatic transmission?
Can you turn a steering wheel?
Can you accelerate and stop?
Can you blow a horn?
Rather, ask about the generative capability to maneuver and automobile in
various situations:
Can you maneuver through congested city traffic?
Can you maneuver around vehicles on crowded expressways
Can you drive down narrow twisting mountain roads?
o Attainment efficacy is a better predictor of performance than subfunction
efficacy" (38).
Self-regulatory efficacy -- how well subskills are enlisted, orchestrated, and sustained -is also an important contributor to the belief in attainment efficacy (38).
o efficacy beliefs may be high for subskills but low for their use in stressful
situations
o the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
o Thus, self-efficacy is concerned with the orchestration of skills.
Individuals as Active Producers rather than Passive Foretellers of Performance (38)
Performances do not happen, we bring them about. People contribute to, not merely
predict their performance.
People who doubt their capabilities
o shy away from difficult tasks.
o give up quickly.
o have low aspirations.
o dwell on deficiencies, formidableness of tasks.
o focus on adverse consequences of failure.
o thus, they undermine their efforts by
diverting attention from effective thinking.
being slow to recover from setbacks.
falling easy victims to stress and depression.
People with strong belief in capabilities
o approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered (not threats to ve avoided).
o fosters interest.
o set challenging goals and maintain commitment to those goals.
o have high effort.
o thus they:
think strategically.
attribute failure to insufficient effort.
quickly recover after failure.
reduce stress.
The Self-efficacy Approach to Personal Causation (38)
Specificity in constructing items (not omnibus, global, decontextualized items)
"Omnibus measures create problems of predictive relevance as well as obscurity about what is
being assessed"(40)
Multi Dimensionality of Self-efficacy Belief Systems (42)
Measuring self-efficacy
o "Measures of personal efficacy must be tailored to domains of functioning and
represent gradations of task demands" (42)

o Measure self-efficacy in terms of particularized judgements of capability that

vary
Across realms of activities.
Under differing levels of task demands within an activity domain.
Under differing situational circumstances.
Structure of Self-Efficacy Scales (42)
"Self-efficacy scales should measure people's beliefs in their abilities to fulfill different levels of
task demands within the psychological domain selected for study. Including a wide range of task
demands identifies the upper limits of people's beliefs as well as gradations of strength of
perceived self-efficacy below that point" (44).
Efficacy beliefs differ in level, generality, and strength.
o LEVEL
In developing efficacy scales, researchers must draw on conceptual
analysis and expert knowledge of what it takes to succeed in a given
pursuit.
The nature of the challenges against which personal efficacy can be
judged vary by
Level of ingenuity
Exertion
Accuracy
Productivity
Threat
Self-regulation required
"With self-regulation, the issue is not whether one can do them
occasionally but whether one has the efficacy to get oneself to do them
regularly in the face of varied dissuading conditions" (43).
Preliminary inquiry to construct scales:
People are asked to describe things that make it hard for them to
perform the required activities regularly.
Sufficient impediments and challenges should be built into
efficacy items to avoid ceiling effects.
o GENERALITY
Wide range of activities versus certain domains
Generality can vary on a number of dimensions
Degree of similarity of activities
Modalities in which capabilities are expressed
behavioral
cognitive
affective
Qualitative features of situations
characteristics of the person toward whom behavior is
directed
"Within the network of efficacy beliefs, the most fundamental are those
around which people structure their lives" (43).
o STRENGTH
weak versus strong efficacy beliefs
The stronger the sense of personal efficacy, the greater the perseverance
and the higher the likelihood that the chosen activity will be performed
successfully.
Measuring strength of self-efficacy beliefs:
Can do rather than will do items
100 point scale intervals of 10 (cannot do) 50 (moderately certain)
100 (certain can do)

In the case of self-regulatory efficacy, people judge their assurance

that they can perform the activity regularly over designated
periods of time (44).
Effects of Self-Assessment (46)
"Numerous tests for reactive effects of self-assessment show that people's affective reactions and
performance attainments are the same regardless of whether they do or do not make prior
efficacy judgements" (46).
Omnibus versus Domain-Linked Measures (47)
"The evidence is relatively consistent in showing that perceived self-efficacy is a good predictor,
whereas locus of control is either a weak predictor or is non-predictive" (47).
Efficacy beliefs predict:
o Academic performance
o Proneness to anxiety
o Pain tolerance
o Metabolic control in diabetes
o Political participation
Three levels of generality of assessment: (49)
o The most specific level measures perceived self-efficacy for a particular
performance under a specific set of conditions
o The intermediate level measures perceived self-efficacy for a class of
performances within the same activity domain under a class of conditions sharing
common properties.
o The most general measures belief in personal efficacy without specifying the
activities or the conditions under which they must be performed.
o "For example to evaluate the impact of a team's sense of efficacy on its
performance in a championship playoff game, one should measure the player's
perceived delf-efficacy to execute different aspects of the game against the
[articular opponent they have to face rather tan against the whole array of teams
in the league or some unspecified opponent" (49).
Discriminative Generalization of Self-Appraisal (50)
"Efficacy beliefs are structured by experience and reflective thought rather than being simply a
disjoined collection of highly specific self-beliefs" (51).
Five processes through which mastery experiences can produce some generality in
personal efficacy
o Similar subskills
Thus, one ought to focus on the common features when tackling a new
activity
o Co-development
o Self-regulatory skills
Diagnosing task demands
Constructing and evaluating alternative courses of action
Setting proximal goals to guide one's efforts
Creating self incentives to sustain engagement and manage stress and
debilitating intrusive thoughts
o Generalizable coping skills
Self-protective skills
Weight loss
Stress management
o Generality is achieved by structuring activities and highlighting commonalities
The framing creates self-efficacy links between activities
"Powerful mastery experiences that provide striking testimony to one's
capacity to effect personal change can also produce a transformational
restructuring of efficacy beliefs that is manifested across diverse realms of
functioning, e.g. snake phobics" (53).

 However, avoid a Holy Grail of Generality . . .(53)

Self-efficacy Causality (54)
Do efficacy beliefs act as causal factors in human functioning?
Dual Causal Linkage(54)
o "In the case of the efficacy mediator, people can report their beliefs. This
observable indicant enables us to understand the origin and function of efficacy
beliefs" (54).
o The efficacy-action link can be corroborated in two ways:
The first is by verifying micro-level relations between particular efficacy
beliefs and corresponding actions.
The optimal cutoff criterion must be determined empirically for different
domains of functioning
Because efficacy strength incorporates efficacy level as well as gradations
of certainty above any threshold value, efficacy strength is generally a
more sensitive and informative measure than efficacy level.
There are conditions where the micro-level congruence procedure is
unsuitable for verifying the effects of efficacy beliefs(55)
In some instances, the modality through which efficacy is
exercised differs from modality in which effects are manifested
Efficacy judgement is made about an intermediary activity that, in
due time, produces a result of a different sort
Self-efficacy is judged for different performance attainments, and
the effect is level of motivation
o The link between perceived self-efficacy and subsequent performance
attainments is verified by macro level relations that correlate aggregated selfefficacy beliefs with aggregate academic performance.
Diverse Tests of Causality (56)
o Perceived self-efficacy is raised to different preselected levels, and its effects on
behaviors are measured. Then perceived efficacy was raised to higher levels and
behavior was measured again at the new level.
Results: higher levels of perceived self-efficacy were accompanied by
higher performance attainments (56)
o Introducing trivial factors that do not affect competence but do affect selfefficacy
Results: efficacy influenced performance by influencing motivation.
o Bogus feedback unrelated to performance
Results: group who were led to believe they were stronger performed
better by spurring greater physical effort.
o Bogus normative comparisons
Results: changing beliefs of where they fell compared to most decreased
their pain tolerance
o A procedure that impairs functioning is applied, but in ways that raise perceived
self-efficacy.
Results: when people's coping efficacy is strengthened, they approach
situations more assured and make better use of the skills that they have.
o Testing multivariate relations between relevant determinants and performance
attainments by regression analysis.
o Personal enablement is achieved by equipping people with knowledge, subskills,
and self-affirming experiences in the exercise of control(60)
Sources of Discordance Between Efficacy Judgement and Action (61)
Deficient assessment
Ambiguity of task demands
Violation of propositions about conditions under which thought is related to action
Genuine discordance between self-referent thought and action.

Limited Scope of Self-efficacy Assessment (61)

"Most behavior has multiple determinants and self-efficacy theory is often tested in a
factor that exerts only partial influence over the behavior of interest" (62).
"Because human functioning is multifaceted and self-efficacy assessment is rarely
inclusive of all facets, the contribution of efficacy beliefs to adaptation and change is
probably underestimated in forma tests. Thus, we should be cautious about interpreting
the explained variance in performance by perceived self-efficacy in any given study as its
maximum contribution" (62).
Mismatch Between Self-Efficacy and the Performance Domains (63)
"Efficacy beliefs must be measured closely with the performance domain to be predictive
Attainment efficacy is more predictive than means efficacy" (63).
Faulty Assessments of Self-Efficacy or Performance (63)
In many spheres of functioning, people know full well how to perform the needed
behavior. Here the relevant efficacy beliefs concern self-regulatory capabilities - can
people get themselves to stick with the behavior given the many dissuading conditions
they will encounter (64).
In familiar activities that must be performed regularly to achieve desired results, it is
perceived self-regulatory efficacy, rather than perceived efficacy for the activity per se,
that is most relevant (64)
Relation of efficacy beliefs to performance can be reduced by faulty assessment:
o Complex patterns of behavior do not lend themselves to assessment
o Global judgements mask the diversity of behavior "people do not behave
globally"(64)
o

Ambiguity of Task Demands (64)

One must have knowledge of the task demands because activities differ in
o Difficulty and subskills
o Cognitive demands and memory
o Strength, endurance, and stress
o Same activity taps differing skills under different circumstances; thus, all must be
accounted for
o Some performances are judged socially, not objectively
o Ethnic, racial, social factors, gender sway performance judgements
The most common disparity is when judgement exceeds performance
o Exaggeration of one's capabilities
o Inadequate knowledge of task demands -- this is especially prevalent in academic
endeavors
Indefinite Aims and Deficient Performance Information (66)
One must have definite aims and feedback about performance
o Especially problematic when one's performances are not personally observed
athletic skills, social settings, conversations, teaching (surprise when videotaped)
o Social judgements, again, cause mismatches between efficacy beliefs and action
Performance feedback can vary on a number of dimensions
o Intrinsically generated or provided externally
o Focus on certain aspects of performance or just final results as failure or success
o Rudimentary categorical feedback or gradations (pass/fail -VS- percentile)
o Intermittent or regularly -- "There is little basis for adjusting effort and action if
one does not know where one should be going or what one is doing" (67).
Temporal Disparities (67)
Time between assessment of efficacy and performance is important.
o Close temporal proximity is essential for accuracy
o Longitudinal studies are problematic when past efficacy beliefs are used to
predict current performance
o The key is not time, but whether efficacy beliefs have changed over that time

o Efficacy strength is likely to waiver as performance draws near

Consequences of Misjudgement (68)
When things matter, accurate self-appraisals serve as valuable guides for action
o Thus, high stakes tasks are useful in academics as well, I would guess, in other
realms. Golf = important tournament or playing with friends
o Depends, also on the nature of the task and the severity of consequences
Disincentives and Performance Constraints (68)
o People may possess skills needed but have no incentives to act
o Faulty equipment may affect performance ( in the case of an artist or athlete or
student?)
o Physical or social constraints impose limits
Statistical Overcontrol (68)
Behavior is not a cause of behavior
o Correlations between prior and subsequent behavior reflect the degree of
commonality of their determinants
o Statistical controls are not removing the "effects" of past performance, but rather
the effects of the determinants governing past performance
o Using past performance as a proxy of ability
Confounds ability and notability facts
Past performance itself is affected by beliefs of personal efficacy
Controlling for past performance without regard for determinants
governing it obscures rather than clarifies factors regulating human
performance
Faulty Self-Knowledge (70)
Some cases, appraisal of efficacy is reasonably accurate while under other circumstances,
faulty judgements can arise from a variety of sources
o New undertakings (limited familiarity/experience)
o Distortion of self-appraisal due to personal factors
Point of initial perception, cognitive processing, or recall of relevant
efficacy experiences
o Distortions in memory of efficacy-relevant experiences and circumstances under
which they occurred (selective recall of personal success or failure)
Veridicality of Self-Appraisal: Self-Aiding or Self-Limiting? (70)
Performance as the index of ability should be tempered, b/c performance is tempered by:
o Motivational factors
o Self-regulatory factors
o Affective, nonability determinants
Sensitivity of performance to notability determinants depends on
o Level of skill development
o Complexity of activity
o Environmental uncertainties
Value of accurate self-appraisal is largely doe to the nature of the task at hand
o Overconfidence and Underconfidence
Swimming in harsh surf
Taking a math test
Navigating a treacherous strip of mountainous road
"People's regrets often center on risks not taken, on opportunities
forsaken and relationships not cultivated" (71)
People generally overestimate their capabilities
Evidence reveals that an optimistic sense of personal efficacy is
needed for accomplishment and positive well-being.
Affective and Motivational Benefits of Optimistic Self-Efficacy Belief (72)
Innovations

o The road to innovation is heavily strewn with difficulty

o More likely to bring about social rejection
o Must be well equipped to deal with hardships and persevere against tough odds
The novelist Saroyan accumulated more than a thousand rejections before
his first literary piece was published.
James Joyce's The Dubliners was rejected by 22 publishers.
Gertrude Stein submitted poems to editors for 20 years before one was
finally accepted.
Fifteen publishers rejected a manuscript by e.e. Cummings.
A Paris art dealer refused Picasso shelter when he asked if he could bring
his art in from out of the rain.
Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life.
Stravinsky was run out of town by an enraged audience after the first
performance of the Rites of Spring.
Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the more widely rejected architects for
much of his career.
Hollywood initially rejected Fred Astaire as "a balding, skinny actor who
can dance a little."
Walt Disney's proposed theme park was rejected by Anaheim on the
grounds that it would only attract riffraff.
Scientists often reject theories that are ahead of their time.
o Lessons
The moral of rejection is that rejections should not be accepted too readily
as indications of personal failings. To do so is self-limiting(73).
People who are socially anxious are often just as socially skilled as the
more sociable ones. But socially active people judge themselves much
more adept than they really are(74).
Consummate survivors have a Phoenix-like ability to bounce back from
setbacks(74).
An optimistic sense of efficacy fosters psychological well-being and
personal accomplishment.
Differential Function of Preparatory and Performance Efficacy (75)
There is a difference between the strength of efficacy beliefs during skill development and the
use of established skills to manage situational demands.
Skill development phase
o Highly efficacious people often underestimate difficulty level
o Little incentive to invest effort
o "Too much confidence has deceived many a one" - Salomon
Already developed skills
o Strong efficacy is essential to mobilize and sustain effort
o "One cannot execute well what one knows while wrestling with self-doubt" (76)
Self-Affirmation versus Self-Deception (77)
False notions should be distinguished from commitment to accomplishments that have
low probability
o Humanity has been advanced more bu persisters that by pessimists
o Self-belief does not ensure success, but self disbelief assuredly spawns failure.
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go"
T.S. Eliot (77)
CHAPTER 3 - SOURCES OF SELF-EFFICACY
There are four principal sources of self-efficacy beliefs
1. Enactive mastery experiences
2. Vicarious experiences (comparisons)

3. Verbal persuasions and allied types of social influences

4. Physiological and affective states
The cognitive processing of efficacy information involves two separate functions.
Types of information people attend to and use as indicators of personal efficacy
Combinations, rules or heuristics that people use to weight and integrate efficacy
information from different sources in construing beliefs of their personal efficacy.
ENACTIVE MASTERY EXPERIENCE is the most influential source of efficacy information
because they provide the most authentic evidence of whether one can muster what it takes to
succeed
Successes build a robust sense of efficacy. Failures undermine it, especially if failures
occur before a sense of efficacy is firmly established (timing is important).
A resilient sense of efficacy requires experience in overcoming obstacles through
perseverant effort
Although success usually raises efficacy beliefs and repeated failures usually lower them, "the
impact of performance attainments on efficacy beliefs depends on what is made of those
performances" (81)
The extent to which people alter their efficacy through performance experiences depends
on
o Preconception of capability
o Perceived task difficulty
o Effort
o Amount of external aid
o Circumstances under which they perform
o Temporal pattern of successes and failures
o Way the experiences are cognized and reconstructed in memory
Preexisting Self-Knowledge Structures (81)
o People do not approach tasks devoid of any notion about themselves or the world
around them (81). They come with a ready developed self-structure system.
Efficacy beliefs are both products and constructors of experience (82)
People who doubt their efficacy are more likely to view repeated
successes as products of laborious effort than as evidence of their own
capabilities, whereas self-assured people believe even more highly in their
capabilities following similar successes (82)
Efficacy beliefs created arbitrarily survive behavioral experiences that
contradict them for some time (82)
Dislodging a low sense of personal efficacy requires explicit, compelling
feedback that forcefully disputes the preexisting belief in one's
capabilities (82)
After a strong sense of efficacy is developed through repeated successes,
occasional failures or setbacks are unlikely to undermine beliefs in one's
capabilities
Task Difficulty and Contextual Factors in the Diagnosticity of Performance
Information (82)
o The self-diagnostic value of successes and failures for judging personal efficacy
will depend on the perceived difficulty of the task
Success can sometimes lowering perceived self-efficacy
In the course of completing a challenging task, performers discover
potentially formidable aspects of the undertaking or limitation to their
mode of coping, they lower their perceived efficacy despite successful
performance. In such instances, a singular success leaves them shaken
rather than emboldened
When experience contradicts firmly held beliefs of weak efficacy, people
resist changing their views of themselves if they can find grounds to
discount the diagnostic value of the success experience
Effort Expenditure (83)

o The amount of effort one expends affects inferences of capability of task

performances (83)-does effort enhance ability or compensate for low ability?
Success achieved through laborious effort can lower people's beliefs in
their efficacy to muster the same level of effort again (84)
To try hard and fail under optimal conditions signifies limited capabilities
(84)
The analytical procedure [of attributes] is usually confined to four
categories of information
Ability - stable internal cause
Effort - unstable internal cause
Task difficulty - stable external cause
Luck (84) - unstable external factor
"For example, attributing deficient performance to insufficient effort will heighten
motivation only to the extent that individuals believe they have the capabilities to
succeed" (85).
Selective Self-Monitoring and Reconstruction of Enactive Experiences (85)
o Perceived self-efficacy is affected not only by how successes and failures are
interpreted, but also by biases in the self-monitoring of performances themselves
(85)
Every performance has variation within it
Early performances [when skills have not been recognized] are especially
vulnerable
Variability allows leeway in whether good or bad performances are
remembered
Selective self-monitoring can enhance beliefs of personal efficacy
In studies, people observe themselves on video replays performing
successfully , with missteps and external aids edited out.
Subsequently, people displayed substantial gains in perceived
efficacy and performance.
VICARIOUS EXPERIENCE (86)
Vicarious experiences mediated through modeled attainments:
o Modeling is an effective way to raise efficacy
o People must often appraise their capabilities in relation to the attainments of
others
Social comparisons
Process Governing the Impact of Modeling on Self-Efficacy (87)
o Several processes by which modeling exerts its effects on efficacy beliefs
Social comparisons
Similar others
Different others
Self-modeling
o Conditions under which self-efficacy appraisals are especially sensitive to
vicarious information
Uncertainty about one's capabilities
Variability in the strength of other [interacting] modes of influence
Like when vicarious experience and direct experience rub each
other.
o Modeled performances to alter efficacy focus on
Predictability
models repeatedly engage in threatening activities to demonstrate
how feared objects and people are most likely to behave in
differing situations predictability reduces stress and increases
preparedness for coping with threats
Controllability

