Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory Of

Motivation In Psychology
simplypsychology.org/self-efficacy.html

Psychologist Albert Bandura has defined self-efficacy as people’s belief in their ability
to control their functioning and events that affect their lives.
One’s sense of self-efficacy can provide the foundation for motivation, well-being, and
personal accomplishment.
People’s beliefs in their efficacy are developed by four primary sources of influence,
including (i) mastery experiences, (ii) vicarious experiences, (iii) social persuasion,
and (iv) emotional states.
High self-efficacy has numerous benefits to daily life, such as resilience to adversity
and stress, healthy lifestyle habits, improved employee performance, and educational
achievement.

Self-efficacy, a concept introduced by psychologist Albert Bandura, refers to an individual’s belief in their
capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance outcomes. It’s the confidence
in one’s ability to influence events and control over one’s environment.

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The term ‘self-efficacy” was first coined by psychologist Albert Bandura (1977), a Canadian-
American psychologist and a professor at Stanford University.

He originally proposed the concept, in his own words, as a personal judgment of “how well
one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations”.

Self-Efficacy is a person’s particular set of beliefs that determine how well one can
execute a plan of action in prospective situations (Bandura, 1977). To put it in more
simple terms, self-efficacy is a person’s belief in their ability to succeed in a particular
situation.

Bandura was responsible for bringing the term to light, but psychologists have studied self-
efficacy from several perspectives.

To give an example of another perspective, Kathy Kolbe – educator and best-selling author
– thinks that believing in one’s own abilities can be vital in measuring cognitive strength
(2009).

She believes that self-efficacy also involves determination and perseverance – seeing as
how it helps one overcome obstacles that would interfere with utilizing those innate abilities
to achieve goals.

How Does Self-Efficacy Develop?

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Source: The Pennsylvania State University

Albert Bandura (1977) states individuals develop their self-efficacy beliefs by

interpreting information from four main sources of influence.

1. Mastery Experiences (Performance Outcomes)

The most influential source is the interpreted result of one’s previous performance or
mastery experience.

When talking about Mastery experiences, this refers to the experiences one gain
when one takes on a new challenge and are successful at doing so.

“Mastery experiences are the most influential source of efficacy information because they
provide the most authentic evidence of whether one can muster whatever it takes to
succeed. Success builds a robust belief in one’s personal efficacy. Failures undermine it,
especially if failures occur before a sense of efficacy is firmly established” (Bandura, 1997).

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 One of the best-proven ways to learn a new skill or to improve one’s performance in a given
activity is by practicing.

How can one be sure that practicing and acquiring new skills will lead to mostly positive
experiences? In most cases, part of the reason this works so well is that people –
unknowingly throughout this process – are teaching themselves that they are capable of
acquiring new skills.

This positive way of thinking – believing that one is capable of achieving tasks they set out
for themselves – is a boon because part of the struggle of getting better at anything or
learning something new is making sure the person believes they are capable of carrying out
said task successfully.

2. Vicarious Experiences (Social Role Models)

The second important source of self-efficacy is the vicarious experiences provided by social
models.

Bandura (1977) posits that “Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained
effort raises observers” beliefs that they too possess the capabilities to master
comparable activities to succeed.”

Vicarious experiences involve observing other people successfully completing a task.

When one has positive role models in their life (especially those who display a healthy level
of self-efficacy) – one is more likely to absorb at least a few of those positive beliefs about
the self.

Social role models include older siblings, older friends, camp counselors, parents, aunts
and uncles, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and employers.

3. Social Persuasion

Receiving positive verbal feedback while undertaking a complex task persuades a person to
believe that they have the skills and capabilities to succeed.

Self-efficacy is influence by encouragement and discouragement pertaining to an

individual’s performance or ability to perform (Redmond, 2010)

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For example, if one were telling an elementary school child that they are capable of
achieving greatness and that they should set out to achieve anything their heart desires –
this would be how verbal persuasion looks in action.

Verbal persuasion works at any age, but the earlier it is administered, the more likely it is to
encourage the building of self-efficacy.

4. Emotional and Physiological States

The emotional, physical, and psychological well-being of a person can influence how they
feel about their personal abilities in a particular situation.

