Self-Efficacy Mechanism in Human Agency

This article addresses the centrality of the self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. Self-percepts of efficacy influence thought patterns, actions, and emotional arousal. In causal tests the higher the level of induced self-efficacy, the higher the performance accomplishments and the lower the emotional arousal. Different lines of research are reviewed, showing that the self-efficacy mechanism may have wide explanatory power. Perceived self-efficacy helps to account for such diverse phenomena as changes in coping behavior produced by different modes of influence, level of physiological stress reactions, self-regulation of refractory behavior, resignation and despondency to failure experiences, self-debilitating effects of proxy control and illusory inefficaciousness, achievement strivings, growth of intrinsic interest, and career pursuits. The influential role of perceived collective efficacy in social change is analyzed, as are the social conditions conducive to development of collective inefficacy. Psychological theorizing and research tend to center on issues concerning either acquisition of knowledge or execution of response patterns. As a result the processes governing the interrelationship between knowledge and action have been largely neglected (Newell, 1978). Some of the recent efforts to bridge this gap have been directed at the biomechanics problem—how efferent commands of action plans guide the production of appropriate response patterns (Stelmach, 1976,1978). Others have approached the matter in terms of algorithmic knowledge, which furnishes guides for executing action sequences (Greeno, 1973; Newell, 1973). , Knowledge, transformational operations, and component skills are necessary but insufficient for accomplished performances. Indeed, people often do not behave optimally, even though they know full well what to do. This is because self-referent thought also mediates the relationship between knowledge and action. The issues addressed in this line of inquiry are concerned with how people judge their capabilities and how, through their selfpercepts of efficacy, they affect their motivation and behavior. 122 • FEBRUARY 1982 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST Recent years have witnessed a growing convergence of theory and research on the influential role of self-referent thought in psychological functioning (DeCharms, 1968; Garber & Seligman, 1980; Lefcourt, 1976; Perlmuter & Monty, 1979; Rotter, Chance, & Phares, 1972; White, 1959). Although the research is conducted from a number of different perspectives -under a variety of names, the basic phenomenon being addressed centers on people's sense of personal efficacy to produce and to regulate events in their lives. , Efficacy in dealing with one's environment is not a fixed act or simply a matter of knowing what to do. Rather, it involves a generative capability in which component cognitive, social, and behavioral skills must be organized into integrated courses of action to serve innumerable purposes. A capability is only as good as its execution. Operative competence requires orchestration and continuous improvisation of multiple subskills to manage ever-changing circumstances. Initiation and regulation of transactions with the environment are therefore partly governed by judgments of operative capabilities. Perceived self-efficacy is concerned with judgments of how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations. Function and Diverse Effects of SelfPercepts of Efficacy Self-percepts of efficacy are not simply inert estimates of future action. Self-appraisals of operaThis article was presented as a Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award address at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, August 1981. The research by the author reported in this article was supported by Research Grant M-5162 from the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Public Health Service. Requests for reprints should be sent to Albert Bandura, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Building 420, Jordan Hall, Stanford, California 94305. Vol. 37, No. 2, 122-147 Copyright 1982 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/82/3702-Ol22$00.75 tive capabilities function as one set of proximal determinants of how people behave, their thought patterns, and the emotional reactions they experience in taxing situations. In their daily lives people continuously make decisions about what courses of action to pursue and how long to continue those they have undertaken. Because acting on misjudgments of personal efficacy can produce adverse consequences, accurate appraisal of one's own capabilities has considerable functional value. Selfefficacy judgments, whether accurate or faulty, influence choice of activities and environmental settings. People avoid activities that they believe exceed their coping capabilities, but they undertake and perform assuredly those that they judge themselves capable of managing (Bandura, 1977a).* Judgments of self-efficacy also determine how much effort people will expend and how long they will persist in the face of obstacles or aversive experiences. When beset with difficulties people who entertain serious doubts about their capabilities slacken their efforts or give up altogether, whereas those who have a strong sense of efficacy exert greater effort to master the challenges (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Brown & Inouye, 1978; Schunk, 1981; Weinberg, Gould, & Jackson, 1979). High perseverance usually produces high performance attainments. High self-percepts of efficacy may affect preparatory and performance effort differently, in that some self-doubt bestirs learning but hinders adept execution of acquired capabilities. In applying existing skills strong self-efficaciousness intensifies and sustains the effort needed for optimal performance, which is difficult to realize if one is beleaguered by self-doubts. In approaching learning tasks, however, those who perceive themselves to be supremely self-efficacious in the undertaking feel little need to invest much preparatory effort in it. Salomon (in press) provides some evidence bearing on this issue. He found that high perceived self-efficacy as a learner is associated with heavy investment of cognitive effort and superior learning from instructional media that children consider difficult, but with less investment of effort and poor learning from media that they believe to be easy. Thus some uncertainty has preparatory benefits. An aid to good performance is a strong sense of self-efficacy to withstand failures coupled with some uncertainty (construed in terms of the challenge of the task, rather than fundamental doubts about one's capabilities) to spur preparatory acquisition of knowledge and skills. People's judgments of their capabilities additionally influence their thought patterns and emotional reactions during anticipatory and actual transactions with the environment. Those who judge themselves inefficacious in coping with environmental demands dwell on their personal deficiencies and imagine potential difficulties as more formidable than they really are (Beck, 1976; Lazarus & Launier, 1978; Meichenbaum, 1977; Sarason, 1975). Such self-referent misgivings create stress and impair performance by diverting attention from how best to proceed with the undertaking to concerns over failings and mishaps. In contrast, persons who have a strong sense of efficacy deploy their attention .and effort to the demands of the situation and are spurred to greater effort by obstacles. Microanalytic Research Strategy Psychological theories postulate intervening mechanisms through which external factors affect behavior. Attempts to verify a theory commonly seek evidence of covariation between behavior and the external factors believed to instate the intervening events, without including independent probes of the postulated mediator. Demonstrations of environmental-action covariation increase confidence in a theory, but they do not establish firmly its validity because the covariation can be mediated through other mechanisms capable of producing similar effects. A postulated mediator is not directly observable, nevertheless it should have observable indicants other than the actions it presumably governs. Hence the most stringent test of a theory is provided by anchoring the hypothesized mediator in an independently measurable indicant and confirming that external factors are indeed linked to an indicant of the internal mediator and that it, in turn, is linked to overt behavior. In testing propositions about the origins and functions of perceived self-efficacy, a microanalytic methodology is employed (Bandura, 1977a). Individuals are presented with graduated self-efficacy scales representing tasks varying in difficulty, complexity, stressfulness, or some other dimension, depending on the particular domain of 1 In the case of habitual routines, people develop their selfknowledge through repeated experiences, to the point where they no longer need to judge their efficacy on each occasion that they perform the same activity. They behave in accordance with what they know they can or cannot do, without giving the matter much further thought. Significant changes in task demands or situational circumstances, however, prompt self-efficacy reappraisals as guides for action under altered conditions. AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • FEBRUARY 1982 • 123