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

• 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.

• 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
• Preconception of capability
• Perceived task difficulty
• Effort
• Amount of external aid
• Circumstances under which they perform
• Temporal pattern of successes and failures
• Way the experiences are cognized and reconstructed in memory
• Preexisting Self-Knowledge Structures (81)
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • 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:
• Modeling is an effective way to raise efficacy
• 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)
  • Several processes by which modeling exerts its effects on efficacy beliefs
  • Social comparisons
  • Similar others
  • Different others
  • Self-modeling
  • 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.
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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)
  • "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)
  • 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)
  • Exposure to multiple skilled models produces stronger beliefs on ones efficacy
  • Diversified modeling is superior to single model

• Coping versus Masterly Modeling (99)
  • Masterly models - perform calmly and faultlessly
  • 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)
  • Competent models command more attention and exert greater instructional influence than do incompetent ones.

VERBAL PERSUASION (101)

• Framing of Performance Feedback (101)
  • 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)
  • 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.
  • Persuasory efficacy appraisal depend on
  • who persuader are
  • their credibility and knowledge
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • Differences may be minimal, moderate (the most desirable level if it is moderately high), or marked
  • 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 self-improvement rather than triumphs over others

PHYSIOLOGICAL AND AFFECTIVE STATES (107)

• Somatic indicants (sweating, tension, shakes)
• Physiological indicants (fatigue, windedness, aches, and pains)
• Mood states
• "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)
  • Speakers who attribute their sweating to physical discomforts of the room read their physiology quite differently than those who view it as stress
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • Low efficacy heightens sensitivity to bodily states
  • The heart races alike in fear, euphoria, and vigorous physical exertion
  • 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)
  • 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
  • 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).

• " 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
• Combine efficacy factors additively - the more indicants there are, the stronger the belief of personal capability
• Relative weighting rule in which some factors are weighted more heavily than others
• Multiplicative combinations rule in which the conjoint impact of factors on efficacy beliefs is greater than simply their additive effect
• Configurally - particular factor is given different weight depending on other available sources of efficacy information (114)