For example, if you are struggling with depression or anxiety, you might find it harder to have
a healthy level of well-being. Is it impossible to build self-efficacy while suffering from some
of these struggles? Of course not, but boosting your self-efficacy is much easier when one
feels healthy and well (Bandura, 1982).

However, Bandura (1977) states, “it is not the sheer intensity of emotional and physical
reactions that is important but rather how they are perceived and interpreted.

People who have a high sense of efficacy are likely to view their state of affective arousal as
an energizing facilitator of performance, whereas those who are beset by self-doubts regard
their arousal as a debilitator.”

Thus, individuals can improve their sense of self-efficacy by learning how to manage anxiety
and enhance their mood when experiencing challenging situations.

Bandura wasn’t the only psychologist to delve into researching self-efficacy. One
example of another influential self-efficacy researcher is James Maddux, who is
actually responsible for suggesting the existence of a fifth main source of self-efficacy:
imaginal experiences, or visualization (Maddux and Meier, 1995).

Imaginal Experiences/Visualization

James Maddux (2013) has suggested a fifth route to self-efficacy through “imaginal
experiences,” the art of visualizing yourself behaving effectively or successfully in a given
situation.”

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Imaginal experiences (or visualization) are basically someone attempting to portray their
goals as achievable.

It’s like the old saying that goes, “it’s so close you can almost taste it” – visualization is about
putting yourself (in your head) in a pole position to being capable of achieving anything one
sets your mind to.

With this method, in order to enhance one’s own self-efficacy or that of a child, the focus
needs to be on painting a picture – making success seem like the most likely outcome
(Maddux and Meier, 1995).

By painting oneself or others in a favorable position, Maddux (1995) hypothesized that the
levels of self-efficacy in said individuals would rise given that they are now more susceptible
– after portraying themselves at the finish line – to believe in themselves.

Building Self-Efficacy
“People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a
fixed property; there is huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-
efficacy bounce back from failure; they approach things in terms of how to handle them
rather than worrying about what can go wrong” (Bandura, 1977b).

Emphasize Peer Modeling

Learning from examples set by those around you happens at any age (think of how a teacher
is a role model for a student, but in a similar manner an employer is a model for an
employee).

This concept of peer modeling, while it can be applied to any age, is, of course, especially
true for children on the early side of the spectrum and is most effective when a child’s direct
peers (brothers, sisters, parents, teachers, friends) set the example (Bandura, 1988).

To put peer modeling into simple terms – it is when a child or an adult shows good social
behaviors and is interested in passing on those same values to a new person.

Take, for example, a work setting – one employee takes center stage for the week and
shows both business savvy and good social behaviors.

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This employee will be a peer model to the rest of the employees of the company – they will
want to learn how to act and behave in that manner, especially if this good behavior helped
them achieve more success or drew more praise from the boss.

Seek Feedback

The problem with understanding feedback is that some people tend to believe that getting no
feedback is the same as being told that one is doing their job well (hence the common
phrase: “no feedback is great feedback”).

When done with both the right intentions in mind and also in the right manner, feedback can
be one of the most important sources of building levels of self-efficacy.

Employees and students alike tend to want to know how they are doing. In order for the
feedback to work positively, feedback must be delivered both concisely and frequently.

Without frequent feedback, one can be confused as to whether they should remain doing
what they are doing, and without concise feedback, the individual will not understand what in
particular they should fix about themselves.

Self-efficacy and subsequent task performance improve after receiving higher, more detailed
levels of performance feedback (Beattie, Woodman, Fakehy, Dempsey, 2015).

Encourage Participation

Participation tends to be essential in any work environment – it encourages the person to be

active and engaged, great qualities in someone that are usually influential in a person’s
levels of self-efficacy.

Participation is especially important at an early age – those students who engage with the
class are not only being more active in their learning, they are probably absorbing more
information in regards to the material. Active class participation is also correlated to having
high critical and higher-level thinking skills.

Participation is also an essential quality of a peer model – this is a person who has
previously engaged in active learning and can teach others in a similar manner.

The level of thinking associated with an activity that requires participation goes beyond
simple comprehension of text – it engages both the instigator and the audience.

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More importantly, participation helps fellow students learn from each other – and people tend
to build their levels of self-efficacy depending on how those who are most close to them
behave.

Allow People to Make Their Own Choices

When talking about the importance of letting people make their own choices, the term self-
accountability usually tends to come to mind.