Model demonstrates highly effective strategies for handling threats

in whatever situations might arise
"What phobic thinking renders frightening, instructive modeling
makes predictable and personally controllable" (88)
o Observational Learning
Attentional process - determine what is selectively observed
Retention process - transforming and structuring information about events
for memory representation in the form of rules and conceptions
Production process - translation of conceptions into appropriate courses of
action
Motivational process
Direct
Vicarious
Self-produced
"Creer and Miklich found that observing oneself performing
successfully not only improves the targeted performance but also
leads people to exercise better control over other aspects of their
daily functioning" (91).
Young children do not use comparative ability information, but
that tends to increase as they get older
Modes of Modeling Influence (92)
o Television and other visual media
The impact of symbolic modeling on efficacy beliefs can be further
enhanced by cognitive rehearsal (93)
Modeling with cognitive rehearsal builds stronger perceived efficacy than
modeling alone
o Development of cognitive skills
The problem of observability is overcome by having models verbalize
their thought processes and strategies aloud as they engage in activities
Verbal modeling of cognitive skills builds self-efficacy and promotes
cognitive skill development.
o Self-modeling of capabilities
Videotapes
Hesitancies, mistakes, and external aids are edited from videotape
recordings.
Sometimes the videotape includes recoupling of successful
performances to more demanding situations (94).
"apparently it is hard to beat observed personal attainment as a
self-persuader of capability" (94)
Structured success situations
Structuring performance tasks in ways that ensure progressive
mastery or arranging conditions that bring out the best of one's
capabilities.
Capture successes on videotape for subsequent replay.
Observing ones faulty performances undermines efficacy and
impairs performance.
"self-modeling operates largely by enhancing belief in one's skills"
(94).
"review of videotapes of oneself in a socially skilled way has been
shown to reduce anxiety and depression in depressed individuals"
(95).
Performance Similarity (96)
o "Persons who are similar or slightly higher in ability provide the most
informative comparative information for gauging ones own capabilities" (96)

Neither outperforming those of lesser ability nor being surpassed by

vastly superior conveys much information on the level of ones capability
thus, one must keep in mind when trying to raise someone's performance
that they can be compares to similar models, but for them to see that
model fail after being told they have the same abilities is crippling. To see
a model fail after being told they are slightly higher does not hurt them.
Perceived dissimilarity can override the benefits of modeled strategies
Attribute Similarity (98)
o Attribute similarity increases the power of modeling influences
Non-athletic female raises women's perceived physical efficacy and
muscle endurance whereas that of an athletic male model does not
Certain attributes that are indicative of performance
Age
Sex
Educational and SES levels
Race
Ethnic designations
(age and gender carry the heavy load)
Multiplicity and Diversity of Modeling (99)
o Exposure to multiple skilled models produces stronger beliefs on ones efficacy
o Diversified modeling is superior to single model
Coping versus Masterly Modeling (99)
o Masterly models - perform calmly and faultlessly
o Coping models - overcome difficulties by tenacious effort
Models may display decreasing stress
Demonstrate strategies for managing stressful situations
Instruction is more helpful than emotive modeling
people may benefit by watching models overcome difficulties by
tenacious effort(99)
Model Competence (101)
o Competent models command more attention and exert greater instructional
influence than do incompetent ones.
VERBAL PERSUASION (101)
Framing of Performance Feedback (101)
o Persuasory efficacy information is often conveyed in the evaluative feedback
given
Evaluative feedback highlighting personal capabilities raises efficacy
beliefs
Feedback that children improves through effort enhances perceived
efficacy
Ability feedback in the early stages has an especially notable impact on
efficacy
People are more motivated to avoid potential losses in the present than to
secure potential future gains.
Knowledgeableness and Credibility (104)
o Success involves more that natural talent
Many people have talent and do little with it.
Self-regulatory capability to mobilized ad sustain perseverant effort is
key.
Handling pressure and failure.
Self-motivational and self-management capabilities are important.
o Persuasory efficacy appraisal depend on
who persuader are

 their credibility and knowledge

o Personal versus social appraisals
Most people believe they know themselves and their predicaments better
than others do
Persuasory efforts are only as strong as the confidence in the person
issuing them
When individuals are more confident about their self-appraisals than in
the judgments of others they are not swayed by what they are told about
their capabilities (105)
o Skill does not confer judgment
Superstar athletes are not always best judges of athletic talent
Great teachers are not always those with the highest academic abilities
Degree of Appraisal Disparity (105)
o Differences may be minimal, moderate (the most desirable level if it is
moderately high), or marked
o Skilled efficacy builders do more than convey positive appraisals or inspirational
homilies.
They structure activities that bring about success.
They encourage people to measure their success in terms of selfimprovement rather than triumphs over others
PHYSIOLOGICAL AND AFFECTIVE STATES (107)
Somatic indicants (sweating, tension, shakes)
Physiological indicants (fatigue, windedness, aches, and pains)
Mood states
o "Affective states can have generalized effects on personal efficacy in diverse
spheres of functioning. Therefore, the fourth major way of altering efficacy
beliefs is to enhance physical status, reduce stress levels and negative emotional
proclivities, and correct misinterpretations of bodily states" (106)
Perceived Sources of Activation (107)
o Speakers who attribute their sweating to physical discomforts of the room read
their physiology quite differently than those who view it as stress
o Self-Appraisal from arousal cues raise a number of intriguing questions
How do young children come to view bodily states?
How do they learn to tell what emotion they are experiencing?
How do they learn that arousal cues signify particular emotions are
predictive of levels of functioning?
In the social cognitive view, knowledge about bodily states is acquired
largely through social labeling coordinated with experienced events (107)
o Arousing experiences contain three significant events(1 private, 2 observable)
Environmental elicitors(private)
Expressive reactions(public)
Social labeling(public)
"Therefore adults must infer the presence of the internal affective state in
young children from their expressive reactions and from environmental
elicitors known to produce particular types of emotions" (108)
"Through repeated social linkage of situational elicitors, expressive
reactions, and internal arousal children learn to interpret and differentiate
their affective experiences" (108)
Level of Activation (108)
o It is not the sheer intensity if emotional and physical reactions that is important
but rather how they are perceived and interpreted
Arousal can be debilitating(low achievers) or energizing(high achievers)
Moderate levels of arousal heighten attentiveness, whereas high
arousal disrupts performance.

Construal Biases (109)

o Low efficacy heightens sensitivity to bodily states
o The heart races alike in fear, euphoria, and vigorous physical exertion
o Optimal levels of activations depends on how the arousal is construed
People who view the arousal as personal inadequacies are likely to lower
their efficacy
People who see arousal (pre-performance nervousness, butterflies) as
common reactions are more likely to benefit
thus, it is the perception of the arousal, not the intensity nor the nature of
it
Impact of Mood on Self-Efficacy Judgement (111)
o Mood states can bias attention and affect how events are interpreted, cognitively
organized and retrieved from memory.
People learn faster if what they learn is congruent with their mood
Recall is better if they are in the same mood as when they learn them
initially
Intense moods exert stronger influence than weak ones
Despondency retards everything
o Mood Biases
Affective priming - past successes and failures are stored as memories
Negative mood activates thoughts of past failings
Positive mood activates thoughts of past accomplishments
Cognitive priming - specific successes and failures that induce affect, also
produce cognition that directly cue thoughts of other past successes and
failures
This view places greater emphasis on the thought content of the
inducing even than on the aroused affect as the primer (112)
Affective State influences evaluative judgements
Selects mood congruent memories
People use affective reactions (as opposed to recall information) to
inform their mood
good mood = positive evaluations
bad mood = negative evaluations
Induced positive mood enhances perceived efficacy
Moods aroused by recall of happy and sad romantic experiences
affect
Perceived heterosexual efficacy,
Social efficacy
Athletic efficacy . . . as well as other types of coping
efficacy
Mood can bias how much efficacy is derived from experiences
Success under positive mood spawns high level of perceived
efficacy
Failures under negative mood breed a low sense of personal
efficacy
People who fail under a happy mood overestimate their
capabilities
Those who succeed under a sad mood underestimate their
capabilities
"The impact of mood on self-efficacy is at least partially
mediated by selective recall of past successes and failures"
(113).
INTEGRATION OF EFFICACY INFORMATION (113)

" There has been little research on how people process multidimensional efficacy beliefs;
there is every reason to believe, however, that efficacy judgements are governed by some
common judgmental processes" (114).
Integrations rules may vary
o Combine efficacy factors additively - the more indicants there are, the stronger
the belief of personal capability
o Relative weighting rule in which some factors are weighted more heavily than
others
o Multiplicative combinations rule in which the conjoint impact of factors on
efficacy beliefs is greater than simply their additive effect
o Configurally - particular factor is given different weight depending on other
available sources of efficacy information (114)

CHAPTER 4 - MEDIATING PROCESSES

Self-efficacy beliefs produce their effects through cognitive, motivational, affective, and
selective processes. These proccesses "usually operate in concert rather than on their own" (116).
COGNITIVE PROCESSES (116)
Efficacy beliefs affect thought processes that can enhance or undermine performance, and take
various forms:
Cognitive Constructions (116)
o Courses of action are initially shaped in thought, then serve as guides for action
(116)
Efficacy beliefs influence hoe they construe situations
Anticipate scenarios
Visualize futures they construct
o high efficacy = viewing situations presenting realizable opportunities
o cognitive negativity = dwells on personal deficiencies & undermining selfmotivation
"It is difficult to achieve much while fighting self-doubt" (117).
Inferential Thinking (117)
o A major function of thought is to enable people to predict likely outcomes (117)
The same predictor may lead to different events
Research ought not be done in nontaxing, static environments
o Acquisition of ability
Some consider ability an acquirable skill
Adopt functional learning goals
Seek challenges that provide opportunities
When skill is seen as something changeable, rate of selfimprovement is greater
Some consider ability an inherent aptitude
Failures carry high evaluative threats
These people measure their ability much more by social
comparison
Viewing ability as an inherent capability
Lowers perceived self--efficacy
Retards skill development
Diminishes interest in the activity
o Another important belief system is people's belief about the extent to which their
environment is influencable or controllable
Self--doubters are harried by futility of their efforts
They are less likely to undertake actions to improve their circumstances
MOTIVATIONAL PROCESSES (122)
The capability for self--motivation and purposive action is rooted in cognitive theory

o Future states cannot be the cause of current motivation or action

o By being cognitively represented in the present, conceived future states are
converted into current motivation and regulators of behavior (forethought).
Three forms of cognitive motivators
o Causal attributions
o Outcome expectancies
o Cognized goals
Attribution Theory (123)
o Retrospective judgements of the causes of one's performances have motivational
effects
What we attribute success and failures to
Reasons for past performances can affect beliefs of personal efficacy
Attributions of success to ability are accompanied by heightened beliefs
of personal capability
Attribution theorists usually treat ability as a stable or enduring internal
characteristic
"The overall evidence reveals that causal attributions, whether in the form
of ability, effort, or task difficulty, generally have weak or no independent
effect on performance motivation. Perceived self-efficacy mediates the
effect of causal attributions on performance" (125).
Expectancy-Value Theory (125)
o People motivate themselves and guide their actions anticipatorily by the
outcomes they expect to get from certain behaviors
The higher the expectancy the greater the motivation
People act on their beliefs of what they can do as well as their beliefs of
the likely effects of various actions
Efficacy beliefs, however, determine the types of outcomes that are
foreseen
When efficacy is controlled, the outcomes-expected for given
performances contribute little to prediction of behavior
Goal Theory (128)
o Behavior is motivated and directed by cognized goals rather than being pulled by
an unrealized future state
Research shows that explicit, challenging goals enhance motivation.
Goals operate through self-reactive influences rather than regulating
motivation and action directly
Self-Reactive Influences as Mediators of Goal Motivation (128)
o Cognitive motivation based goals are mediated by three types of self-influences
Affective self-evaluations to one's performances
Perceived self-efficacy for goal attainment
Adjustment of personal standards
o Efficacy beliefs contribute to motivation in several ways
Influences the challenges people pursue
Effort they expend
Perseverance
"When faced with obstacles or failures, people who distrust their
capabilities slacken their efforts or abort their attempts prematurely. Those
who have strong belief in their capabilities intensify their efforts when
they fail to achieve what they seek and persist until they succeed. Strong
perseverance usually pays off in performance accomplishments" (129).
o Knowledge of having surpassed a demanding standard through laborious effort
does not automatically straighten efficacy and raise aspirations
Some set even more challenging goals
Some are left with self-doubts

Some judge themselves unable to muster the same demanding effort

o Self-reactive influences predict the impact of success and failure on motivation
o The experience of struggling hard but falling just short produces several
interesting self-reactions
Some become demoralized
Their efficacy plummets
They abandon pursuit of the goal
Others remain efficacious and aspiring but are discontent to motivate
themselves to do better.
A good number become over complacent - "too content"
Self-Regulation and the Negative Feedback Model (130)
o Negative feedback is the basic regulator in control theory - perceived discrepancy
between performance feedback and inner reference standard automatically
triggers adjustments to reduce the incongruity
Bandura does not have nice things to say about these control theories
Portray humans as nonconscious beings
Grafted ideas from several other theories
Stilted machine language
o Discrepancy reduction plays a central role in any system of self-regulation (the
negative feedback control model provides us with nothing useful however).
o Different self-regulatory systems govern the mobilization of motivation
Human motivation relies on discrepance reduction and discrepancy
production
Proactive as well as reactive control
People initially motivate themselves through proactive control by setting
standards that create disequilibrium, they then mobilize their effort based
on anticipatory estimation to reach those standards.
o To capture the complexity of human self-regulation, a system must evaluate
properties shown to play important roles in self-directedness
Proactive adoption of standards rooted in a value system
Self-appraisal of personal efficacy to achieve goals
Anticipatory regulation of effort
Material and social outcome expectations
Affective self-evaluative reactions
Self-reflective metacognitive activities focused n accuracy of one's
appraisals
In human activities, goal adjustments do not follow a neat pattern of ever
rising standards. Rather, feedback of discrepancy has diverse effects on
self-reactive influences that mediate motivation and aspiration
Negative Discrepancy as Automotivator (132)
o "If disparities between perceived events and mental structures were automatically
motivating, learning would be unremitting and much more unselective that it
really is" (132)
o People are active agents in their motivation and learning
Goal Properties and Self-Motivation (133)
Relevant Goal Properties
o Goal Specificity - clear, attainable goals produce higher levels of performance
than general intentions do
o Goal Challenge
Strong interest and involvement in activities is sparked by challenges
A large body of evidence shows that the higher the goals, the harder
people work to attain them
When goals are set unrealistically high, strong effort and repeated failure
are likely to take their toll on perceived self-efficacy

Self-motivation is best sustained through a series of proximal subgoals

that are hierarchically organized.
o Goal Proximity - the effectiveness of goal intentions depends greatly how far into
the future they are set
Distant goals makes it easy to put things off
In the absence of proximal goals to concentrate their efforts, people
postpone taking needed steps; find convenient detours; and dawdle when
they do get on track./
Subgoals enlist self-reactive motivators and figure into the development
of self-efficacy "without standards against which to measure their
performances, people have little basis for guacin their capabilities" (135).
Hierarchical Structure of Goal Systems (136)
"Subgoal challenges often outweigh the lure of superordinate goals as ongoing
motivators" (136).
Causal Ordering of Efficacy and Goal Influences (136)
o Efficacy Beliefs influence
Level at which goals are set
Strength of commitment to them
Strategies used
Amount of effort expended
Intensification of effort when accomplishments fall short
AFFECTIVE PROCESSES (137))
Three three ways in which self-efficacy beliefs affect the nature and intensity of
emotional experiences. Exercise of personal control over
o Thought - create attentional bias (what we pay attention to) and determine
whether events are construed benignly or emotionally perturbing
o Action - regulate affective states by supporting effective courses of action
o Affect - perceived self-efficacy to ameliorate aversive emotional states once they
are aroused
Anxiety is defined as a state of anticipatory apprehension over possible deleterious
happenings
Efficacy Regulation of Anxiety through Attentional and Construal Processes (140)
o Threat is a relational matter concerning the match between perceived coping
abilities and potentially hurtful aspects of the environment
Efficacy-beliefs determine in large part the interpreted danger of events
People who believe that they can exercise control over events do not
conjure up calamities and frighten themselves
People who are led to believe that they can exercise control over painful
stimuli display lower autonomic arousal and less performance impairment
Efficacy enhancement exceeded relaxation and sedative drugs in
ameliorating self-rated anxiety as well as behavioral agitation during
surgery
Efficacy Regulation of Anxiety through Transformational Actions (141)
o Efficacious exercise of control diminishes anxiety by reducing or preventing
painful experiences
o Infants are frightened by a noisy mobile when it is out of their reach, but it
becomes fun when they can activate it
Micro Relationships Between Efficacy Beliefs and Anxiety Arousal (143)
o People display little anxiety arousal while coping with threats they regard with
high efficacy. But as they confront threats for which they distrust their coping
efficacy, their anticipatory and performance subjective anxiety mounts, their heart
rate accelerates, and their blood pressure rises
o After a strong sense of coping efficacy is instilled [through guided mastery], the
previously intimidating threats no longer elicit differential autonomic reactivity.

