Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency

Abstract

The article announces a theoretically complete and methodically substantiated author’s concept of personal self-efficacy, which justifies this integral psychosocial f u n c t i o n a l  as one of the basic cognitive mechanisms of human developmental presence in the world. Essentially, it is said about the three-factorially formed (personality, environment, behavior) conscious ability and self-valued ability of a person to carry out behavior in accordance with a complex task or newly appeared problem situation and eventually successfully cope with life problems. The first two subsections, outlining the functional possibilities and various effects of self-perception of one’s efficacy (intensification of learning, mobilization of effort, selection of activity, increase in productivity, etc.), reveal the strategy and principle of the micro-analytical methodology, specifically offering graded self-efficacy scales as a set of tasks of varying difficulty, problematics, stress resistance, and other traits-parameters of the subject being examined, leading to a detailed assessment of the degree, strength, and total coefficient of self-efficacy compared to benchmark productivity in behavioral actions. In general, the micro-analytical procedure in the author’s experience of methodologization encompasses at least four  s t e p s  of psychological observation of a person’s or group’s behavior: focusing attention, accumulating all possible information, reproducing a behavior model, and sufficient motivation to intellectually process all this. In this important dimension of the researcher’s consciousness expansion, the author’s reflection rightly states: “A special merit of the micro-analytical approach is that specific indicators of self-efficacy provide refined predictions of human action and the affective reactivity of a person to leisure challenges.” Notably, in the subsequent subsections, causal, inductive-comparative, general-prognostic, self-motivational, causal-career, goal-oriented, and competent types of analysis of the perceived self-regulatory effectiveness of a person in his invariants, modalities, gender trajectories and peculiarities of personal and collective functioning are carried out. Here, an idea of the author of self-efficacy probes is original, which has received both conceptual understanding and empirical implementation in the treatment of phobias and other mental ailments. It is worth noting that such a separate probe is positioned as an effective psychodiagnostic tool, constructed in personalized locations of coping-strategy modeling, enabling the conduction of therapeutic procedures regarding the subjects’ perception of their own self-efficacy at a predefined low, medium, or high (maximum) level. It is argued that within the framework of the highly complex theoretical subjectification – dynamic interaction between self-referential thought, action, and social influence – there are: 1) four main sources of information (achievement of productivity, experience of observation of others’ behavior, verbal persuasion, and partners’ relationships, certain physiological states revealing the ability, strength, and vulnerability of the person); 2) four factors for successful treatment of phobic dysfunctions (identification of essential features, managing anxious excitement through thought, self-relaxation, purposeful mastery of fear overcoming skills); 3) four parameters for measuring self-feeling of physical efficacy (physical load, heart capacity, emotional stress, sexual activity); 4) four most important external stimuli of human functioning (interest in activity, reward, management of one’s own productivity, cultivation of personal effectiveness); 5) four classes of incentive-motivators to increase self-efficacy (goal-oriented, self-motivational, competency-conditioned, career advancement); 6) four channels for asserting the feeling of control over one’s actions, situations, and threats (emotional reactions, thought modeling, behavioral and cognitive control); 7) four key internal factors of perceived by a person one’s own inefficacy (anxiety due to the inability to influence events and social conditions, a sense of uselessness due to unproductiveness or ineffectiveness of actions, apathy and a tendency to dipression generated by stereotypical centering on negative results of activity, despondency as a result of irreparable loss or inability to achieve existentially desired, urgent); 8) several important prerequisites for weakening self-efficacy through a person’s refusal of personal control (difficult-to-perform personal investments of time, effort, resources and self-limits in his knowledge and organizational competence, misuse of proxy-control when pressure is exerted on authorities or rulers, etc.); 9) a number of factors slowing down the development of collective effectiveness (widespread dependence on the dominance of technique and technology, the pressure of bureaucratic structures, ethno-local disagreements, the militant factionalism of political organizations and professional groups, the pressure of social institutions, the dominance of the transnational companies interests, etc.); 10) four decisive internal barriers created by the perception of collective self-efficacy and perniciously demoralize the manifestation of joint efforts (personal passivity, feeling of societal helplessness, fragmented goal perception by participants, disappointment from the ineffectiveness of collective efforts and institutional means). At the same time, quite convincing are the author’s psychologically grounded empirical facts regarding the fundamental importance of self-efficacy as a complex-system cognitive mechanism-mediator (in the aggregate of sources, factors, internal conditions, traits-qualities) between the person and the environment, which causes the actual forms and models of their behavior. For example, observation, modeling, and reinforcement play a primary role in why and how people learn; the choice made by the person of activity “during the formation of their self-efficacy constructs one’s life path through selective development of competencies, interests, and partner preferences; a personality’s awareness of their self-efficacy leads to greater effort in performing complex tasks, and the higher the level of personal self-efficacy, the higher their productivity; people can acquire new behavior patterns through observation of the behavior models of those around them, which they can later replicate; high personal self-efficacy, enhancing the desire for successful outcomes, contributes self-respect, while low self-efficacy – being a source of failure expectations – reduces self-respect.