Whether the outcome is positive or negative – making one’s own decisions allows for one to
feel responsible (due to your cunning or due to your negligence, the person themselves is
the one held accountable for if the outcome turned out in your favor or against you).

Another important reason to emphasize self-accountability – making one’s own choices and
decisions allow one to make their own mistakes and – most importantly – gives one the
opportunity to learn from them.

Advice is not the same as a command – an individual can advise one on something, but it is
a person’s own responsibility to do whatever they feel like with said information.

This is why a peer – although very helpful – is not enough; the person needs to understand
that at the end of the day – if they want to model anyone – the only person capable of taking
action is themselves.

Applications of Self-Efficacy

High self-efficacy has been linked with numerous benefits to daily life, such as
resilience to adversity and stress, healthy lifestyle habits, improved employees
performance, and educational achievement.

Healthy Habits

According to health psychologists (Bandura, 1988), people are more likely to engage in
healthy behaviors when they feel confident in their capabilities to successfully carry out those
behaviors.

To give one example, having higher levels of self-efficacy could help one stick to an exercise
routine. This tends to be a positive on multiple ends – the goal of finishing the workout is
complete due to the higher levels of self-efficacy, and the finished exercise routine helps with

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your bodily and mental wellness.

Self-efficacy is also a factor that helps people adopt other healthy lifestyle choices – like
trying to keep a healthy diet or trying to stop smoking. For whatever one would want to use it
for, health psychologists believe that self-efficacy can be applied in ways that promote a
healthy lifestyle.

Academic Success

Mart van Dinther (2011) and a number of his colleagues conducted research on the link
between education and self-efficacy. Their conclusions state that self-efficacy is linked to
factors such as the strategies that students utilize, the goals that students set out for
themselves, and their academic achievements.

In other words, higher levels of self-efficacy are related to – what people everywhere largely
consider to be – healthy student life habits.

This means that those individuals with higher levels of self-efficacy could be subject to doing
better in school and being more organized.

Treating Phobias

Bandura (1982) proposed that self-efficacy could be used in an effective manner to treat
phobias. He wanted to test this by conducting an experiment.

He started with two groups – one group would directly interact with their phobia (in this case,
snakes), and the members of the second group would watch someone partake in activities
with their phobia.

The point was to assess which group – after different ways of approaching a phobia – would
still be more fearful of snakes. According to the results of the experiment, the participants
who had directly interacted with the snake showed higher self-efficacy and less avoidance.

This suggests that personal experience is more effective than observation when it comes to
developing self-efficacy and facing our fears.

How is Self-Efficacy Measured?

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The General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) was developed by Matthias Jerusalem and Ralf
Schwarzer – the scale is composed of only 8 items, rated on a scale from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

1. “I will be able to achieve most of the goals that I have set for myself”
2. “When facing difficult tasks, I am certain that I will accomplish them”
3. “In general, I think that I can obtain outcomes that are important to me”
4. “I believe I can succeed at most any endeavor to which I set my mind”
5. “I will be able to successfully overcome many challenges”
6. “I am confident that I can perform effectively on many different tasks”
7. “Compared to other people, I can do most tasks very well”
8. “Even when things are tough, I can perform quite well.”

The scores are then calculated by taking the average of all eight responses (these will
respectively range from 1 to 5).

The way the test is supposed to work is so that the higher one’s score is, the greater the
level of self-efficacy in said individual.

Self-Efficacy and Related Ideas

Self-esteem vs. Self-efficacy

Self-esteem is one’s sense of self-worth, while self-efficacy is the perception of one’s own
ability to reach a goal.

To give an example, let’s say we have an individual who is a terrible horse rider. In regards to
horse riding, this person would probably exhibit low levels of self-efficacy given that they
themselves believe they are terrible at horse riding.

This person’s self-esteem – however – will probably not be affected if the person doesn’t rely
on horseback riding to determine self-worth (and with how out of scope this activity is, it is
very unlikely that this is the case).

Conversely, let’s say the individual is actually very skilled at horseback riding, yet this
individual has set such a high standard and has based enough of their self-worth on this
particular skill that their self-esteem is actually quite low. In any case, both examples

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illustrate how self-esteem and self-efficacy are indeed related, but they are not the same
term.