o Efficacy beliefs determine the subjective perilousness of situations

Environmental Controllability and Anxiety Arousal (144)
Regulation of Affective States by Thought Control Efficacy (145)
o People possess the capacity to manage their own thought processes.
To the extent that they can regulate what they think, they can influence
how they feel and behave
Some can control what they think
Others feel powerless to rid themselves of disturbing thoughts
The self-regulation of thought control therefore plays a significant role in
the maintenance of emotional well-being
"You cannot prevent the birds of worry and care from flying over your
head. But you can stop them from building nests in your hair" - Chinese
proverb
o Intrusive cognitions
Frequency
Intensity
Acceptability
Controllability
It is not the frequency that engenders their effects, but perceived
controllability
o Churchill measure of thought management
Perceived self-efficacy to divert attention from unwanted thoughts
To tolerate them and reconstrue them in benign ways
It is not the sheer frequency of intrusive thoughts but the perceived
inefficacy to turn them off that is the major source of distress
o Different strategies of thought control
Suppression - does not work because the negation of a thought contains
the thought "quit thinking giraffe" - Efforts of thought control are more
likely to backfire under stressful conditions
Self-distractions by concentrating on other trains of thought can be more
effective than suppression -This method instates the thoughts one needs
Postponement of worrying (give a set time to worry each day). This works
Proactive attention to wanted thoughts
People enlist environmental aids
Situational changes and environmental changes
Absorption in novels, movies, or television
Immersion in engrossing activities
Affective Control Efficacy (151)
o Beneficial perspectives also provide further means for dealing with stressors
Physical exercise
Recreational activities
Enjoyable avocational pursuits
Humor tempers the sting of adversity
Much human distress is self-inflicted by personal demands for
accomplishment that are exceedingly difficult to fulfill.
Relaxing stringent self-imposed demands relieves stress
Perceived Self-Inefficacy and Depression (153)
o The inability to influence events and social conditions that significantly affect
ones life can give rise to feelings of futility as well as despondency and anxiety
Anxiety - when people perceive themselves ill equipped to handle
potentially injurious events
Sadness and depression - when people have low perceived self-efficacy to
gain valued outcomes

 Hopelessness about the future

Failures or hardships
Lack or loss of emotional relationships
Cyclical - depressed people create depressing environments by their
behavior
Inefficacy and Biased Cognitive Processing of Experiences (154)
o A weak sense of perceived self-efficacy operates on the cognitive source of
depression in several ways
The processing of positive and negative experiences
Dwell on failures rather than savoring their successes
Influence causal explanations of performance attainments
Depressed persons are not especially charitable with themselves
Use unfavorable social comparisons
Depression through Inefficacy for Unfulfilled Aspirations (156)
o A sure way of nurturing self-inefficacy is by adopting lofty or vague goals for
gaining self-worth
Depression through Inefficacious Thought Control (157).
o Depressed people are not only poor at ridding themselves of distracting, negative
thoughts, they are also notably good at eliminating positive thoughts
Depression through Social Inefficacy (157)
o Another route to depression comes with the inability to foster interpersonal
relationships that provide modes of coping and satisfaction
Socially supportive relationships reduce vulnerability to stress, depression
and physical illness
Social support is likely to heavily affect post abortion patients and the
efficacy of new mothers
Socially efficacious people create more supportive environments for
themselves.
SELECTION PROCESSES (160)
People are partly the products of their environments
o By selecting their environments, people can have a hand in what they become
o Any factor that influences choice of behavior can affect the direction of personal
development
Choices made during formative periods of life carry special weight because they initiate
concatenating experiences that rete the prerequisites for desired futures.
o In hindsight, turning points stand out
o The stronger their efficacy the more career options they consider
CHAPTER 5 - DEVELOPMENTAL ANALYSIS OF SELF-EFFICACY
"Different periods of life present certain prototypic competency demands for successful
functioning. Changing aspirations, time perspectives, and social arrangements over the course of
the life span alter how people structure, regulate, and evaluate their lives in the lifelong journey"
(163).
Changes with age do not represent lock-step stages through which everyone must pass
Adolescence is not necessarily a period of adaptational turbulence
The middle years are not necessarily the period of a midlife crisis
There are many pathways through life
o Affected by age, social events, status, family, education
o Some things are predictable, some are not
"Fate is the arbiter of half . . ."
Backgammon - luck skill
Thus, only a measure of control is often achievable

Serendipity/Synchronicity
"People are often brought together through a fortuitous constellation of
events that can shape the course of their lives" (163).
"The particular patterning of changes - interwoven with fortuitous occurrences contribute to the uniqueness of individual life."xx
Operative environments take three different forms
o Imposed
Physical
Social - The key here is viewing it favorably, neutrally, or negatively
o Selected
Potential
Actual - The selection of an environment changes it from potential to
actual
o Created
People create social systems
ORIGINS OF A SENSE OF PERSONAL AGENCY (164)
"The newborn arrives without any sense of self. The self must be socially constructed through
transactional experiences with the environment" (164).
"As infants begin to gain behavioral capabilities, their understanding of agent causation
is fostered by experiencing and observing the results of action" (164)
To gain agency infants must learn that they can make things happen
Recognition That Actions Produce Outcomes (164)
Realization of personal agency requires observation that outcomes flow from actions and
that recognition that actions are part of one's self.
o "Infants who experience success in controlling their environment by their actions
become more attentive to their behavior and more competent learners than infants
for whom the same events occur regardless of how they behave" (164).
o Infantile experiences with agency can be long lasting and widely generalized
o During the initial months of life, the exercise of influence over the physical
environment may contribute more to a sense of personal agency tan influence
over social environments
Factors that can impede infants perception of control
o Hazy functional relations between event sun everyday life (no consistency)
Delays b/t action and outcome
Imperfect linkage b/t action and outcome
Multi-determination of outcome
Ambiguous environmental signaling of events that are controllable, and
Those that are not
Recognition and Differentiation of the Self (167)
Understanding that one is that agent of action shifts the perception of agency from action
causality to personal causality.
o "infants acquire a sense of personal agency when they recognize that they can
make things happen and they regard themselves as the doers" (167).
o They get their own names
o Differentiate themselves from others in verbal labeling
o During pre-verbal period of development, a sense of persona agency is perhaps
o Better reflected in evidence that courses of action are intentionally selected, selfmonitored, and self-corrected
FAMILIAL SOURCES OF SELF-EFFICACY (168)
Since children cannot do much for themselves, much of their influence is through the
exercise of proxy control
o Neonates depend on adults for food, clothing, comfort . . .
o Parents who are responsive to their infants, have infants who are advanced
socially, linguistically, and cognitively

Impact of Early Mastery Experiences on Social and Cognitive Development (168)

Enabling influences during infancy build a sense of agency conducive to cognitive
development
o Intensive preschool programs that provide rich mastery experiences permanently
raise the level and academic attainments of children from economically
disadvantaged and undereducated families
o High risk children without such enablement programs end up functioning at
retarded or borderline levels and tend to repeat grades.
o thus, efficacy enhancing programs can alter adverse inter-generational patterns of
intellectual functioning
o Types of enabling experiences during early childhood contribute to direction of
development irrespective of quality and stability of the early home environment
The initial efficacy experiences are centered in the family
o First comparative age-mates are siblings
o As children's social world expands, peers assume an increasingly important role
o First-borns and only children have different bases for judging their capabilities
that do children with older brothers and sisters
o Self-efficacy rooted in sibling rivalry is especially likely to create
hypersensitivity to judging personal efficacy against the accomplishment of
others
Development of Self-Appraisal Skills (170)
Accurate (even functional) self-appraisal is no easy matter
o While engaging in activities children must attend to
Nature of the task
Situational factors that aid/impede performance
Characteristics of their actions
Results they produce
Children have limited experience and, thus, their self-appraisals are apt to
be dependent on immediate, salient outcomes and, hence, be unstable
o As children age they
Reliance on immediate performance attainments declines in importance of
judging what they can do
Understand that effort can compensate for lack of ability
Judge their capabilities and their limitations more accurately
Begin to use inference rules or heuristics in processing efficacy
information
"Evaluating personal efficacy by social comparisons involves greater complexities than do self
appraisals based on direct experience" (171).
Surmounting Childhood Adversities (172)
Resilience (in the face of things like, poverty, divorce, physical abuse, parental
alcoholism, mental disorders) is reflected in positive developmental outcomes in the face
of severe adversity.
o The development of a stable, social bond to a caring adult is a crucial factor
Emotional support/guidance
Promotes values and standards
Model coping mechanisms
Create opportunities for mastery experiences
o Connectedness to a variety of other caring persons outside the family provide
continuing guidance and support
o Resilient children play a proactive role in shaping their life courses
Become highly resourceful in finding and creating environments
conducive to personal development
Often manage the house and care for younger siblings
Cultivate interests that save them from the mental hardships

PEERS AND THE BROADENING AND VALIDATION OF SELF-EFFICACY (172)

A vast amount of social learning occurs among peers
o Peers are neither homogenous nor selected randomly
Children tend to choose close associates who share similar interests and
values
o Children are especially sensitive to their standing among those peers with whom
they interact in activities that determine prestige and popularity
o Two determinants of aggressive or prosocial behavior
Efficacy beliefs for either of the two
Outcome expectations for either of the two
o Aggressive disorders often arise in families with low positive interactions but a
high degree of punitive reciprocity
Under such conditions children become appositional and hostile
They behave by coercive and punitive means
Antisocial peers model, teach, and reward delinquent behavior.
SCHOOL AS AN AGENCY FOR CULTIVATING SELF-EFFICACY (174)
Efficacy is determined by more than formal instruction
o Peer modeling of cognitive skills
o Social comparisons
o Instructors interpretations of children's successes and failures
A fundamental goal of education is to equip students with self-regulatory capabilities that
enable them to educate themselves
o Skills for planning, organizing, and managing instructional activities
o Enlisting resources
o Regulating one's own motivation
o Applying metacognitive skills
o Contributes to mastery of subject matter by building cognitive efficacy and
raising academic aspirations
o "Inefficacy feeds on itself" (175).
There are a number of school practices that tend to convert instructional experiences into
educational inefficacy (175)
o Lock step instruction that loses children who can't keep up
o Ability grouping
o Socially competitive grading
o Recurring difficulties encountered with low achieving students erode teachers
sense of instructional efficacy
o Self-appraisals of less able students suffer most when the whole group studies the
same material and teachers make frequent comparative evaluations
o Cooperative structures tend to promote higher performance attainments than do
competitive ones
"Inefficacy feeds on itself" (175).
"Once established, reputations are not easily changed" (175).
"Educational practices should be gauged not only by the skills and knowledge
they impart for present use but also by what they do to children's beliefs about
their capabilities, which affects how they approach the future. Students who
develop strong beliefs in their personal efficacy are well-equipped to educate
themselves when they have to rely on their own initiative" (176).

Lifelong health habits are formed during childhood and adolescence

o Eating patterns
o Recreational skills for fitness

o Self-management skills
o School can be a facilitator in this but "harried educators do not want the
additional responsibilities . . . they have enough problems fulfilling their basic
academic mission"
"The traditional style of health education provides students with factual information
without attempting to change social influences that shape and regulate habits"(176)
o School health education is long on didactic, and short on personal enablement
o Programs must equip youths with the means to exercise control over personal
habits
GROWTH OF SELF-EFFICACY THROUGH TRANSITIONAL EXPERIENCES OF
ADOLESCENCE (177)
Contrary to the stereotype of "storm and stress" most adolescents negotiate the important
transitions of this period without undue disturbance or discord
Sociocognitive Theory construes the positive contributors to adaptation within an agentic
perspective
o Protectiveness shields individuals from harsh realities
o Enablement equips them with personal resources to select and structure their
environments
Adolescents have to manage Biological, Educational and Social Role Changes
simultaneously
o Biological
Accelerated rate of physical development
Pubertal changes contribute to self-efficacy interacting with psychsocial
factors
Biological matters affect physical prowess and social status
Developmental lag is a personal handicap for boys but an advantage for
girls
Early blooming girls get into dating, sexual and drinking situations sooner
o Educational
Change inti more impersonal schooling environment
Reestablish efficacy, social status, and social connectedness
o Social
Close personal ties render everyday stressors more bearable
Isolations carries high risk of despondency/depression in adolescence
Supportive family and peer relationships serve as safeguards against
depression
Management of Sexuality (179)
"Adolescents must learn to manage their sexuality long before they are ready to take on
the functions of parenthood" (179).
o Social practices largely foster sexual ignorance and unpreparedness
o Teens are initiating sexual activity at younger ages
o Most teens pick up sexual information from peers and the media
o Information alone does not exert much influence on sexual behavior
o Sexual risk reduction calls for enhancing interpersonal efficacy rather than
targeting a specific behavior for change
In managing sexuality, people have to exercise influence over themselves as well as over
others
o Requires self-regulative skills over self and others
o Self-regulative efficacy form an integral part of sexual self-management
o Low self-regulatory efficacy in risky sexual situations spells trouble
o Educational aspirations delay initiation into sexual activity
Management of High-Risk Activities (182)
Experimentation with risky activities is not uncommon
o Alcohol use

o Marijuana use and smoking

o Sexual activity
Adolescents expand their sense of efficacy by learning to deal with situations. This is
best achieved through guided mastery experiences
o Development of resilient self-efficacy requires some experience in matering
difficulties through perseverant effort
o Success in managing difficulties develops a strong belief in ones capabilities
The prototypical self-regulatory program developed by Gilchrist and Schunke has been
extended to the prevention and reduction of adolescent drug abuse
o Informs adolescents about drugs
o Provides them with interpersonal skills for managing pressures
o Lowers drug use
o Fosters self-conception as a non-user
SELF-EFFICACY CONCERNS OF ADULTHOOD (184)
"Young adulthood is a period when people have to learn to manage many new social demands
arising from lasting partnerships, marital relationships, parenthood, entry into vocational career,
and managing financial resources" (184).
Fulfillment of Occupational Roles (184)
The transition from school to a vocational career is more difficult than for kids going to
college
o Employers prefer older applicants to recent graduates
o Non college bound kids often end up on a circle of mediocre jobs with little/no
advancement
Other societies create more formal social mechanisms for getting young adults started on
valued vocational careers
o Japan: schools and employers form close partnerships
o Germany: industry and schools share responsibility for occupational development
education programs for non-college bound youth are linked to occupational
career lines by combing academic instruction with intensive apprenticeships at
work sites
o Transition systems with positive incentives for learning enable students to
exercise some control over their vocational futures (186).
There are a number of ways in which efficacy beliefs contribute to career development
and success in vocational pursuit.
o In preparatory phases, students beliefs in their efficacy partly determine how well
they develop basic sociocognitive skills on which vocational careers are founded
o Opportunities alone do not ensure that people will take advantage of them
Beliefs about one's capabilities are influential determinants of vocational life paths
o Young adults forego vocations they see as providing valued benefits if they
believe they lack the efficacy to fulfill the entry requirements and occupational
demands
o Gender and social class barriers exist
o Low SES breeds a low sense of occupational efficacy regardless of prestige level
of the vocations(188)
o A high sense of efficacy -whether preexisting or raised by guided mastery of job
search skills-intensify job search activities, which, in turn, greatly increase the
likelihood of reemployment
Fulfillment of Family Roles (190)
The transformation from a marital dyad to a family triad greatly increases the scope and
diversity of coping demands
o Parenting efficacy plays a key role in adaptation to parenthood
o Mothers with a strong belief in their caregiving abilities

