Self - Efficacy , Motivation , and Performance

This article discusses the relation of self-efficacy to motivation and performance in cognitive and sport domains, Self-efficacy refers to one's beliefs about accomplishing a task and can influence choice of activities, effort, persistence, and achievement. People enter activities with varying levels of self-efficacy derived fund prior experience, personal qualities, and social support. As they work on tasks they acquire information about how well they are doing. This information influences their self-efficacy for continued learning and performance. Research is described in which interventions involving models, goal setting, and feedback, were employed to affect self-efficacy. Regardless of domain, research shows that self-efficacy helps to predict motivation and performance, and studies testing causal models highlight the important role played by self-efficacy. Suggestions for future research are given, along with implications of theory and research for education and training. Article: The role of self-efficacy in motivation and performance has been increasingly explored since Bandura's (1977a, 1977b) original publications. Self-efficacy refers to, "People's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances" (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). Stated differently, we might say that self-efficacy involves one's beliefs about accomplishing a task. Research shows that self-efficacy predicts such outcomes as cognitive skill learning, smoking cessation, pain tolerance, athletic performance, career choices, assertiveness, coping with feared events, recovery from heart attack, and sales performance (Bandura, 1986; Maddux, 1993; Schunk, 1989). This article focuses on the relation of self-efficacy to motivation and performance in the cognitive and sport domains. Initially I present an overview of self-efficacy theory to include causes and consequences of selfefficacy. I then discuss research on three types of interventions de-signed to affect self-efficacy: models, goal setting, feedback. Some evidence is provided on the utility of self-efficacy as a predictor of behavior. The article concludes with future research directions and implications of research findings for education and