Chapter 17 Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory 505People do more than plan and contemplate future behaviors. They are also
capable of self-reactiveness in the process of motivating and regulating their own
actions. People not only make choices but they monitor their progress toward
fulfilling those choices. Bandura (2001) recognizes that setting goals is not sufficient
to attaining desired consequences. Goals must be specific, be within a person’s
ability to achieve, and reflect potential accomplishments that are not too far in the
future. (We discuss self-regulation more fully in the section titled Self-Regulation.)
Finally, people have self-reflectiveness. They are examiners of their own func-
tioning; they can think about and evaluate their motivations, values, and the mean-
ings of their life goals, and they can think about the adequacy of their own thinking.
They can also evaluate the effect that other people’s actions have on them. People’s
most crucial self-reflective mechanism is self-efficacy: that is, their beliefs that they
are capable of performing actions that will produce a desired effect.
Self-Efficacy
How people act in a particular situation depends on the reciprocity of behavioral,
environmental, and cognitive conditions, especially those cognitive factors that relate
to their beliefs that they can or cannot execute the behavior necessary to produce
desired outcomes in any particular situation. Bandura (1997) calls these expectations
self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1994), “people’s beliefs in their personal
efficacy influence what courses of action they choose to pursue, how much effort
they will invest in activities, how long they will persevere in the face of obstacles
and failure experiences, and their resiliency following setbacks” (p. 65). Although
self-efficacy has a powerful causal influence on people’s actions, it is not the sole
determinant. Rather, self-efficacy combines with environment, prior behavior, and
other personal variables, especially outcome expectations, to produce behavior.
In the triadic reciprocal causal model, which postulates that the environment,
behavior, and person have an interactive influence on one another, self-efficacy
refers to the P (person) factor.
What Is Self-Efficacy?
Bandura (2001) defined self-efficacy as “people’s beliefs in their capability to
exercise some measure of control over their own functioning and over environ-
mental events” (p. 10). Bandura contends that “efficacy beliefs are the foundation
of human agency” (p. 10). People who believe that they can do something that has
the potential to alter environmental events are more likely to act and more likely
to be successful than those people with low self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is not the expectation of our action’s outcomes. Bandura (1986,
1997) distinguished between efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Efficacy
refers to people’s confidence that they have the ability to perform certain behaviors,
whereas an outcome expectancy refers to one’s prediction of the likely consequences
of that behavior. Outcome must not be confused with successful accomplishment of
an act; it refers to the consequences of behavior, not the completion of the act itself.
For example, a job applicant may have confidence that she will perform well during
a job interview, have the ability to answer any possible questions, remain relaxed and