 Experienced more positive emotional well being

Closer attachment to their babies
Better adjustment to parenting
Less conflict
Better marital relationship during the toddlership
o Parental efficacy is taxed when
Children suffer health problems
Children are especially temperamental
There is no social support
building parenting efficacy can help eliminate child behavioral problems
Nontraditional lifestyles are becoming more common
o Women elect to remain single
o Marry but remain childless
o Live with a partner without marrying
o "Family income, heaviness of occupational workload, and division of childcare
responsibility has no direct effect on women's well being or emotional strain over
the dual roles. These factors operated through their effects on perceived selfefficacy" (192).
Psychosocial processes through which economic hardships alter parents' perceived
efficacy that, in turn, alters how they raise their children. Three areas for child
management skills
Exercise parental efficacy to promote children's competencies
Parental efficacy to exercise control over children's high-risk behaviors
Active parental involvement in beneficial community organizations
"Efficacious parents link to subcommunities which provide models for
their children, social networks, and compensate for meager neighborhood
resources and dangerous aspects (193).
o Grandparents can be important parts of grandchildren's lives
Efficacious grandparents take a more active role in children's lives
Spend more time
Especially important in divorced families
o Families that have an efficacious outlook experience greater community
satisfaction
Economic adversities exact a lower toll
Parents who feel that they can exercise control have less desire to move
but, "when both adversity and prospects for change are dismal, families
with a high sense of efficacy are apt to move elsewhere in search of a
better life"(195).
Midlife Changes (196)
"By the middle years, people settle into established lifestyles that stabilize their sense of
efficacy in major areas of functioning"(196).
o However, life is not arrested at this stage
o Conditions of life never remain static
Changes require adaptations that call for reappraisal of efficacy
o Occupational-middle agers are pushed by younger challengers
o Young athletes supplant older teammates
o Competition for status, promotions, and work
Occupational advancements rewuire perceived efficacy to master new roles and skills
o Occupational pursuits are often less secure
o People must develop the efficacy beliefs to mange periodic changes in jobs,
companies, and occupations
During the middle years, people often confront declining opportunities for career growth
o Time and opportunities begin slipping away

o Visions of a future lacking variety and challenging new prospects give rise to new
strains
o Upward mobility decreases with age
o Employees who are assured of their learning efficacy are more receptive to
opportunities to expand their knowledge
Some pursuits call for heavy training for short-term careers (sports)
o Unemployment can come quickly
o Transition from sports to new career paths is difficult for athletes who have
invested their sense of efficacy and identity mostly in the sport
Even true for competitive amateur athletes
o Those who cultivate other interests during those years fare much better
The midlife crisis resides more in the rhetoric of popular media than in the actual
experiences of people in middle life
o Midlifers do not hold a monopoly on stock-taking
o Reactions to taking stock take many forms
Some people choose to expand competencies in areas around which their
lives are structured
Many scale down their ambitions and restructure their goals
People who remain in the same job increase their level of skill
"Most people navigate through the middle years efficaciously. Some do not . . . adaptation in
midlife is best predicted by the interplay of personal attributes and life circumstances rather than
by one's age" (198).
REAPPRAISALS OF SELF-EFFICACY WITH ADVANCING AGE (198)
The self-efficacy issues for older adults canter on reappraisals of their capabilities
o Loss of physical stamina
o Sensory functions
o Intellectual facility
o Memory
o Gains in knowledge, skills, and expertise compensate for some loss in reserve
capacity . . . older adults have many adaptive capacities
Heterogeneity of Cognitive Changes (199)
Intellectual development is multifaceted
o Attention
o Memory
o Time sharing
o Information integration
o Level of knowledge and expertise
Intellectual growth and decline exist together
The contributions that the elderly can make to society receive little
attention
o Wisdom
Advanced understanding
Keen discernment
Sound judgement
A theory of wisdom must be concerned not only with the forms that
wisdom takes but also with how to evaluate its usefulness.
o Every human pursuit presents dilemmas and problems of how to conduct one's
life to gain a sense of purpose and fulfillment (199)
Wise judgment has to do with pursuits around which people structure their
lives
Wisdom exists, in varying degrees, in all walks of life
Although it is founded on expert knowledge, it encompasses much more
o Wisdom requires superior judgment and broad social and temporal perspective
Memory Functioning (201)

Memory lapses can be construed differently; how one views them can have varied effects
on the quality of functioning
o Controllable skill - confidence in ability to improve it
Efficacious outlook accompanies low depression
Actually facilitates memory performance
Does a better job of remembering things
Predicts degree of improvement in memory functioning
o Shrinking biological capacity
Harbor doubts suffer depression
Believe they have limited memory capacity
Can do little to affect memory capacity
The more that individuals believe this, the poorer use they make of their
cognitive capabilities
o Efficacy beliefs can enhance memory performance by motivating deeper levels of
cognitive processing of experiences. These cognitive memory aids may include:
Organizational strategies
Mental rehearsal
Elaborative and associative coding
Physical and Health Functioning (204)
Declines in stamina and functioning health status are attributed all too often to biological
aging when in fact some of the decline in physical stamina reflects decrements in beliefs
of physical efficacy.
o Lowering perceived efficacy lowers endurance (204)
o Arbitrary social comparison diminishes physical stamina
o "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was?" - Satchel Paige
o Weakens functioning of biological systems
Negative changes in cellular and metabolic processes
Loss in lean body mass
Cardiovascular decline
Diminished immunocompetence
"The major share of the decline in cardiovascular functioning with age
can be offset by regular exercise" (204).
o The mass media play an influential role in shaping images of reality
Elderly are often seen as insignificant contributors
Negative stereotypes as idle simpletons or leading impoverished,
debilitating lives
Thus, people with similar biological status but with varying belifs will
vary in how well they use the capabilities they possess
Aging and the Exercise of Control (205)
The issue of interest is not only what cognitive capacities the elderly have, but how they
use them to construct and manage their social realities.
o How they maintain agency (during a clearly transitional period)
o Maintain social connectedness
Retirement
Relocation
Loss of friends
Enabling function of social support supports enhanced coping
efficacy
o Institutional constraints on the exercise of personal control can take a toll on
psychological well being
Residents of nursing homes who are given opportunities to exercise some
control over events in their daily lives are
more active socially
more engaged in activities

 happier
remain in better health
live longer
the loss of skills often brings on the need to exercise proxy control
Sociostructural Constraints (207)
It is easier to age successfully for those who experience little discontinuity in their major
life pursuits
o Writers continue to write
o Artists paint
o Professors profess
Environments affect how people age
o Monotonous environments that require little thought or judgement diminish
cognitive functioning
o More limiting the environment is, the more they decline in their socio-cognitive
functioning
o People are both products and producers of their environments
Today's elderly are aging more effectually than in the past
o Greater control of self-development
o More intellectually agile
o Healthier and more proactive
Thus, there is a mismatch
Society is slow in accommodating these expanded potentials
Role expectations
Social norms that curtail opportunity
affect work opportunities
retirement practices
educational pursuits
filling of unstructured leisure time
Maintenance of Self-Efficacy with Decline in Capacity (208)
An efficacious outlook is no less futile in old age than in earlier periods of life
o There are several ways older adults can sustain high efficacy in spite of reserves
in capacity
Social comparisons
they should use self-comparisons rather than comparing against
younger people
selective social comparisons with age-mates
shifting standards of self-appraisal
when skills stabilize or begin to diminish, self-satisfactions and
perceived efficacy are better served by selective social
comparisons
Exploiting age-norms (like John Glenn).
Selective integration of multifaceted efficacy information
multiple experiences using different skills
weighing heavily the domains of functioning at which they excel,
and minimize those at which they consider of lesser importance
Selective Optimization and compensation
simplifying activities
pacing activities
restructuring the physical environment to make it more
manageable
adopt new roles

CHAPTER 6 - COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING

"Education has now become vital for a productive life" (213).
Societies pay dearly for the educational neglect of their youth
o School failure foreshadows delinquency
o Substance abuse
o Teenage pregnancy
o Intellectually deficient youth become disadvantages adults
Children can learn a lot from computers, but they need human teachers to help build their
sense of efficacy, to cultivate aspirations, to find meaning and direction in their pursuits.
o Self-development effects endure into adulthood
o Must develop ability to regulate motivation
"The major goal of formal education should be to equip students with the intellectual
tools, efficacy beliefs, and intrinsic interests needed to educate themselves in a variety of
pursuits throughout their lifetime" (214).
There are three ways in which efficacy beliefs operate as important contributors to the
development of cognitive competencies that govern academic achievement
o Students belief in their efficacy to master different academic subjects
o Teacher beliefs in their personal efficacy to motivate and promote learning in
their students
o Faculties collective sense of efficacy that their schools can accomplish significant
academic progress
STUDENTS' COGNITIVE SELF-EFFICACY (214)
Perceived efficacy beliefs contribute independently to intellectual performance
o Children with stronger beliefs
More quickly dissolved faulty strategies
Solved more problems
Reworked more problems they failed
o Efficacy beliefs predicted
interest in mathematics
positive attitudes toward mathematics
mathematics ability did not (215)
o Regardless of cognitive ability, efficacious children
more successfully solved problems
managed work time better
were more persistent
and less likely to reject correct solutions prematurely
o Dale Schunk has investigated the many factors that affect children's perceived
cognitive efficacy
Children have severe math and language skills deficits
They pursue self-directed easily mastered subskills, supported by
modeling of cognitive operations
instruction in higher order strategies
using differing forms of performance feedback
positive incentives and aspirational goals
"Efficacy beliefs are influenced by acquisition of cognitive skills, but they are not merely
a reflection of them. Children with the same level of cognitive skill development differ in
their intellectual performance depending on the strength of their perceived self-efficacy"
(216).
o Children differ in how they interpret, store, and recall their successes and failures
o same attainments can yield different amounts of efficacy
Children evaluate social influences that contribute to efficacy beliefs independent of
skills (216)

o "Perceived self-efficacy is a better predictor of performance that skills alone"

(216)
o Efficacy beliefs play an influential mediational role in academic attainment
Level of cognitive ability
Prior educational experience
Gender
Attitudes toward academic activities
All affect performance by how (and how much) they affect efficacy
beliefs
Development of Cognitive Self-Efficacy through Aspiration (216)
The motivating power of personal goals is partly determined by how far into the future
they are projected.
o Short term goals provide immediate incentives
Self-motivation is best sustained by combining long range goals with a
series of attainable subgoals to guide and sustain one's effort along the
route.
Proximal goals also serve as effective vehicle for developing a sense of
efficacy
Subgoal attainments provide rising indicants of mastery that help
instil growing sense of efficacy
Reduces the risk of self demoralization
b/c the same accomplishment that indicates significant
progress when evaluating against short term goals may
appear trifling and disappointing against lofty, long term
aspirations
The less individuals believe in themselves, the more they need
explicit, proximal, and frequent feedback gained by short term
goal achievement
Cultivating Intrinsic Interest through Development of Self-Efficacy (218)
Although behavior is not its own reward, it can provide its own rewards once it gets
invested with personal significance
o Once involvement in activities gets tied to personal standards, variations in
performance attainments self reactions
o Hitting a white ball into a hole 72 is not in itself satisfying, but personal triumphs
over lofty goals that provides the exhilaration
remove the personal challenges and hitting balls becomes boring
Personal standards can contribute to enhancement of interest in at least
three ways.
Enlist sustained involvement needed to build competence
select challenges that match capabilities
feedback from progress
personally challenging goals
the satisfaction derived from goal attainment builds
intrinsic interest
short term goals are better
Do extrinsic incentives decrease interest? It is a complex question. (221)
o Rewards can increase interest, reduce interest, or have no effect
o Incentives for mastering activities contribute to the growth of interest and
perceived efficacy when they
enhance or authenticate personal efficacy
people increase interest when they are rewarded for performance
Self-Efficacy in the Use of Cognitive and Metacognitive Skills (223)
Effective intellectual functioning requires metacognitive skills for how to organize,
monitor, evaluate, and regulate ones own thinking processes

o An integral part of teaching is teaching students to regulate their learning

o Knowing what to do is only part of the story
Failure is often the result of misuse of cognitive skills, not lack of
knowledge
People need a sense of efficacy to apply what they know
Success is often as much a matter of perceived efficacy as of
capability
Self-regulative function of speech
o Luria has a 3-stage developmental press
Verbal instruction from others
Overt self-instruction
Covert self-instruction
Vygotsky's model of inner speech guides thought and action
Meichenbaum's approach is aimed at developing beneficial selfguiding speech
cognitive skills are described then modeled out loud
individuals then practice verbalizing the modeled plans for
their own problem solving
coping self-instructions counteract self-debilitating thought
patterns when problems arise.
new skills become routinized
Verbal self-guidance can enhance competence through
o Heightens attentional rehearsal involvement in cognitive skills, which facilitates
learning and retention
o Guided self instruction produce results, but anticipated benefits also produce
incentive motivation to apply cognitive aids (224)
o Provides repeated self-affirmations of personal agency that one has gained
mastery over one's thinking and performance
Impact of Performance on Perceived Self-Efficacy (225)
Teachers' evaluative reactions influence students' judgments of their capabilities. These
evaluative reactions include
o the attention they pay to students
o teacher expectations
o the standards they set for students
o grouping practices
o difficulty level of assignments
Greater efficacy in children is developed by ability feedback than effort feedback
Whether effort attributions carry positive or negative connotations depends on their
conceptions of ability
o For people who believe ability is developed by effort, attributing
accomplishments to effort enhance efficacy
o Those who see ability as inherent, are likely to question their efficacy by being
told their accomplishments are doe to hard work
Class efficacy
o Ability feedback increases efficacy and performance
o Effort attributions do little for class efficacy
o Conceptions of Ability
Inherent aptitude undermine development of capabilities
Acquirable skillfosters resilient efficacy
o Social cognitive view of promoting student achievement
Ability is construed as a changeable attribute
Guided mastery is the principle vehicle to develop competencies
cognitive modeling

 instructional aids
Growing proficiencies are credited to expanding personal capabilities
(226).
Self-directed mastery experiences are arranged too strengthen and
generalize personal efficacy
Self-regulatory capabilities and higher efficacy are the ultimate goal
A focus of social cognitive theory is the development of personal agency
Self-Efficacy in Self-Regulated Cognitive Development (227)
As students progress in their education, they are expected to become more self-directed
in their learning - "this requires bringing self-influence to bear on every aspect of
learning experiences" (228).
there is a difference between possessing knowledge and being capable of
proficient action
students often know what to do, but cannot translate that knowledge into
proficient performance
o Social cognitive theory expands the concept of self-regulation in two ways.
Incorporates a large set of self-regulatory mechanisms governing
cognitive functioning
Encompasses social and motivational skills as well as cognitive ones
o Three main features [mechanisms] of motivation
Selection
Activation
Sustained direction of behavior toward certain goals
o Motivational facet of self directed learning includes
Self-monitoring
Self-efficacy appraisal
Personal goal setting
Outcome expectations
Affective self-reactions
o Barry Zimmerman's expanded view of academic self-regulation
people must develop skills to regulate
motivational
affective
social determinants of intellectual functioning
Students must learn to
select and structure the environmental settings
study strategies
mobilize ans sustain motivation for academic pursuits (over
outside distractions such as play and television).
"When self regulatory skills are lacking, people defer tasks to the last
moment and do them minimally or not at all" (229).
"In self-directed pursuits, people must exercise personal discipline
if they are to accomplish what they seek" (229).
o The strategic skills needed to exercise control over one's learning include
Information processing skills needed for identifying important
information, transforming it to improve its meaning, and organizing it into
generalizable forms
Cognitive operational skills for structuring problems in ways that specify
goals and possible routes to them, selecting appropriate strategies, and
applying them effectively to solve problems
Metacognitive skills - thinking about the adequacy of one's own thinking
monitor regulative thought
evaluate its adequacy in solving problems
make corrective adjustments

o It is a common finding that people who learn rules in abstract do a poor job of
applying them to particular situations
Metacognitve training must include applying cognitive strategies
Transference of cognitive skills takes experiences
Instructing people in the self-regulative process does little
Self-regulatory development is often social in nature
o Parents ought to do two things
Set high goals
Develop the efficacy beliefs needed to achieve those goals
o Writing presents special challenges to self-regulation
The higher their self-beliefs, the
less apprehensive students are about writing,
more useful they regard writing, and
the better they write (see Pajares & Valiante, 1997).
o Writing beliefs
Self-efficacy is weakest for taking first steps into writing a piece
Efficacy to regulate writing activities affects writing attainments by
strengthening efficacy beliefs for academic activities,
raising goals for mastering writing, and
heightening writing aspirations
Peer Influences in the Social Construction and Validation of Self-Efficacy (234)
Peers contribute to the social construction of intellectual self-efficacy
o Comparative information from teachers and grading
o Students publicly label, rank, and discuss how smart classmates are.
o Ability groupings stabilize (for good or ill) peer evaluations
o Peer models for academic efficacy (success and failure) (234)
o Influence interpersonal affiliations
who one associates with
selective orientations with certain peers who set examples
"efficacy beliefs are both products and determiners of peer affiliations"
(235).
Perceived Self-Efficacy and Academic Anxiety (235)
There is a lot to be anxious about in scholastic life
Students who are inefficacious
o don't concentrate on mastery, but on the difficulty of the task
o focus on personal inadequacies
o ruminate about past failures
o worry about the consequences of failing
o think themselves into emotional distress and faulty performances
The impact of past performances in math is mediated entirely through their impact on
effect on beliefs of personal efficacy
The full impact of perceived self-efficacy on academic anxiety is best revealed by
assessing belief in one's efficacy to
o Fulfill academic demands
o Exercise control over intrusive thinking
o Ameliorate experienced distress
o Regulate one's study activities
Impact of Cognitive Self-Efficacy on Developmental Trajectories (237)
Children's intellectual development cannot be isolated from the social relations within
which it is imbedded or from its interpersonal effects.
o A secure sense of intellectual and self-regulatory efficacy not only promotes
academic success, but also is influential in fostering satisfying and supportive
social relationships and positive emotional development.

