Understand what self-efficacy is and its impact on individual behavior and mental health. This article explores the definitions, influencing factors, and enhancement strategies of self-efficacy, and introduces the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) and its online tests to help you evaluate and improve your confidence in responding to challenges.
What is self-efficacy?
Self-efficacy refers to the individual's confidence in whether he can successfully complete a specific task or goal. It was first proposed by psychologist Albert Bandura in 1977, and defined it as 'the level of confidence in whether people can use the skills they have to complete a certain job behavior.' In short, self-efficacy is an individual’s belief in whether he or she can overcome challenges and achieve goals.
For example, there is a problem in the Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale: 'Even if others oppose me, I still have a way to get what I want', which reflects a person's confidence in his or her abilities when facing external resistance.
Factors influencing self-efficacy
According to Bandura's theory, self-efficacy is affected by four main factors:
- Personal success or failure experience : Successful experience will enhance self-efficacy, while failure will weaken confidence. Success in experiencing challenging tasks will make individuals feel confident about future tasks.
- Alternative Experience : Self-efficacy can be enhanced or weakened by observing the success or failure of others, especially those who are similar to themselves. If you see the people around you succeed, you will think you can succeed too.
- Verbal encouragement : Positive feedback and encouragement from others, especially friends, family, teachers, etc., can significantly improve the individual's sense of self-efficacy.
- Emotional and Physiological State : Positive and healthy physical states help improve self-efficacy, while negative and bad physical states can easily weaken individual self-confidence.
Function of self-efficacy
Self-efficacy plays a crucial role in individual behavioral and mental health:
- Behavioral Choice : People with high self-efficacy are more willing to choose challenging tasks and are able to persist in completing them; people with low self-efficacy often avoid challenges.
- Motivation : People with high self-efficacy are more motivated to overcome difficulties and be able to recover from failure; on the contrary, people with low self-efficacy are prone to give up.
- Thinking Patterns and Responses : People with high self-efficacy usually maintain a positive attitude and believe that they can overcome difficulties; while people with low self-efficacy are prone to negative emotions and self-doubt.
- Health : People with higher self-efficacy are more likely to adopt a healthy lifestyle, such as regular exercise and maintaining a healthy diet, while people with lower self-efficacy are more likely to have health problems.
- Academic and career achievement : Self-efficacy is closely related to academic and career achievement. People with high self-efficacy are more likely to succeed.
Strategies to improve self-efficacy
- Set reasonable goals : Start with small goals, gradually accumulate successful experience, and enhance self-confidence.
- Learn from role models : Improve your sense of self-efficacy by observing and imitating the behavior and thinking of successful people.
- Seek positive support : Support and encouragement from relatives, friends, colleagues or teachers can help improve self-confidence.
- Maintain a positive mood and a good physiological state : maintain physical and mental health through exercise, rest and cultivate positive thinking, and improve self-efficacy.
Introduction to General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES)
The Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) is a scale compiled by German psychologist Professor Ralf Schwarzer and his colleagues in 1981. It aims to measure individuals' confidence in their abilities when facing various challenges. This scale has been translated into multiple languages and is widely used in psychological research and clinical practice around the world.
GSES has 10 questions covering people’s sense of self-efficacy when dealing with different situations. Each question was scored using a 4-point Likert scale, from 'completely incorrect' to 'completely correct' to indicate the strength of an individual's sense of self-efficacy. The results of the test help individuals understand their level of confidence in different situations.
The GSES test content mainly revolves around the following two aspects :
- Results Expectation : An individual's estimate of the possible results of his or her behavior.
- Performance expectations : The individual's belief in the successful implementation of their own behavior.
Generally speaking, people with a high sense of self-efficacy can face challenges in life more proactively, be brave enough to try new things, and be able to pursue goals unremittingly.
Self-efficacy and mental health
Self-efficacy not only affects behavior, but also plays an important role in mental health. People with high self-efficacy are usually able to maintain an optimistic and positive attitude and show strong resilience when facing stress and challenges. Research shows that a higher sense of self-efficacy is closely related to individuals' mental health and can effectively prevent and relieve psychological problems such as anxiety and depression.
The concept of collective effectiveness
In addition to individual self-efficacy, Bandura also proposed the concept of collective effectiveness . Collective effectiveness refers to a group's judgment of its own abilities, especially collective beliefs when facing common goals or challenges. The introduction of this concept has enabled the study of self-efficacy not only to the individual level, but also to the team and organizational level.
Summarize
Self-efficacy plays a crucial role in individual mental health and behavioral performance. By understanding the definition, influencing factors, functions and improvement strategies of self-efficacy, we can more effectively enhance our self-confidence, actively respond to challenges in life, and thus achieve personal goals.
If you want to know how confident you are when facing life challenges, you can try the free online test of the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) provided by the official website of PsycTest Quiz. This test will help you evaluate your sense of self-efficacy in different situations and provide personalized recommendations for improvement.
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