Confidence vs. Self-Efficacy

When Bandura first began researching self-efficacy (1977), he wanted to demonstrate that
the construct of self-efficacy needed a separate definition from a more colloquial term like
“confidence.”

Why was this the case? The issue with a term like “confidence” and why it can’t mean the
same thing as self-efficacy is that confidence is a nonspecific term that refers to the strength
of belief but does not necessarily specify what certainty is about.

For example, an individual can be confident in their innate ability to screw up anything. The
perception of self-efficacy is distinct – it refers to believing in one’s own capabilities and that
one can produce given levels of attainment.

Therefore, the reason one can’t use confidence in the same vein as the term self-efficacy is
that confidence(unlike self-efficacy) fails to include both an affirmation of a capability level
and the strength of that belief.

Motivation vs. Self-Efficacy

Motivation is based on an individual’s desire to achieve a certain goal, while self-efficacy is

based on an individual’s belief in their own capacity to achieve said goal.

While in most cases, those same individuals with high self-efficacy often have high
motivation and vice versa, it is essential to understand that this is not just a foregone
conclusion.

Think of motivation as what makes one get out of bed, and think of self-efficacy as one’s own
perception of believing that they have the necessary strength to get out of bed – the two
terms go hand but are certainly not exchangeable.

Of course, logically speaking, it still remains true that when an individual maintains or
increases their levels of self-efficacy, that usually tends to make these individuals get a boost
in motivation to continue learning and making progress.

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This relationship can go both ways; take, for example, an individual who is motivated to learn
and succeed. When an individual is highly motivated to be successful, most of the time, it
means that they are likelier to achieve whatever goals they set out for themselves, which
contributes to increases in their levels of self-efficacy.

Learning Activity
Develop a measure of self-efficacy for any health-related behavior that avoids the
confounding of self-efficacy with related constructs such as confidence or motivation.

Health-related behaviors include:

Smoking cessation
Alcohol use
Eating
Pain control
Exercise

Design an intervention program that will enhance self-efficacy for a health-related behavior
and a research design to measure changes in self-efficacy.

References
Bandura, A (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change.
Psychological Review. 84 (2): 191–215.

Bandura, Albert (1977), Social Learning Theory Vol. 1). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-hall.

Bandura, A. (1997b). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman.

Bandura, Albert (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist.

37 (2): 122–147.

Bandura, A (1988). Organizational Application of Social Cognitive Theory. Australian Journal

of Management. 13 (2): 275–302.

Beattie, S., Woodman, T., Fakehy, M., & Dempsey, C. (2016). The role of performance
feedback on the self-efficacy–performance relationship. Sport, Exercise, and Performance
Psychology, 5 (1), 1.

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Dinther, M.V., Dochy, F., & Segers, M.S. (2011). Factors affecting students’ self-efficacy in
higher education. Educational Research Review, 6, 95-108.

Gaumer Erickson, A.S., Soukup, J.H., Noonan, P.M., & McGurn, L. (2016). Self-Efficacy
Questionnaire. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas. Center for Research on Learning.

Kolbe, Kathy (2009) “Self-efficacy results from exercising control over personal conative
strengths”, Wisdom of the ages.

Maddux, J. E. (Ed.). (2013). Self-efficacy, adaptation, and adjustment: Theory, research, and
application. Springer Science & Business Media.

Maddux, J. E., & Meier, L. J. (1995). Self-efficacy and depression. In Self-Efficacy,

adaptation, and adjustment (pp. 143-169). Springer, Boston, MA.

Redmond, B. F. (2010). Self-Efficacy Theory: Do I think that I can succeed in my work? Work
Attitudes
and Motivation . The Pennsylvania: State University, World Campus.

Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (1995). Generalized self-efficacy scale. Measures in health
psychology: A user’s portfolio. Causal and control beliefs, 1 (1), 35-37.

Further Reading

Bandura: Self-Efficacy

The General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSF)

Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective

Health promotion by social cognitive means

Perceived behavioral control, self-efficacy, locus of control, and the theory of

planned behavior

Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning

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 Self-efficacy: A theoretical analysis of its determinants and malleability

Self-efficacy and work-related performance: A meta-analysis

Self-Efficacy: An Essential Motive to Learn

Self-efficacy and the stages of exercise behavior change

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