o Students who doubt their intellectual efficacy gravitate toward students who
devalue academic pursuits
Self-Efficacy in Advanced Cognitive Functioning (239)
Efficacy beliefs are even more critical at advanced levels of cognitive functioning where
pursuits demand high levels of self-directedness
o In college, students must choose which educational level to pursue and assume
responsibility for their learning
o Self-efficacy plays a large role in career choice
o Predicts academic grades
o By influencing preparatory development and occupational choices, efficacy
beliefs partly shape the courses that lives take.
Perceived self-efficacy figures prominently in scholarly productivity
o Mediational role of self-efficacy is stronger for males than females
o Affects graduate students in several ways
mastery experiences
modeling of research strategies
supportive feedback
o "research, by its very nature, requires resilience and a firm sense of purpose"
(240)
TEACHERS' PERCEIVED EFFICACY (240)
Teacher beliefs in instructional efficacy influence students academic development.
o Teachers with a high sense of efficacy operate on the beliefs that students are
teachable through extra effort and appropriate techniques.
They devote more class time to instructional activities
Provide guidance more to students who need it.
Praise their academic accomplishments more.
o Low efficacy teachers feel there is little they can do if students are unmotivated
or there is environmental opposition.
Spend more time on non-academic pastime
Readily give up on students if they do not get quick results
Criticize students for their failure.
Teachers' beliefs in their efficacy affect their general orientation toward educational
processes as well as instructional activities (241).
o Low efficacy
Pessimistic view of students motivation
Classroom control through strict regulations
Use negative sanctions to get students to study are mired in classroom
problems
Distrust their ability to manage a classroom
Are stressed and angered by student misbehavior
Pessimistic about students improbability
Take a custodial view of their job
If they had to do it all over again, would not choose teaching profession
o High efficacy
Regard their students as reachable and teachable.
Beliefs about efficacy predicted student achievement.
o The early years of schooling are critical for students
Beliefs about efficacy are socially constructed by
Appraisals of performance
Repeated social comparisons with attainments of peers
Construal of academic expectations and ability evaluations
Teachers efficacy is especially influential on young children
because

their beliefs about their own capabilities are relatively

unstable
peer structures are relatively informal
young children make little use of social comparative
information
Thus, "teachers beliefs in their instructional efficacy is a stronger
predictor if the academic attainments of younger students than of
older students" (242)
Teacher burnout is a common problem in education
o Prolonged occupational stressors
o Physical and emotional exhaustion
o Depersonalization of the people one is serving
o Lack of a sense of personal accomplishment
High efficacy teachers direct efforts at resolving problems
Low efficacy teachers avoid dealing with problems and turn energies
inward to relieve their emotional stress
Assessing teacher efficacy
o Teacher efficacy in science education is of particular concern
o Assessment of teacher efficacy should be broadened to gauge its multifaceted
nature
o Multi item measures are an improvement over single item ones, but teacher
efficacy scales are still cast in cast in a general form.
o Teacher efficacy scales should be linked to the various knowledge domains
COLLECTIVE SCHOOL EFFICACY (243)
Teachers operate collectively within an interactive social system rather than as isolates.
Therefore, educational development through efficacy enhancement must address the social and
organizational structure of educational systems.
1940s top disciplinary problems identified by teachers
o Students making noise
o Talking
o Running in the halls
o Chewing gum
1980s top disciplinary problems identified by teachers
o Drug and alcohol abuse
o Assault and vandalism
o Extortion
o Pregnancy
o Gang warfare
o Rape
Some educational problems
o Heavy workloads requiring constant intensive interactions
o Little say in how the educational enterprise is run
o Responsibility to meet high public demands
o Disconcerting bureaucratic practices
o Variability of quality of administrative leadership
o Insufficient resources
o Lack of advancement opportunities
o Sizable sharer of problematic students
o Insufficient pay
o Low occupational status
o Inadequate public recognition of accomplishments
o What should be taught

o "In short, educational systems are strewn with conditions that can easily erode a
teacher's of efficacy and occupational satisfaction" (244).
Measuring school efficacy
o Identifying effective schools is not easy
Control for background
Ethnic and socioeconomic composition
Otherwise differences may reflect what students bring to the school
o Traits that contribute to effective schools
Strong academic leadership by the principal
High academic standards
Mastery oriented instruction
Classroom management skills
Parental support and involvement
Attributes of Efficacious Schools (244)
Principals
o Highly efficacious schools - educational leaders who seek ways to improve
instruction
o Low efficacious schools - administrators and disciplinarians
Tracking
o Determines level of intellectual challenge and career guidance
o In efficacious schools, only used to accelerate students so they can become part
of regular instruction
o Once tracked, most students remain there
o Rewarded for substandard performances or merely for effort
o Affects high ability disadvantaged minorities
o Often fosters affiliation with low achieving peers
o Affects teachers efficacy which, in turn, affects student efficacy
Family - "parents are the first teachers, and the home is the first school"
o Efficacious schools heavily involve parents as partners. Parents:
Prepare children for school
Place a value on education
Set beliefs about scholastic abilities
Set standards of excellence
Establish regular homework habits
Help with schoolwork at home
Encourage language development
Keep track of academic progress
Reward efforts
Support school related functions
Assist with school activities
Parental involvement increased the likelihood of high academic tracks
Supplement education with after school programs
informal social networks spawn a lot of learning outside school
Teacher
Determines level of parental participation (by being more inviting)
Stronger teachers instructional efficacy, the more parents seek
contact with them
Family involvement is critical
An effective efficacy building program would include videotaped
modeling of family tutoring skills as well as guided practice
Schools
o Learning activities promote a sense of personal capability and scholastic
accomplishment

Mastery model of learning

Extensive interactive instruction so students don't fall too far behind
Students are not sorted into homogenous tracks of fast and slow learners
Classroom behavior is managed successfully
Done by praise and encouragement, not by punishment
o Quality of the school environment contributes to academic achievement of
schools
Collective Instructional Efficacy (247)
Teachers with strong instructional efficacy create positive climates for learning
o Devote most time to academic endeavors
o Convey positive expectations
o Instill and reward academic success
o Principal has an large effect on collective efficacy of school
o How teachers view intelligence affects climate
Acquirable, improvable trait
Innate unchanging quality
o Strong principals excel at motivating their staff
o Teachers are products and producers of micro environments
o "The differences between schools are greater than among teachers within schools,
but collective efficacy is by no means a unitary characteristic" (249).
Teachers collective efficacy varies across grade levels and subjects
o Low efficacy to promote learning at the entry level
o Middle grades teachers express stronger belief
o In succeeding grades, teachers view their schools as declining in instructional
efficacy
o Teachers judge themselves more efficacious to teach language skills that
mathematical skills
Disadvantaged schools
o When no special effort is made, SES and racial composition account for much of
the variance between schools in collective efficacy and achievement
o There are not many schools of low SES with lofty collective efficacy and superior
achievements
Causal influences are bidirectional
Reciprocal causation
o Teachers determine partly what their students learn
o A number of factors in the school environment contribute to teachers beliefs
Models for Enhanced Education of Disadvantaged Youth (251)
Our schools are not serving disadvantaged youths well.
o Compensatory programs have met with limited success
o Gains are small compared with the huge and widening gaps in achievement that
persist between advantaged and disadvantages children
o Educationally disadvantaged represent about a third of the nations student
population
o African American students and Latino students drop out at a higher rate than
white students
o Educationally disadvantaged students require accelerated not remedial programs
Competitive solution to education
o Performance accountability
o Educational choice
o Can become socially segregating if it doesn't provide equitable access for all
o Weak schools would become worse and efficacious schools would retain their
superiority, thus widening the educational gap
Creating new schools and operating them successfully present formidable challenges
o
o
o
o

o No evidence that charter schools turn out superior students

o A society that writes off its disadvantaged members pays a heavy price in social
strife and the quality of its economic future
o Society members must commit to an ethic of inclusion
School failure represents a broader social problem
o Many low SES children are ill-prepared for school
Cognitively
Motivationally
Socially
Aversive experiences in school breed antagonistic reactions
Estrangement between parents and schools is especially harmful
o Comers model has three major structural components
Governance and management team
teachers, parents, guidance counselors and staff members
Develops school plan
In charge of development, governance, and management
Parent-participation program
links parents to the development of their children
teachers aids, librarians, cafeteris, resource center
parents gain a sense of responsibility in the school life
Student services team
Counselors, nurses and other support staff
Develop and implement individualized programs
Frees teachers from acting as disciplinarians & lets them teach
o Levin model - accelerated school
Principles
Unity of purpose
Collective enablement
Shared responsibility
Building in strengths
Uses collaborative decision making
Uses a number of instructional strategies
Peer tutoring by older students
Cooperative learning
Special strengths of students, parents, or staff are emphasized
There is heavy parental involvement
Retirees are used to assist teachers
o Differences between Comer's and Levin's models
Comer relies on heavy interpersonal climate
Implementation Models for School Enhancement (256)
Must have teachers' and principals' support
Everyone eventually benefits
o Teachers gain a positive school climate
o Principals find it easier and more rewarding to manage schools
o "Education does not suffer from a shortage of good ideas, but from a shortage of
effective means of implementing them" (Levin, 1996).

CHAPTER 7 - HEALTH FUNCTIONING

Recent views of health place heavy emphasis on biopsychosocial functioning
o Health and disease are the products of interactions among
psychosocial and biological factors
o Psychosocial factors affect biological systems and can impair functioning

o Medical care cannot substitute for healthy habits

Biopsychosocial perspective underscores
o Health enhancement
o Disease prevention
o Orientation change from a disease model to a health model
Stress
o Efficacy mediates stress which contributes to physical dysfunction
o Controllability is a key to explaining biological effects of stress
Exposure to stressors w/control --> no adverse effects
Exposure to stressors w/ no control
Activates neuroendocrine
Catecholamine
Impairs functioning of immune system
o Stress is governed by perceived control over ones life
o Social cognitive theory views stress as low efficacy to exercise control over
aversive threats and taxing environments

Biochemical effects of perceived self-efficacy in coping with stressors (262)

If people believe that they can deal with environmental stressor they are not so perturbed
by them
If they believe they cannot, they distress themselves
It is the perception of life events that becomes the stressful reality
Exposure to uncomfortable stressors is correlated with illness
o Common cold
o Headaches
o Stress increases susceptibility ti viruses
o "Whereas stress can impair immune functioning, positive mood can enhance it"
o Antibodies are higher on a pleasant day, lower on an aversive day
Autonomic Activation (263)
Phobics perceived efficacy was raised by modeling and mastery experiences
o Snake phobics were viscerally unperturbed by things they felt efficacious about
o Heart accelerated and blood pressure rose during intimidating activities
o Thus low efficacy actually affects biological functioning/processes
Catecholamine Activation (265)
Catecholamine are neurotransmitters that play a crucial role in brain-body mechanisms
and in stress related hormones that mobilize body systems to deal with perceived threats
(p. 265).
o Self-doubts in coping efficacy produce increased catecholamines
As efficacy weakened
Epinephrine rose
Horepinephrine rose
Dopac rose
Opiate activation (266)
Opioids are a type of endorphin (body's painkillers)
o Studies show that stress triggers opioids
o Opioid activation is determined not by pain, but by the psychological stress over
its uncontrollability
o Thus, animals that cannot control shock treatments show no opioid production
o People submerged their hands in ice water
efficacious people had no opioid activation
non-efficacious people had stress and opioid production
Opioid and Cognitive Mechanisms in Pain Control (267)

The same intensity of pain stimulation can give rise to different levels of conscious pain,
depending on
o How attention is deployed
o How the experience is appraised cognitively
o Coping strategies used to modulate pain
o How others are observed to react to painful stimulation
Pain control techniques
o Attention strategies
o Cognitive distractions
o Cognitive reconstrual
There are several ways that coping efficacy can reduce pain
o People who believe that they can alleviate pain enlist ameliorative skills and
persist to reduce discomfort
o Altering consciousness because if pain sensations are supplanted in
consciousness they are felt less
o Engrossing activities that are attentionally demanding are better than trivial
thoughts
Perceived efficacy mediates analgesic potency of various psychological procedures
o Less pain in later cold-presser tests
o Higher pain threshold
o Higher pain tolerance (268)
Self-efficacy and back pain
o Patients judged their efficacy for lifting, bending carrying pushing, and pulling
Expectation of pain and harm are largely products of perceived inefficacy
Gains in efficacy increased physical functioning and patients suffering
from degenerative disk disease
Helplessness theory and self-efficacy theory appear to be at odds
o Pain endurance
Helplessness theory - deficient control over stressors
Self-efficacy theory - control over stressors
Increased pain endurance through non opiod cognitive
mechanisms
Differing consequences of control it types of coping situations
Pain Regulatory Efficacy in Placebo Analgesia (272)
The purpose of placebo is to separate the contribution between
o Psychological action
o Pharmocological action
People sometime begin to behave in ways that produce benefits (M*A*S*H*)
Strength of placebo analgesic is predictable from placebos affect beliefs in efficacy to
endure pain
o Placebos work because they are efficacious in their ability to withstand pain
o Efficacy beliefs to ameliorate pain are enlisted by placebo based on past
experience with medicine to relieve pain
Combining Medications with psychosocial Treatment (273)
A Perceived efficacy that rests entirely on medicinal aid will not survive withdrawal of
medication
o Smokers and obese people who had placebo pills withdrawn lost their effect
quickly and reverted to old habits
o Those told they succeeded though their own efforts achieved further reductions in
wight loss and smoking
Combining medicines and development of self-regulatory skills can enhance perceived
efficacy

o Medication that enable people to develop self regulatory skills can enhance
perceived efficacy
o Medication facilitates skill development and skill development enhances
perceived efficacy
o Medication can undermine efficacy if coping successes are ascribed to
medication rather than improved capability
Perceived Coping Self-efficacy and Immunocompetence (274)
Psychosocial factors modulate the immune system in ways that can influence
susceptibility to illness
Immunoregulatory influence operates through
o Neuroanatomical
o Neurochemical
o Neuroendocrine . . . links of the central nervous system.
Three way perceived self-efficacy can affect immune functioning
o Stress mediation
Self efficacy to control stressors mediates their impact on immune
functioning
Immune cells have receptors for opiods
When opioids are blocked the stress of coping inefficacy loses it
immonosuppressive power
Exposure to stressors is accompanied by impairment of the immune
system
Decreased lymphocyte proliferative response to mitogen
stimulation
Reduced number of helper T lymphocytic and natural killer cell
activity
Weaker immunological control over latent herpes viruses
Depressed interferon production
Poorer DNA repair in lymphocytes exposed to X-radiation
Acquisition of perceived efficacy to control stressors produced changes in
immunity
Generally sustained changes over time
Mastery of choice stressors instills strong sense of efficacy and
leaves long lasting protective changes
Efficacy gained commandingly often conveys more generalized
sense of coping than efficacy gained laboriously
Laborious achievement of efficacy can leave on "sensitive"
Stress management skills
Decrease immunological vulnerability in healthy individuals
Increase immunofunctioning in metastic cancer patients
Enhance cellular and humoral immune functioning is seropositive
men in asymptomatic stages of HIV infection (Magic Johnson)
o Depression Mediation
Depression has been shown to reduce immune functioning and heighten
susceptibility to disease
Increased incidence of infectious diseases
Development and spread of malignant neoplasms
Accelerated rate of tumor cell growth
Efficacy to develop social relationships influences indirectly b/c
supportive relationships lessen the impact of adverse life events
o Control Mediation (277)
The central nervous system can exert regulatory influence on immune
functioning

Induced expectations affect physical reactions to allergens and

antigens
Expectancy learning can enhance immune functioning as well as
impair it
Prior experiences effectively to ineffectively managing environmental
demands affect beliefs about coping efficacy
Have physiological consequences when stressors are no loner
present
Mere thoughts about coping efficacy lower or heighten
autonomous activation
Situationally aroused beliefs may produce anticipatory
immunosuppressive or immunoenhancing effects
Example: Gastrointestinal disorders
Stress produces stomach upset, which can cause abdominal pain,
nausea, bloating, and diarrhea
Uncontrollable stressors trigger chemicals that wreak
gastrointestinal havoc
Can be fixed two ways
Pill that blocks brain chemicals activated by stressors
Gain permanent mastery over stressors in life
People ought to learn to exercise control in life habits rather than
rely on drugs
PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY IN HEALTH-PROMOTING BEHAVIOR (279)
Three basic processes of personal change
o Adoption of new behavior patterns
o Generalized use under differing circumstances
o Maintenance over time
Efficacy beliefs affect all three
o Whether people consider changing their health habits
o Whether they can enlist the motivation and perseverance
o Success in restoring control after setbacks
o Maintenance of changes
Initiation of Personal Change (279)
People see little point in even trying what they think they are incapable of
o Smokers who don't believe, don't try
o If they do they give up easily
Phases of habit change
o Efficacy rises as people move from disregarding habit changes to contemplating
it, to initiating it, to maintaining change
The media plays a role in reporting health issues
o Scare tactics often backfire
Fear without sense of personal control -> futility
o Efficacy in ability to stick to a hygiene routine is a better predictor for adopting
preventive practices
Fear arousal had little effect
o A shift in emphasis is required
From scaring people into health
To providing them with the tools needed to exercise personal control over
their health habits
Interventions
Guided self-enablement programs/mastery experience
o Emotions
Positive emotions increase the availability of thoughts about personal
success

Negative emotions male personal failure more salient

Public health messages that elicit positive emotions make people feel
more efficacious and optimistic
Health communications should emphasize that success requires
perseverant effort . . . so that people's sense of efficacy is not undermined
by a few setbacks" (p. 281).
Conceptual Models of Health Behavior (282) (see chart)
Health belief model
o Preventive health efforts are influenced by four factors
Perceived threats - provide motivation
Benefits - influence course of action to take
Barriers - influence course of action to take
Cues to action - experience and social prompts
Protections motivation
o Includes physical threat, adds to efficacy component
Response efficacy - whether a given course of action results in a given
attainment
"We are now in the age of cafeteria style theorizing in which constructs
are plucked from divergent theories and strung together in various
combinations as alternative conceptual schemes in the name of theoretical
integration" (p. 285).
Achievement of Personal Change (286)
Effective self-regulation is not achieved through an act of will. It requires the
development of self-regulatory skills.
o Monitor behavior they want to change
o Set short range, achievable sub goals (motivate)
o Enlist positive incentives and social supports (sustain motivation)
The stronger the efficacy beliefs the interventions instill, the more likely people are to
enlist personal resources and sustain effort needed to maintain healthy behaviors
o Enhancement of pulmonary functioning
o Recovery of cardiovascular functioning
o Reduction of pain in arthritis patience
o Ameliorate tension headaches
o Control of labor pain during labor and childbirth
o Manage lower back pain
o Stress reduction
o Weight reduction
o Control over bulemic behavior
o Reduction of cholesterol through diet
o Maintaining diabetic self-care
o Coping with invasive medical procedures
o Contraceptive use
o Controlling sexual practices
o Addictive habits
Alcohol abuse
Smoking
Opiate drugs
Maintenance of Personal Change (287) - Habits
Habit changes are of little consequence unless they endure
o Habits embedded in interpersonal relationships are not easy to break
o Maintenance of habit change relies heavily on self-regulatory capabilities
o Experiences in exercising control serve as efficacy builders

o Each mode for enhancing perceived efficacy helps develop a resilient sense of
efficacy
Enactive mastery -- structured demonstrations trials exercising control
over progressively more challenging tasks
Modeling - patients demonstrate how to cope with and reinstate control;
they make clear that success requires tenacious effort.
Persuasion - verbal persuasions - construing a slip as an occasion for
improvement supplants self-debilitating thoughts with constructive
problem solving
Long-term success in altering and maintaining health habits depends on self-regulatory
skills.
o Perceived self-efficacy is a good predictor of how well people stick to healthful
behavior
o Hypertension - the more firmly people believe in self-regulatory efficacy, the
more they practice relaxation
o Efficacy beliefs predict adherence to habits that enhance cardiovascular
functioning
o Predicts likelihood that organ transplant recipients will stick to immunosuppressive medication
o Self-management of diabetics regiments
Relapse Prevention and Management (289)
Relapse process is the same for
o Heroin addiction
o Alcoholism
o Smoking
Common pre-cipients include inability to manage negative emotional states like
o Stress
o Loneliness and depression
o Boredom and restlessness
o Social pressures
o Personal conflict
Mechanisms through which situational reminders prompt relapse
o Produce biological and cognitive change
o Familiar settings trigger biochemical reactions
o Familiar settings trigger positive or pleasurable outcome expectations
Courses of behavioral change include
o Improvements
o Plateaus
o Setbacks
o Recoveries
o "People often must go through several cycles of mastery and relapse before they
finally succeed" (p. 290).
o "Because serious attempts to quit are usually followed by lapses and relapses, the
mastery process is better viewed in terms of relapse management rather than
relapse prevention (p. 293).
Ecological Perspective on Efficacious Self-Regulation (p. 293).
Each of the three classes of interactants - environmental factors, self-system, behavioral
competencies - contribute to the long-term control of substance abuse. (Include little
triangle here)
o Social support and guidance during difficult times bolster the maintenance of
abstinence
o Environmental orientated approaches create social structures that enable people
to exert satisfying proactive control over their family, occupational, and
recreational lives.

