Self-efficacy conditions the way we face challenges.
A person's confidence in themselves to overcome adversity and challenges is called self-efficacy . The concept refers to believing in one's abilities to face different situations and achieve goals.
Face the challenges
The Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura is noted as the creator of the idea of self-efficacy. According to specialists, there are resources and mechanisms that can contribute to the development of self-efficacy.
It is important to keep in mind that self-efficacy affects how challenges are faced. The individual's attitude and the behavior he adopts are linked to his belief regarding the possibilities of success .
Self-efficacy can be related to self-esteem and self-concept . Although these terms specifically refer to different issues, all three have to do with the perception and assessment of oneself.
Response to objectives
The cognitive abilities, capacities and attitudes of the subjects form their self . The individual response to events depends on perception which, in turn, is given by the construction of the self. Self-efficacy is the belief that someone has in meeting their goals in a specific environment.
Faced with an objective that is desired to be achieved, a human being can position itself in different ways. There are those who do not even act since they think they will fail and others who abandon the journey before completing it. Self-efficacy, on the contrary, allows you to begin the journey with the necessary attitude to not stop moving forward, since success is expected. That's why it's important to focus on self-efficacy from childhood.
Social learning
This theory explains the way in which human beings acquire new skills that we then develop exclusively or almost exclusively in a social group. This type of learning is linked to the results of our dynamic interactions in these environments (whether we fail or succeed) and drives us to develop individual and emotional practices and skills, in addition to perceiving ourselves accurately and accepting those who They surround us.
According to social learning theory, human beings can learn from others through different mechanisms: observing them, imitating them, and taking them as role models. Self-efficacy allows us to understand what skills we can provide to other members of our social groups.
Self-efficacy and function
Typically, we avoid tasks for which we have a low degree of self-efficacy, prioritizing the opposite instead. Of course, there are also cases in which our perception is considerably distorted : if we believe we are too capable, sooner or later reality will hurt us; If we despise ourselves, we may never know how much we are worth.
High self-efficacy can also lead to failure if it is excessive.
These two extremes of self-efficacy are relatively common, and it all starts with a lack of guidance in childhood. Our elders have the responsibility of teaching us to find our abilities and value them reasonably , not to display them but to take advantage of them in our development. In any case, since perfect balance is unattainable, researchers consider that the ideal level of self-efficacy is slightly above reality. In other words, a small excess of self-esteem is preferable to a lack.
The consequences of extreme self-efficacy are not so easy to predict, since both ways can have similar results. Someone with high self-efficacy is expected to not be afraid of challenges, but they may also lose motivation more easily than others, due to feeling like they are above everything. Similarly, low self-efficacy can demotivate us, but also drive us to improve to fight against this supposed destiny of failure.