Dynamics of Self-Regulation (p. 294)

An efficacy belief system is not an immutable trait
o Understanding self-regulatory efficacy requires ongoing assessment of
fluctuations of efficacy beliefs and behaviors they influence
o Proximal efficacy beliefs regulate behavior
Self-regulatory Model of Health Promotion and Risk Reduction (295)
"Health care has thus become a major domestic problem" (p. 295)
People who adopt healthful habits live not only longer but healthier lives, with less need
for medical services
o Health promotion policies pay for themselves
o Physicians do not change high-risk behavior thus -> minimal prevention and
costly remediation
Self Management and Chronic Disease (299)
Rather than receive enabling guidance, most people suffering from chronic illness are
heavily medicated or given guidelines that they ignore
Treatment of chronic disease must focus on self-management of physical conditions over
the lifetime rather than on care
o Pain amelioration
o Enhancement and maintenance of functioning with growing physical disabilities
o Development of self-regulatory compensatory skills
Holman and Lorig Model of self-management of chronic diseases
o Cognitive pain control techniques
o Self-relaxation
o Proximal goal-setting
o Self-diagnosis skills
o Skills in locating community resources
Social Diffusion of Health Promoting Practices (302)
An effective program of widespread change in health practices includes 4 major
components
o Informational - build up people's awareness of health risk ans benefits
o Self-regulatory - development of social and self-regulatory needs
o Building robust sense of efficacy to support exercise of control in face of
difficulties
o Enlisting and creating support for desired personal change
Informational
o Mass media can be used more effectively
o Despite high levels of knowledge about health risks, many people continue health
impairing practices
People need reasons and means to change
self-regulatory skills
o Motivation is not enough, skills must be developed
o Motivation without skills produces little change
Self-regulation operates through 3 main subfunctions
o Self - monitoring
o Goal setting
o Enlistment of self-incentives for personal change
Successful self-regulators enlist component subfactors of self-regulation
o Track their behavior
o Set proximal goals
o Draw from an array of coping strategies
o Create positive incentives for their efforts
Health Promotion in Childhood (303)
It is easier to prevent detrimental health habits than to try to change then

o Prevention should be given priority but rarely is

o Rising health costs are likely to change all that
School are natural settings for preventive programs
o Health promotion curriculum
o Healthy lunches
o New school based models (home community school)
o Current programs provide information but do little in the way of shaping and
regulating habits (305)
The programs that have proved most effective in substance abuse
o Strip the substance of its glamorous image
o Awarify students that substance abuse is not the norm
o Awarify students of health risks
o Model strategies for resisting social pressure
Social Supports for Personal Change (p. 307)
Personal change occurs within a network of social influences
o Social influences can aid efforts at personal change
o Social influences can retard efforts at personal change
o Social influences can undermine efforts at personal change
Subcommunity norms
o Taking drugs is a shared enterprise
o Kelly trained a group of well respected and popular students to lead the charge at
a school and it worked well
Social norms exert influence on behavior via 2 sanctions
o Social - community based models use both formal and informal networks
o Personal
o Community ownership is best achieved when a cadre of health educators is taught
how to design, co-ordinate and implement programs for disease prevention and
health
Health Enhancement Through Health Policy Initiation and Environmental Change (310)
Health habits are not totally under personal control. They are the products of reciprocal
interplay of personal and social influences
o Health of a nation is a social matter
o Personal beliefs in their collective efficacy to accomplish social change play a
key role in health policy
o Health field has sound policies but lacks the collective efficacy to realize them
Cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of death
o Kills more than 400,000 people a year
o More people die annually from smoking than from
Alcohol
Heroine
Cocaine
AIDS
Suicide
Homicide
Auto accidents
Fires
Combined
o 3000 children take up smoking daily
one-third will die of tobacco related disease
Unless people take up habits as youngsters, they rarely become smokers
during adulthood
Scope of Prognostic Schemas (313)
Factors to include in prognosis schemes

o Biological factors
o Social factors and influences
o Self-beliefs of patents
Psychological recovery from heart attack is a social rather than individual matter
o Spouses judgements have a strong impact
o Treadmill activities raised patients and spouses belief in patient ability to
withstand cardiovascular strain
Mode of conveying prognosis information (316)
o It is good to use verbal tasks, but add performance tasks as well
Self-Validating Potential of Prognostic Judgements (317)
Diagnostics not only foretell the course of recovery but may partly influence it
o They form expectations about probable courses of a disease
o These beliefs are conveyed to patients
o People whose beliefs were raised by bogus information exhibited functional
improvement in physical stamina and pain management
CHAPTER 8 - CLINICAL FUNCTIONING
ANXIETY AND PHOBIC DYSFUNCTIONS (319)
Most people admit to some phobic tendencies of varying intensity
o They have acute misgivings and suffer chronic distress
o They can't do things they find subjectively threatening (but which are objectively
safe)
o They shun easily manageable activities
For example, snake phobia inflicts suffering on human lives
o People abandon recreational activities
o Affects job
Firemen who won't fight grass fires
Biologists/geologists who avoid field work
Plumbers who cannot work outdoors
Often plagued by ruminating thoughts and nightmares
Spider phobia
o Affects marital relationships
o People are unable to enter places they perceive have spiders
o They constantly want to take baths
o They suffer from physiological reactions such as vomiting, shortness of breath
Some human debilities stem not so much from perceived inability to control the
environment as from one's self (mental functioning)
o Actors forget lines
o Singers forget lyrics
o Soloists forget well rehearsed sequences
o inefficacy can lead to memory lapses
Traumatic experiences - severe stress in relationships long after trauma
o Re-experience traumatic events in flashbacks
o Recurrent nightmares
o Hyper vigilant arousal
o Depression
o Self-devaluation
o Emotional detachment from others
o "The experience of powerlessness exacts a heavy toll on a sense of personal
efficacy" (321)
Social anxiety - overly concerned about what others think of them
o Shy away from social activities

o Are reluctant to express themselves

o Suffer discomfort in social situations
o Socially anxious individuals differ from those who are not socially anxious
mainly in dysfunctional beliefs of inefficacy rather than in their actual social
skills"
o "Once people form beliefs bout their social efficacy they construe their social
successes and failures in accordance with those beliefs"
Self-efficacy and Anxiety Control Theories (323)
"the notion that anticipatory anxiety controls avoidant behavior has been investigated and found
seriously wanting"
Studies
o Feedback of autonomic arousal is eliminated or medically blocked
o Occurrence of avoidant behavior is measured after anxiety arousal to threats has
been eliminated
o Change in anxiety arousal are related to changes in avoidant behavior during and
after treatment -> avoidant behavior is not controlled by anticipatory anxiety
o Routine avoidant acts prevent anxiety arousal rather than being motivated by it.
o Anxiety expectations are not sourceless . . .anxiety and biological stress reactions
are largely the products of perceived inefficacy to exert control over potentially
aversive events
Social cognitive view of anxiety
o It is mainly perceived inefficacy in coping with potential threats that gives rise to
anticipatory anxiety and avoidant behavior
o People avoid situations and activities that can be aversive not because they are
not beset with anxiety but because they believe they are unable to manage the
risky aspects
Those who judge themselves efficacious in managing threats neither fear
nor shun them
Those who are inefficacious envisage their inept coping as producing all
kinds of aversive outcomes
Human accomplishment requires efficacious thought to overrule visceral
arousal in the regulation of behavior
Agoraphobia
o Fear that they will be overcome by fear or panic attacks
o Neither anticipatory anxiety nor perceived danger predicts agoraphobic behavior
o Efficacy beliefs are highly predictive
Self-efficacy and anxiety arousal
o Accounts for variation in threatening academic performances
o Predicts performance on intimidating athletic tasks
o Predicts catastrophic worrying
o Predicts engagement in physical activity
Therapeutic Strategies: Stimulus Exposure Versus Mastery Experiences (326)
"Guided mastery is the most powerful form for enhancing beliefs of personal-efficacy, reducing
anxiety, and restoring behavioral functioning" (327).
"in vicarious modes of treatment, it is not mere exposure to models but the exemplification of
effective coping strategies and socially comparative indicants of capability that constitute the
critical influence" (328)
Guided Mastery (329)
"Although verbal analyses and social persuasion can produce some results, it is difficult to
achieve consistently major changes in human behavior by talk alone" (329).
Social cognitive theory prescribes mastery experience as the principal vehicle of personal
change
o Therapists must create enabling environmental conditions so that . . . phobics can
perform successfully despite themselves

Feared activities are first modeled to show people how to cope effectively
with threats
Modeling aids that cultivate competencies are especially important
Modeling alone produces some heightening of perceived self-efficacy
o Difficult or intimidating tasks are broken down into subtasks of readily mastered
steps
At any given point people are asked to do what is in their capabilities with
extra effort and perseverance
o Example: driving phobics
Start with brief trips on secluded streets, then advance to longer drives on
more active routes, and culminate with lengthy drives on the freeway
if phobics fail, they are quick to ascribe their difficulty to inherent
capability. The therapist must then ascribe the difficulty to the size of the
task demand. More easily achievable tasks are selected and attempted
o Joint performance of intimidating activities with the therapist can aid in several
ways
Presence of familiar persons reduces stress reactions and increases
boldness
People are not always aware and attentive when strategies are modeled in
safe settings
they benefit greatly from ongoing corrective modeling specifically
focused on the problematic aspects of their capabilities
Rituals often increase exercise of control over outcomes - therapist ought
to get rid of them
Modification of faulty thought patterns
Clients may adopt different thought patterns in benign interview
settings
In the participant arrangement the therapist is present to identify
and correct dysfunctional patterns of thinking as they arise in
taxing situations and suggest strategies to foster successful
performance
Graduated time
Enduring stressors in short bursts to develop coping efficacy
Gradually increasing durations
Mastery aids are useful here too
Facets of Personal Change (332)
There are four processes of change
o Acquisition - development of knowledge, skills, and self-beliefs that govern
human though, affect, and action
o Generality - how widely acquired capabilities are used
Generality across situations
Toward different persons
Across modalities of thought, affect, and action
o Durability - how well changes are sustained over time
o Resilience - ability to recover readily from aversive experiences
Social Cognitive Theory asks analytic questions
o What is the power of treatment to produce personal change?
o Do the changes generalize or are they narrow in scope?
o How well are they maintained over time
o Does treatment build resilience to adversity?
the goal is to create treatments that realize all four facets of personal
change
o How the treatments affect vulnerability to aversive experiences

Treatments should build resilience reflected in the ability to bounce back

from adverse experiences
A resilient sense of efficacy is not created by a few successes
Mastering increasingly tougher challenges
Independent personal accomplishments build resilience
Distinguishing between mechanisms and modes of change (333)
There is a common misconception that the modality of treatment must match the
o modality of dysfunction
o behavioral dysfunctions require action oriented treatment
o emotional distresses require emotive oriented thinking
o faulty thinking requires a cognitively oriented treatment
o "In fact, powerful experiences produce changes in all modalities of functioning behavioral, cognitive, and affective" (p. 333)
o "we do not think our way into a pattern of living, we live our way into a pattern
of thought" John Dewey67
Two diverging roads in psychology
o Explaining psychological changes relies increasingly on cognitive mechanisms
o Performance based treatments operating through mastery experiences are proving
most powerful in producing cognitive, affective, and behavioral change
Common Mediating Mechanisms (334)
Enactive - produces highest, strongest, and most generalized increases in personal
efficacy
Vicarious - modeling conveys information on the predictability and controllability of
threats
Cognitive - generating cognitive scenarios in which they repeatedly confront threatening
situations and gain mastery
Emotive - threats are broken down into a graded hierarchy of menacing encounters for
visualization
"Results confirm that differing modes of treatment all raise and strengthen beliefs in
coping efficacy" (335).
Next step: Understanding the restructuring of efficacy-beliefs
Cognitive behavior therapy
o Human problems and distresses arise from faulty thinking
o Treatments seek to eradicate phobic dysfunctions by altering faulty modes of
thinking
o "To christen thought as verbal behavior is to stretch the definition of behavior to
the point where it ceases to have any meaning. One can have thoughts without
words" (338).
o "Distressed people create perturbing realities by how they behave as well as by
misreading what they encounter in their everyday life" (338)
DEPRESSION (343)
"Depression has come to be regarded as the common cold of psychosocial functioning" (343).
Depression is caused by many different things, and, thus, no one treatment can
effectively mitigate its effects.
o Interpersonal model - depression in rooted in relationship models
Lives devoid of affection and companionship or beset by interpersonal
discord and severed affectional relationships are prone to suffer bouts of
depression
Despondency turns people off which leads to more despondency
o Self-schema theory - depression is basically a thinking disorder
People prone to depression negatively distort and misinterpret events
Male erroneous inferences
Take things out of context
Overgeneralize personal deficiencies

Turn ordinary mistakes and setbacks into catastrophes

Personalize negative happenings that have little or nothing to do
with them
Think dichotomously (astute or stupid, courageous or cowardly)
Become skilled at discounting their successes and positives
o Harsh standards of self-evaluation give rise to chronic depression, feelings of
worthlessness, and lack of purposefulness
e.g. Ernest Hemingway
Unattainable demands
Demeaned his own accomplishments
o Dysfunctional self-evaluation system. People who are prone to depression
Are not charitable with themselves
Are self-belittling when others surpass them
Impose unreachable standards
Are self-denying and punitive for failures
o Biochemical dysfunctions
Depletion of neurotransmitters
Biological and psychological functions operate bidirectionally
Mastery oriented treatment that instills a strong sense of coping efficacy
normalizes neurotransmitter functioning
EATING DISORDERS (249)
The most disordered eating patterns appear in anorexia and bulemia
o Crash and liquid diets do not work
The body adjusts by slowing down the rate at which it burns calories, so it
takes fewer calories to put on pounds
Restrictive eating patterns and self-devaluation are the problems requiring
treatment
Obesity (350)
A variety of factors contribute to obesity
o Genetic makeup
o Fats cells developed during growth spurts
o Metabolism
o Caloric intake
o Activity level
Obesity is more prevalent among people of low SES
o Less likely to adopt exercise programs
o less likely to eat low calorie, nutritious food
o More prevalent in the Midwest and among ethnic minorities
Efforts to control obesity psychological center on 2 factors
o Change in eating habits
o Adoption of exercise habits
o "Lasting control of obesity requires lifestyle changes rather than just cutting
calories intermittently" (350)
Effective self-regulation operated through a set of psychological subfunctions that
facilitate and maintain habit change
o Regular self-monitoring of eating habits
o adopting attainable sub goals
o Arranging self-incentives
o Altering dysfunctional styles of thinking about eating that undermine selfregulatory behavior
o Substituting other activities for eating
o Restructuring the environment to reduce instigators
Self-Efficacy in the Regulation of Eating and Exercise Habits (351)

Perceived self-efficacy to exercise control over eating habits encompasses a variety of

aspects
o Perceived self-efficacy to resist overeating when
Experiencing negative emotions
Social pressures to eat
Engaging in enjoyable activities
When high calorie foods are available]

Bulemia (354)
The preoccupation with thinness has seeped down to preadolecence breeding eating
disorders that often plague later life
o 1/3 of young girls resort to unhealthy dieting or purging
o Bulimics hold a distorted view of themselves as portly
o Emotional states often trigger binges and purges
o "It is not emotional distress per se, but perceived inefficacy to mange emotional
distress that gives rise to overeating" (p. 354)
o "A low sense of efficacy to manage stressful events and to resist urges to eat was
predictive of bulimic behavior" (p. 354)
Bulemia is part of a larger life-management problem
o Rooted in dysfunctional personal relationships
o High standards of performance
o Stereotyped sex-roles
o Excessive investment of self-worth in physical appearances
o In studies, the more individuals raised their perceived self-regulatory efficacy the
less they purged
Socially Oriented Initiatives (356)
Part of the effort to ameliorate the epidemic problem of dieting and eating disorders
should be directed at raising collective efficacy to alter sociocultural values and
standards of physical attractiveness that breed health problems and self-devaluation.
The media must be sensitized to the fact that the svelte models of beauty they propagate
create severe pressures on young women to try to conform to this ideal of femininity
ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE (357)
Studies of the life course of alcohol abuse reveal that it develops gradually over a long period of
social drinking rather than abruptly as the disease model would lead one to believe
In the biopsychosocial interactional model
o Alcoholism is a multidetermined behavior pattern that varies across individuals in
severity, patterns of causal influence, and amenability to personal control.
Treatment strategies must be tailored to the particular constellation of
determinants operating in any given case.
Whatever treatment is selected, it must address the client's sense of
efficacy to control their drinking and their outcome expectations
Genetic factors may operate indirectly thorough their influence on
temperamental personality characteristics that predispose some youngsters
to drinking as well as other problem behaviors
Social models are powerful sharers of alcohol consumption
Televised modeling of drinking increase pro-drinking attitudes
Societies where alcoholic beverages are used as a food and not a drug are
less plagued with drinking problems
Self-Regulatory Efficacy in Alcohol Abuse (p. 358)
Alcohol is used by adults as a social facilitator and drinking is a significant part of social
activities
o A low sense of efficacy to regulate drinking in situations of social pressure is a
strong predictor of alcohol consumption

o If heavy drinkers are to manage their alcohol consumption, they must exercise
control over where and with whom they hang out.
People base their actions more on what they believe than on what is objectively the case.
o Males believe that liquor incenses sexual prowess when in fact it impairs
physiological sexual response
o It is a widely shared belief that alcohol reduces tension but that may work
because of the belief that it reduces tension "individuals who have learned to
respond to stress and dysphoric mood by heavy drinking need to develop more
effective ways of managing stressors" (p. 359)
The types of treatments that have been shown effective include
o Training in interpersonal skills
o Counteracting social pressures to drink
o Stress management
o Developing positive peer relations
o Cognitive skills for managing stressors
Self-Efficacy Mechanisms in Treatment Effects (361)
Perceived self-efficacy is an important operative factor in initiation, attainment, and
maintenance of changes in drinking behavior
o Those with low efficacy will not even try
o Those who enter treatment with nagging doubts give up quickly
The benefits from drinking have been considered one of the factors that maintains
drinking behavior
o Positive and negative consequences
o Contributes to
Health
Self-respect
Better future
o And may lead to
Loneliness
Reduction in expressiveness and outgoingness
Increased boredom
Drug Dependence (364)
Scope and Use of Self-Efficacy Analysis in Addictive Habits (367)
The overall findings provide converging evidence that perceived self-efficacy partly
determines success in altering detrimental addictive and consummatory habits and in
adhering to altered habits over the long term
o Most people who enter treatment do not do so with a robust sense of confidence
o They are not gladdened to hear that therapists an provide guidance but that they
will have to serve as the main agents of their own change
There are several sources of motivation that drive people to seek help with detrimental
habits
o Aversive effects of such habits
o Social pressures to alter them
o Self-dissatisfaction with ones life
o Anticipated benefits of eliminating injurious habits
These may bring people to treatment but will not keep them there for long
Self-efficacy theory accounts for
o initiation of self-change
o Level of behavioral changes
o Rate of change during the course of treatment
o Variations in behavioral changes achieved by individual receiving the same
treatment
o And provides explicit guidelines for how to structure and implement powerful
treatments

CHAPTER 9 - ATHLETIC FUNCTIONING

Success in athletic competition requires more than physical skills.
Cognitive factors play an influential role in athletic development and functioning
Belief in athletic efficacy determines who chooses to pursue athletic activities
The execute skills athletes must exercise control over
o Acute stressors
o Vexing pain
o Discouraging slumps
Cognitive Phase of Skill Development (371)
Cognitive representation in the first of athletic skills developed
o Modeling
The most effective way of transmitting information about a skill is
through proficient modeling
Observing models perform allows individuals to gain knowledge about
the dynamic structure skills being acquired
In viewing modeled skill, attention must be paid and symbolisms must be
formed
o Fixed skills - predictable situations - diving, golf, darts
o Generative skills - unpredictable elements - basketball, football
o Information for skill development can be modeled by
Pictures
Demonstrations
Verbal instructions
o Computers and tv are helpful modeling tools
Allow athletes to follow their own enactments
High speed cameras capture what the eye misses
Self-modeling is a great way to learn to perfect athletic skills
Performances are captured on film
Film is edited and flaws are cut out
Raises efficacy as well as skill
Making the Unobservable Informatively Observable (373)
A common problem in mastering athletic skills is that performers cannot fully observe
their own behavior
o Swimmers and golfers
o Thus they may practice faulty habits
o Video feedback holds the solutions
The automation of complex skills involves atleast three (3) major processes
o Mergerization - segments of skills are merged into larger skills until it becomes
fully integrated
o Production of Contextual linkages - actions are linked to recurrent contexts
o Shift in attention from execution of action to its correllational results - focus on
the target, not the mechanics
Cognitive Enactment (visualization)
Visualization is a cognitive skill that must be developed
o Individuals must mot be told just to visualize with no guidance
o Good visualizers profit more from cognitive enactment
o Executional success is a matter of self-belief as well as skill
o There are many constraints on when one can practice physically, but skilled
performances can be visualized repeatedly with no sweat at any time and place
o Cognitive stimulation diverts attention from disruptive thoughts in stressful,
competitive situations
o Visualizing positive outcomes raises efficacy which in turn boosts performance

There are many facets of athletic skills that can be the focus of attention
o Cognitive
Plans
Strategies
o Motor - regulation of action patterns and accompanying sensations
o Emotive - stress management and reduction of tension
Impact of Model Attributes on Self-Efficacy and Performance (379)
The impact of athletic models
o Assumed similarity carries a heavy weight
o Women are especially inclined to act on their belief if the models voice belief in
themselves
o Of special interest is power of a presumably superior athlete to undermine the
efficacy beliefs of uncertain people
o Given a choice individuals are likely to select models with similar attributes and
ignore those with whom they have little in common
o Results clearly show the strength of self-modeling proficiency
Self-efficacy's Contribution to Acquisition of Motor Skills (380)
Most people regard athletic skills as depending on innate endowment
o Aptitude is converted to mastery through effort
o Ought not view physical ability as an inherent aptitude
Efficacy differs from confidence
o Confidence is a non descriptive term that refers to strength of belief
o Perceived self-efficacy is given powers of attainment
The field of sports psychology is heavily invented in personality trait measures
o They do not have predictive power
o They provide little guidance for how to structure training
o Efficacy beliefs and goals were more predictive of athletic functioning than was
"competitiveness"
Self-Regulation of Athletic Performance (383)
Cognitive Aspects of Athletic Ability
A common mistake is to judge ability by physical skills alone
o Perceived self-efficacy emerges as the sole determinant of overtime performance
o Athletic performance is co-determined
o "Can he win when he doesn't have his good stuff?"
o A capability is only as good as its execution
Level of perceived self-efficacy is the one psychological factor that most consistently
differentiates successful from less successful athletes across a variety of sports
o Raising efficacy beliefs : competitors outperformed opponents
o Beliefs in efficacy contribute to resilience against the adverse effects of defeat
o In some, mere sight of a formidable opponent instills lower efficacy beliefs
o Athletes of comparable abilities but differing self-assurance do not perform at the
same level
Efficacy Beliefs in Performance Regulation by Goal Challenges (386)
Personal challenges through goal setting contribute to athletic skill
o String motivators
o Combine proximal with distal goals
o Self-respect operates as a powerful motivator
o The higher the self set goal, the better the performance
o In accord with goal theory, performance attainments are better predicted by
personal goals than by assigned ones
The form that goals take affect motivation
o Poor goals are
Vague

 Distant or remote
Easy to fulfill
Goals without feedback
o Better goals are
Set high
Include achievable sub goals
Feedback allows foe adjustments
Goals + efficacy to reach them = performance
Perceived Efficacy in Management of Competitive Stress and High Risks (388)
Relation between anxiety and impaired performance
o In social cognitive theory, anxiety and impaired performances are coeffects of a
low sense of efficacy to meet competitive demands
o In basketball, efficacy accounted for 40% of anxiety
o A common assumption in sports psychology is that anxiety arousal debilitates
performance. "Whatever effects physiological arousal might have are likely to
depend more on
How much attention is paid to it
Whether it is interpreted as being psyched up or distressed
o To the extent that perceived arousal affects performance, it does so through the
influence of efficacy belief
Thought Control Efficacy in Managing Stressors, Failures, and Slumps (391)
Consummate athletes have a remarkable efficacy to block out distractions and control
disruptive, negative thinking
o "I don't worry about who's on base, who's at bat . . . I just concentrate on the next
pitch"
o "It is me and the shot."
o Athletes must develop the efficacy to cope with failure because it is visited upon
them unmercifully often (391)
A lot of stress is self-inflicted
Dwelling on failures rather than savoring successes
All athletes make mistakes
o People can better rid themselves of disruptive thinking by concentrating their
attention on the task at hand
In athletes, weak efficacy heightens vulnerability to adversity
o Get down on themselves
o Brood over mistakes
o Conjure up disastrous mistakes
o Inefficacy feeds on itself
Efficacious athletes do not exacerbate performances problems by disruptive emotional
patterns and disruptive thought patterns
o Cognitive restructuring help "one shot at a time"
o Relax performance standards - more things are viewed as successes
o Good old fashioned "short rest" and break from the game
o Conquering a slum is not entirely an individual matter
Self-Management of Pain and Recovery from Injury (393)
Athletes do not come equipped with fewer pain receptors than non athletes
o They must learn to play through pain and fatigue
o The belief that pain is controllable makes it so
o Efficacy beliefs aid in recovering from injury
Self-Efficacy enhancement of Athletic Performance (394)
Past Performances
o Performance is not a cause of performance

o Different occasions mean different determinants, including

Perceived self-efficacy
Goal aspirations
expected outcomes
Perceived constraints
o Under some conditions, prior performance is an inflated predictor of itself
When non ability factor is extracted in Multivariate analysis
routine is performed repeatedly in isolation
Efficacy Belief in Transcendent Attainments (396)
Analysis of breaking records
o Regardless of athletic activity, immediately after a barrier is broken, it is rapidly
surpassed by others
o Once extraordinary performances are shown to be attainable, they become
commonplace
o Records are not broken in uniform gradations, but in step like triumphs (chunks)
Coaching Influences on Development and Maintenance of Self-Efficacy (397)
Coaches may differ in style, but they all have remarkable efficacy in their abilities to
motivate and teach
o They get their players to believe in themselves
o This is achieved not through rambling pep talks, but through careful mastery
experiences
o They model confidence
o They provide corrective feedback
o They place players in game situations and have them execute plays that have a
good chance of success
o Work them gradually into pressure situations
o Removing athletes prematurely undermines their efficacy
o What counts is not the failure or the difficulty, but how it is construed and framed
by the coach
Collective Efficacy and System Interdependence (403)
A highly gifted player can raise team efficacy
A weak link can lower team efficacy
The whole of a team is much greater than the sum of its parts
o Players often judge team efficacy higher than individual player ability
o A collection of superstars often fails to produce a championship team
Preparatory Efficacy versus Performance Efficacy (405)
Momentum
o Occurs when perceived self-efficacy and performance build on each other in an
upward cycle
o Is governed by changes in perceived competitive efficacy, immediate strategies
and microgoals for gaining control, self-evaluative reactions, and concerns over
likely outcomes
CHAPTER 10 - ORGANIZATIONAL FUNCTIONING
"This chapter examines the role of perceived self-efficacy in what people choose as their life's
work, how well they prepare themselves for their chosen pursuits, and the level of success they
achieve" (422).
CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND PURSUITS (422)
In making career decisions, people must come to grips with
o uncertainties about their capabilities,
o the stability of their interests,
o the current and long range prospects of alternative occupations,
o the accessibility of potential careers,

o and the type of identity they seek to construct for themselves

Career Choice and Development (423)
People with higher perceived self-efficacy to fulfil job functions consider a wider range
of career options
o Some people eliminate entire classes of vocations based on perceived efficacy
o Perceived mathematics self-efficacy contributes more to educational and career
choice than does amount preparation in high school, level of mathematical ability,
prior achievement, and anxiety.
Sex differences in fulfilling duties
o Women judge themselves less efficacious for scientific occupations than men
o Women express lower sense of efficacy for occupations requiring quantitative
skills and activities
People act on their beliefs of vocational efficacy as well as their knowledge about career
options
o Perceived self-efficacy to master scientific knowledge predicts successful
academic coursework and perseverance
o Perceived self-efficacy is predictive of withdrawal from other fields as well
Perceived efficacy can also affect career pursuits through interest
o Higher perceived efficacy is related to high interest
o Efficacy beliefs raise interest (we are interested in things we think we may be
good at)
Comparative Tests of Theories of Career Choice (425)
People seek a match between their interests and occupational environments
o Artistic types seek artistic environments
o Technical types seek technical environments
Wheeler compares the predictiveness of self-efficacy and expectancy value theory
o Outcomes included salary, security, social status, freedom to exercise initiative,
chance to learn new competencies, chance to advance to leadership,
o Efficacy-beliefs contribute more heavily to occupational preferences
Perceived efficacy is a robust contributor to career development
o It predicts the scope of career options
o Occupational interests and preferences
o Perseverance in difficult fields
o Academic success in those chosen pursuits
o Choice of cultural milieu
Exploratory Decision Making and Fulfillment of Occupational Roles (427)
Men and women often differ in their perceived capabilities for various occupations but
not in their perceived capability to arrive at decisions about which to pursue
o Men may consider a wider range of options
o Women may consider less options
o Women who enter male dominated occupations encounter considerably more
obstacles and barriers than do their male counterparts
Perceived Efficacy in Employability and Reemployment (429)
Most job openings are discovered through friends, acquaintances and circles of
associates
Successful preemployment
o Perceived self-efficacy predicts successful preemployment after job loss
o Other factors examined were
Age
Marital status
Length of tenure
Quality of job performance
Depression

Perceived obstacles
Perceived efficacy emerged as the only significant predictor of
subsequent preemployment (429)
Betz and Hackett have identifies a number of skills that relate to success in occupational
roles
o Ability to communicate well
o Relate effectively to others
o Plan and manage demands of one's job
o Exercise leadership
o Cope with stress effectively
Gender Differences in Occupational Self-Efficacy (430)
Although women make up approximately 50% of the total work force not may choose
technical and scientific careers
o They typically maintain clerical, service, or sales jobs
o Largely employed in traditionally female fields
Women's beliefs about their capabilities and career aspirations are shaped by
o Family
Parents expectations often differ by sex
o Educational system
o Mass media
o Culture at large
o Boys tend to inflate their sense of competence, girls generally disparage their
capabilities
Eccles (1989) found that parents generally subscribe to the stereotype that girls are less
talented in mathematics than boys, despite equal grades.
o Although boys and girls do not differ initially in their perceived mathematical
abilities, girls begin to lose confidence and diverge increasingly as time goes on
o They avoid math activities and classes creating the very gender differences
parents originally presumed to exist
o Current studies reveal a smaller disparity between male a female beliefs in pursuit
of occupational careers

Gender bias in classrooms

o Teachers convey lower expectations of girls academically
o Different criticisms
Boys disruptive behavior; failure attributed to lack of effort
Girls intellectual aspect of girls work; attribute failures to ability
o School counselors encourage boys in scientific fields
o Peers (children) already stereotype career occupations as early as preschool
o Preschoolers ascribe to the stereotype that boys possess higher intellectual
capabilities than girls
Stereotypes
o Women are cast in non achieving roles; subordinate; emotional
o Men are cast as directive, venturesome, enterprising, recreational
Perceived mathematical efficacy
o Prior mathematical experience and gender affect mathematical performance
largely through their impact on efficacy belief
o Girls underestimate their mathematical ability whereas boys overestimate theirs
Environment affects beliefs in mathematical competencies
o Women from single sex schools who cite males teachers as boosting their efficacy
the most, have a higher sense of efficacy for nontraditional careers than those
from coeducational schools
o Women's lowered sense of mathematical self-efficacy is changeable
Ethnicity and Occupational Self-Efficacy (436)

Ethnic minorities are also under represented in the science and engineering
o %age of non-Asian minorities has been decreasing
o Minority students generally have a low sense of efficacy for scientific and
technological careers
Enhancement of Occupational Self-Efficacy (438)
Solutions to restricted aspirations require personal and social remedies
o Programs to support minorities in occupations
o Exposure to appropriate models
o Eliminating self-belittling biases
MASTERY OF OCCUPATIONAL ROLES (439)
Development of Competencies through Mastery Modeling (440)
Humans have an advanced capacity for observational learning
o Direct experience (tutorial) is often overused
o Models portray values, thinking patterns, and behavior
o Skills can be
Fixed
Generative
Instructive Modeling (441)
Modeling is the first step in developing competencies
o Skills are broken down into subskills
o Skills are then modeled on videotape
o Modeling ought also include the development and articulation of requisite beliefs
in personal efficacy
o "Mastery modeling works much better than lectures" (441)
People learn thinking skills by observing models think aloud
o Verbal models verbalize their thought processes as they evaluate the problem,
seek information, and generate alternative solutions
o Verbal models hold attention better
o Produce faster learning
Guided Skill Perfection (443)
Practice and role rehearsal
People need feedback how they are doing
o Videotape replays combined with instructional feedback are useful to show
people how they are doing
o Performance feedback mus include corrective changes that need to be made
o Corrective modeling is most informative and achieves the greatest improvements
An important aspect of occupational training includes training to be resilient to difficulty
Transfer Training by Self-Directed Success (444)
New skills are unlikely to be used for ling unless they are put into practice (444)
o New skills ought be tried in job situations likely to produce good results
o These successful experiences are followed up by discussions about difficulties
and successes
o Training programs ought to provide ample practice and success experiences to
gain proficiency
o "When instructive modeling is combined with guided role rehearsal and a guided
transfer program, this mode of organizational training usually produces excellent
results" (444)
Self-efficacy in Occupational Socialization (445)
Newcomers come with varied beliefs in personal efficacy
o Training strategies ought to be focused on confidence and competence
o Reduces anxiety
o Structures guidance lowered anxiety whereas self-study tutorials made them more
anxious
o Training contributed to growth of occupational self-efficacy

Efficacious Adaptability (448)

people experience a high rate of change across vocations over the ful course of their
working lives
o Technological change is fast
o Slow changers can become big losers
People must take charge of their own self-development
Any insecurities people have about their learning capabilities are
reacted when they have to learn new ways of thinking and doing
things
Perceived self-inefficacy contributes to occupations transition
problems
o There are three (3) types of changes that require different forms of efficacy
Reactive efficacy requires close monitoring of trends in the marketplace
Efficacy to create incremental improvements in existing products and
services
Innovative efficacy is when knowledge is synthesized into new ways of
thinking and doing things.
SELF-EFFICACY IN ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION MAKING (450)
Decision making is neither a dispassionate process nor one driven solely by the desire to
maximize self-interest
o Emotional factors favor and foreclose certain options
o People do not merely seek utility
o Since they have to live with themselves they tend to choose courses of action
bring them self-satisfaction and a sense of self worth and reject those that are
self-devaluating
Managerial Decision Making (451)
Managers must understand how their decisions affect the motivations and performance of
others
o They must link short term goals with distal organizational objectives
o Effective decision making requires a generative capability
o People who judge themselves inefficacious in managing environmental demands
tend to become ore self-diagnostic than task diagnostic
Appraising Opportunities and Risks and Managing Constraints (455)
Managers beliefs in their decisional efficacy affect their appraisal orientations
Perceived self-efficacy affects risk taking
Entrepreneurship rests heavily on a robust sense of efficacy
Having an entrpreneurial parent raises offsprings efficacy to begin and run their own
business
Visionaries who have had successful businesses
o Personality trait bore no predictiveness
o They had a vision of what they wanted to achieve
o Had a firm belief in their efficacy to achieve it
o Set challenging goals
o Innovative production and management
o "The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit. I never
quit until I get what I want." -Thomas Edison
Enhancing Resilience to Managerial Stressors (456)
Conception of ability
o Ought to be viewed as an acquirable ability
o Those who view it as an inherent capability become beset with self doubts
o One can always match or even surpass the attainments of others by gaining more
knowledge and perfecting ones skills

The debilitating effects of social comparisons can be reduced by judging ones

accomplishments against personal standards of self improvement rather than against the
attainments of others
o Self-comparative focuses develops persona l challenges without being haunted by
how others do
o Self comparison is not an unmitigated benefit however
Improvement does not follow an ever rising course
It is characterized by spurts improvement, setback, plateaus and variations
in rate of progress
Hence, self comparisons can be self demoralizing or self enhancing
Self -Efficacy in Policy Making and Receptivity to Innovations (458)
Effective leadership requires receptivity to innovations that can improve the quality and
production of organizations
SELF-EFFICACY IN ENACTMENT OF OCCUPATIONAL ROLES (460)
Perceived self-efficacy affects how well individuals manage requirements and challenges
of occupational pursuits
Self-Efficacy in Management by Goal Setting (460)
Goals improve the level of functioning in several ways
o Sense of purpose and direction
o String motivational effect
o Raise and sustain levels of effort needed to succeed
o Build and strengthen a sense of efficacy
o Create self satisfaction and interest
o "Motivation through aspiration"
How to design and implement goal systems
o Good measures of performance
o Should include only aspects of the work over which workers have control
o Should provide an overall index of organizational productivity
o Assess where the system is working well and where improvements are needed
Participative Goal Setting (462)
When people have a say in the goals that are selected, they hold themselves responsible
for fulfilling them and thereby self-evaluative motivators in the process
When goals are imposed by others, individuals do not necessarily accept them or feel
obligated to meet them
People perform better with goals
Collaborative decision making involves more than goal setting
Contribution of Self-Efficacy to Creative Productivity (463)
Success in academia rests heavily on research productivity
o Scientific discovery is usually a tortuous one with uncertain outcomes
o It requires creativity, staying power, good fortune
o Perceived self-efficacy contributes to productivity both directly and indirectly by
influencing goals of scholarship
o High productivity harvests citations in professional journals and commands, good
salaries and promotions
Publish or Perish
o Why should the quest for knowledge require social coercion?
o Faculty hold lower perceived self-efficacy for research than for teaching
Occupational Stress and Dysfunction (464)
Perceived self-efficacy to fulfill occupational demands affects level of stress and the
physical health of employees
o Those with low self-efficacy
Suffer anxiety
Health problems

 Health impairing habits

Occupational stress
o Work places are often structured in a way to breed stress
o Computers provide tracking of employee performance
o Stress is when task demands exceed perceived ability to do them
Employees with a low sense of efficacy are stressed by heavy work
demands
Those with high self-efficacy are stressed by limited opportunities to
make full use of their talents
Some strategies for relieving stress rely on cognitive reappraisals of situations
o View problems as challenges
o Focus on positive aspects in otherwise negative situations
o Considering how things could be much worse
o Placing petty problems in larger perspective
o Reexamining priorities
o Seeking solace form others
COLLECTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL EFFICACY (468)
Effective exercise of collective action involves more complex socially mediated paths of
influence then individual self-direction
o People have to depend on one another
o Interdependent linkage of tasks, skills and roles
o People are affected by the beliefs, quality of performance, and motivations of
others
Individualistic versus Collective Efficacy (470)
Some societies encourage individualism, others a collective ethic
o The effects of a collective orientation on efficacy beliefs are more complex than
saying "collectivists work better in groups than independently
o American managers represent individualistic culture
o Chinese managers represent a collectivist culture
o Regardless of background, employees achieve the greatest sense of personal selfefficacy and productivity gains when training s congruent with their personal
orientations than when it is discordant
o Both at the cultural and personal levels, a strong sense of efficacy fosters high
effort and productivity
Organizational Learning (472)
There are fundamental differences between individual and organizational learning
o At the individual level, the same person performs each subjunction
o At the organizational level, it depends on different subgroups
o Viewed from the perspective of Social Cognitive Theory, organizational learning
occurs through interactive psychosocial processes rather than through reified
organizational attributes operating independently of individual's behavior
Radical innovations encounter more problems in product development than do
incremental improvements in existing products
o Missteps are the part and parcel of experimentation with new ideas
o Learning from failure is a critical part of organizational learning that requires
allowance in creative work life
o Thomas Edison tested 1600 different filaments before finding one suitable for
light bulbs, and then continued to search for the best filament by testing 6000
novel materials
The second type of creativity largely involves synthesizing existing knowledge into new
ways of thinking and doing things
o Many innovations are achieved by modeling (reverse engineering)
o Organizations do not have the time and money to keep reinventing core
characteristics of good products, services, and systems

The third process of creativity is serendipity

o It gives birth, from time to time, to innovations
o New products and major industries often spring from happenstance
o The Kellogg brothers made cereal because they neglected to return to the over on
time. Instead of biscuits, they had dried crust that became flakes and gave rise to
the cereal industry (474)
o Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by neglecting to discard old culture
dishes, thus giving the penicillin mold sufficient time to develop

CHAPTER 11 - COLLECTIVE EFFICACY

"Perceived collective efficacy is defined s a group's shared belief in its conjoint capabilities to
organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainments"
(477).
The collective belief centers on the groups operative capabilities
Interactive dynamics create an emergent property that is more than the sum of its
individual attributes.
Several factors contribute to interactive effects
o Mix of knowledge and competencies
o How the group is structured
o How well it is led
o How the members interact with each other (undermining or building)
GAUGING COLLECTIVE EFFICACY (478)
There are two approaches to the measurement and evaluation of collective efficacy
o Aggregate members appraisals of their personal capabilities for the functions they
perform in the group
o Aggregate members' appraisals of their groups capabilities as a whole
o Beliefs of personal efficacy are not detached from the larger social system
For instance, a quarterback considers his offensive line, receivers, etc.
o The two indices of collective efficacy are at least moderately coordinated
Perceived collective efficacy is not a monolithic group attribute
o Teachers at differing grade levels face different challenges that vary in
amenability to personal control
o Individuals occupying different roles or positions in the same social system may
differ somewhat in their in how they view their groups collective efficacy
Collective efficacy is of course rooted in self-efficacy
o A group of elf-doubters is not molded into a collectively efficacious force
o A weak link that has to perform interdependently can spell group failure
o A group of highly efficacious individuals may perform poorly if they do not work
well together
Beliefs of collective efficacy predict level of group performance
o The stronger the beliefs they hold about their collective capabilities, the more
they achieve
o Schools, organizations, and athletic teams
Bandura (1993) did a collective efficacy study of 79 schools .
The stronger the staffs' shared belief in their instructional efficacy, the
better the school performed academically
Political Efficacy (483)
Perceived political efficacy involve peoples beliefs that they can influence the political
system
o Personal efficacy needed to produce results by effort and use of capabilities

o How amenable social systems are to change by individual and collective

influence
o Individuals who judge themselves powerless effect little effort or change
Structure of Political Efficacy Beliefs (485)
Social cognitive theory posits that political activity is better explained and predicted by
particularized efficacy beliefs that bear on legislative activities
o Locus of control is non predictive of political action
o General, global measures are weakly predictive
Human survival in the nuclear age requires the inhabitants of nations to challenge the
military doctrines and justifications for nuclear weapons.
o Those who choose to get involved in nuclear disarmament activities have higher
collective efficacy than those who remain inactive
o It is easier to exert collective efficacy in close knit communities
Participatory Dilemmas in Collective Action (488)
Significant social changes are typically spearheaded by a minority bearing the full
burden
o Social activism is a dynamic, not static affair
o Group success brings benefits to the participants
o People derive self-respect from challenging social practices that violate their
ethical standards
o A strong sense of camaraderie provides sustaining interpersonal rewards at a time
when the tangible benefits of social change may be long in coming
o The more a persons well being and identity are tied to a group, the stronger are
the felt obligations to the cause.
Joint Impact of Efficacy and System Trust on Political Activism (490)
People who believe that they can help to achieve desired futures will act on that belief
regardless of whether they hold the political system in high or low regard.
Those who are active within the political system believe they can influence it
Research on political efficacy must therefore assess not only a multi faceted efficacy
belief system, but also different forms of political activism at different levels of
government systems.
Development of Political and System Trust (491)
Beliefs that one can influence the government start early in life.
o Listening to adults model political attitudes
o Their ability to influence adults and/or teachers at school may play a part
o Adult females feel less politically efficacious than adult males
Electronic Campaigning and the Political Process (492)
Political parties and commercial interests with a lot of financial clout are increasingly
orchestrating legislative activities over the media airwaves
o Talk radio
o Television call in media
o The media coverage of campaigns has shifted from political issues to tactics of
electoral races
It is a negative state of affairs that frustrating peoples and see politics as
manipulative
Computer politicking does not regulate quality of political discourse or
interchanges
o In this era of electronic campaigning, image politics orchestrated by pollsters,
computer programmers, and image makers has become the major source for
influencing the electorate
It is easier to buy an image than to earn it through good deeds
o The more voters rely on television for their information the more their voting
decisions are influenced by candidates image qualities rather than by their
positions on issues

Collective Efficacy and Militant Social Action (497)

It is often said that hopelessness breeds militant social action
o Evidence disputes this
o For people living under inequities, comparatively few take action
o The challenging question is why mos people subject to maltreatment and dismal
living conditions acquiesce
Magnitude of civil disorder is governed by three sets of factors
o Level of social discontent arising form economic decline, oppression, and social
inequities
o Traditional acceptance of force to achieve social change
o Third factor is the balance of coercive power between military, police, industry
and labor
People are not empty vessels shuffled about by external forces
o People are proactive
o Groups resort to protesting when they believe the payoff outweighs the penalties
o Militant activism is instigated by detrimental conditions
People who lead protests and who are activists are generally
o Better educated
o Have greater self- pride
o Have stronger beliefs in their ability to shape events
o Favor coercive measures
o *in most nations, protests are led by university students, not the underprivileged
Building Community-Wide Efficacy for Social Change (500)
shaping the social future through institutional change is a long, tortuous process
o The challenge is to build a community wide sense of efficacy
o Alinsky was a masterful community organizer
His approach to collective enablement was founded on self- reliance
"Never do anything for someone that they can do for themselves" (500).
Social power comes in three forms
Political power
The power of money
The power of numbers
The role of community organizer
o Not to solve their problems but to
o Help them develop capabilities to solve their own problems
o Serves as a community enabler
o Construct a self- directing community that unifies, enables, and motivates its
residents
ENABLEMENT BY MEDIA MODES OF INFLUENCE (504)
An uninformed public is apt to be an ineffective if not an apathetic one
o The media shapes how people think about issues
o The general public must be informed, motivated, and its collective efforts
channeled
o Effective use of the media is, thus, in integral part of collective efforts.
Media Use for Policy Initiatives (505)
The responsiveness of the media to the public interest will depend partly on the strength
of the public voice. Therefore a good part of media advocacy is devoted to building
coalitions and teaching community groups how to promote their policy initiative through
a variety of media outlets.
Entertainment Media in Social Change (505)
Burgeoning population growth is by far the most urgent global problem
o Produces environmental degradation
o Global ecosystem cannot sustain the high consumption

o Curbing that growth is imperative for survival

Many factors give rise to large families
o Children help support parents in later years
o Male resistance to contraception
o Efforts to bring down the population growth must include not only strategies and
benefits relative to family planning, but must also include the role and status of
women in societies in which they are treated subserviently.
o Dramatic serials are effective vehicles for reaching vast numbers of people
ENABLEMENT FOR SOCIOCULTURAL CHANGE (511)
The benefits of change carry social costs...some entrenched customs are forfeited
Obstacles to Social Change (511)
New practices usually threaten existing status and power relations
If change were instantly beneficial change would be welcome
Obstacles to change can be constructed by privileged social groups
Properties of Efficacious Model of Diffusion (513)
If effective programs are to be adopted, people must be equipped with the
o Skills
o Beliefs of personal efficacy
o Incentives
Successful models of social diffusion have (4) four phases
o Selecting an optimal sight for introducing innovation
Some sectors are more receptive than others
o Creating the necessary preconditions for change
Increasing awareness of benefits of change and innovations
o Implementing an effective program for change
Mere attitude change is not enough and has met with little success
Fostering the desired behavior is also desirable
"After people behave in new ways, their attitudes accommodate to their
actions" (513).
o Using successful examples to disperse innovations to other settings
If new patterns of behavior are to be acquired, potential adopters must be
provided with emulatable models to impart the necessary knowledge,
value, and skills
Social Impact of Innovations (516)
Innovations can have a profound impact on society
o Create new industries
o Alter institutional practices
o Restructure how people live their lives
o When new technologies are introduces without addressing the social conditions
that control access to them, they may in fact exacerbate social problems
o Verdicts about the worth of an innovations ultimately rest on value systems.
Self-efficacy theory approaches the issue of inequitable distribution of benefits in terms
of creating equitable opportunity to make use of innovations
o Opportunities ought to be expanded to all members
o The structuring of social agencies to endure access to opportunities should be
considered as much a part of the innovation as the technology itself
Communications Innovations and Social Diffusion of Ideas and Social Practices (517)
Social cognitive theory analyzes social diffusion of ideas, values, and social practices in
terms of (3) three constituent processes and the psychosocial factors that govern them
o Acquisition of knowledge
Symbolic modeling by print media, radio and television
Innovations that are difficult to understand are given less consideration
Informal personal channels

o Adoption of behavioral practices

Environmental inducements
Adoptive behavior
Modeled benefit increase adoption of new behaviors
Necessary resources
both personal and social well being are served by weariness to new
practices
o Diffusion through various social networks
Kinship, friends, colleagues, occupational colleagues . . .
More likely to learn new ideas and practices from contact with different
casual acquaintances than from the same, close circles.
People with many social ties are more apt to adopt innovation
Different social networks transmit differing innovations and news.
UNDERMINERS OF COLLECTIVE EFFICACY (520)
The accelerated pace of informational and technological change and extension of global
interdependence
o The need for shared purposes to keep the earth habitable is crucial
o Many factors undermine the development of collective efficacy
Transnational interdependence (where people are affected by events very
far away).
The major challenge to leadership is to forge a national sense of self-efficacy to take advantage of globalization while minimizing the price to
local cultures
o Modern life is increasingly regulated by complex physical technologies that most
people neither understand nor believe they can do much to influence
o The social machinery of society is no less challenging
o Social fragmentation along racial, religious and ethnic lines
o Advanced telecommunications are spreading idea, values, and styles of behavior
transnationally at an unprecedented rate
Factional Efficacy and Gridlocking of Social Initiatives (524)
"Clearly there exists a paradox to be explained. The rise of narrow-interest groups
flexing their factional efficacy does not jibe well with the diagnosis of growing public
apathy and feelings of helplessness" (524).
o In the absence of shared imperatives, growing factional efficacy can be
undermining of collective efficacy
Bidirectionality of Social Influence (524)
Human influence, whether individual or collective, is a two way process
o Social transactions are rarely unilateral
o The less control that people bring to influence on their own lives, the more
control they relinquish to others
o As a society, we enjoy the benefits left by those before us who collectively fought
inhumanities and worked for social reforms that permit us better lives. Our own
collective efficacy will, in turn, shape how future generations live their lives.
Self-Efficacy: The Exercise Of Control
Bandura, Albert
New York, NY, US: W H Freeman/Times Books/ Henry Holt & Co. 1997.