Self-efficacy, a concept introduced by psychologist Albert Bandura, refers to an individual’s belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance outcomes. It’s the confidence in one’s ability to influence events and control over one’s environment.
Who Are Our Role Models?
Role models can be anyone you relate to or look up to, including:
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Older siblings or friends
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Teachers and coaches
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Parents, grandparents, or relatives
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Supervisors or colleagues at work
When these role models display confidence and success, especially in tasks you find difficult, you naturally begin to adopt some of their self-belief.
How Do Vicarious Experiences Work?
Watching someone else perform a difficult or feared task successfully gives you a mental blueprint.
You see firsthand that challenges can be overcome through perseverance, effort, and effective strategies.
This builds your expectation that by putting in similar effort, you can also achieve positive results.
However, it’s important to note that while observing others is helpful, it’s typically not as powerful as achieving success yourself (mastery experiences).
Personal accomplishment gives you stronger and more lasting confidence because you’ve directly proven your capability.
How you mentally interpret what you see matters a lot.
If you doubt yourself, you might dismiss a role model’s success by assuming they have special skills or abilities you don’t have.
But if you view their success as achievable through effort and persistence, your self-efficacy will grow significantly.
When Are Vicarious Experiences Most Effective?
Several factors influence how strongly you benefit from watching others:
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Effort and Persistence Shown by the Model: Role models who visibly struggle but eventually succeed through perseverance tend to be the most inspiring.
Their journeys teach you that setbacks and anxiety are normal, temporary, and manageable through sustained effort.
Observing this type of realistic success helps you stay motivated when you face your own difficulties.
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Similarity to the Model: You’re more likely to believe in your capabilities when your role models feel relatable—people who share similar backgrounds, skills, or characteristics.
Seeing someone very much like yourself succeed can significantly boost your belief in your potential.
In contrast, seeing someone very different succeed might not affect your confidence as much.
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Clear and Diverse Examples: The most helpful role models clearly demonstrate the results of their efforts.
When you see someone achieving clear, positive outcomes, your belief that you can achieve similar success grows.
Observing multiple people (rather than just one) successfully handle challenging tasks is even better—it reinforces the idea that success is achievable by different people, including you.
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Practical Skills and Strategies: Watching others successfully manage difficult tasks doesn’t just build confidence—it can also teach you practical skills and effective strategies.
For example, a role model might demonstrate how to stay calm in stressful situations, handle setbacks constructively, or solve complex problems step-by-step.
By painting oneself or others in a favorable position, Maddux (1995) hypothesized that the levels of self-efficacy in said individuals would rise given that they are now more susceptible – after portraying themselves at the finish line – to believe in themselves.
Improving Self-Efficacy
People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is huge variability in how you perform.
People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failure; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong (Bandura, 1977b).
1. Goal Setting
Setting clear, challenging goals is essential for keeping us motivated and enhancing our performance. Goals not only guide our actions but also provide benchmarks for measuring progress and satisfaction.
Long-term goals—such as getting a degree or starting a new career—are inspiring but can also feel overwhelming.
Because they’re so distant, it’s often tough to stay motivated or even recognize progress along the way.
This is why breaking down large goals into smaller, achievable subgoals (also called proximal goals) is so powerful.
Proximal goals act as stepping stones, offering immediate incentives, clear direction, and a sense of achievement that keeps motivation alive.
The Power of Proximal Goals
Each time we reach a subgoal, we experience a sense of accomplishment. These frequent successes build our confidence, increasing our self-efficacy – the belief in our own ability to succeed.
Research shows that repeated small victories significantly strengthen our self-belief, empowering us to persist even when we encounter setbacks (Bandura & Schunk, 1981).
Importantly, short-term goals help us see our progress more clearly.
Without them, it’s hard to accurately judge our performance, and motivation can fade quickly.
By regularly achieving these smaller milestones, we can clearly track improvements, making us feel more competent and capable.
Additionally, achieving proximal goals creates feelings of satisfaction and even enjoyment in the task itself.
Rather than feeling discouraged by how far we are from a distant target, we find intrinsic motivation and fulfillment in regular, smaller wins.
This cycle of setting, achieving, and celebrating short-term goals makes the entire process rewarding, sustaining both our motivation and our belief in our ability to achieve even bigger goals down the road.
2. Emphasize Peer Modeling
Learning from examples set by those around you happens at any age (think of how a teacher is a role model for a student, but in a similar manner an employer is a model for an employee).
This concept of peer modeling, while it can be applied to any age, is, of course, especially true for children on the early side of the spectrum and is most effective when a child’s direct peers (brothers, sisters, parents, teachers, friends) set the example (Bandura, 1988).
To put peer modeling into simple terms – it is when a child or an adult shows good social behaviors and is interested in passing on those same values to a new person.
Take, for example, a work setting – one employee takes center stage for the week and shows both business savvy and good social behaviors.
This employee will be a peer model to the rest of the employees of the company – they will want to learn how to act and behave in that manner, especially if this good behavior helped them achieve more success or drew more praise from the boss.
3. Seek Feedback
The problem with understanding feedback is that some people tend to believe that getting no feedback is the same as being told that one is doing their job well (hence the common phrase: “no feedback is great feedback”).
When done with both the right intentions in mind and also in the right manner, feedback can be one of the most important sources of building levels of self-efficacy.
Employees and students alike tend to want to know how they are doing. In order for the feedback to work positively, feedback must be delivered both concisely and frequently.
Without frequent feedback, one can be confused as to whether they should remain doing what they are doing, and without concise feedback, the individual will not understand what in particular they should fix about themselves.
Self-efficacy and subsequent task performance improve after receiving higher, more detailed levels of performance feedback (Beattie, Woodman, Fakehy, Dempsey, 2015).
4. Encourage Participation
Participation tends to be essential in any work environment – it encourages the person to be active and engaged, great qualities in someone that are usually influential in a person’s levels of self-efficacy.
Participation is especially important at an early age – those students who engage with the class are not only being more active in their learning, they are probably absorbing more information in regards to the material.
Active class participation is also correlated to having high critical and higher-level thinking skills.
Participation is also an essential quality of a peer model – this is a person who has previously engaged in active learning and can teach others in a similar manner.
The level of thinking associated with an activity that requires participation goes beyond simple comprehension of text – it engages both the instigator and the audience.
More importantly, participation helps fellow students learn from each other – and people tend to build their levels of self-efficacy depending on how those who are most close to them behave.
5. Allow People to Make Their Own Choices
When talking about the importance of letting people make their own choices, the term self-accountability usually tends to come to mind.
Whether the outcome is positive or negative – making one’s own decisions allows for one to feel responsible (due to your cunning or due to your negligence, the person themselves is the one held accountable for if the outcome turned out in your favor or against you).
Another important reason to emphasize self-accountability – making one’s own choices and decisions allow one to make their own mistakes and – most importantly – gives one the opportunity to learn from them.
Advice is not the same as a command – an individual can advise one on something, but it is a person’s own responsibility to do whatever they feel like with said information.
This is why a peer – although very helpful – is not enough; the person needs to understand that at the end of the day – if they want to model anyone – the only person capable of taking action is themselves.
6. How to Use Emotions and Physical States to Boost Self-Efficacy
So how can you shift your mindset and improve your self-efficacy, even when you’re feeling anxious or stressed?
Here are a few helpful strategies:
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Reframe Your Anxiety as Excitement: Recognize that feeling anxious can be a sign that something matters deeply to you. Reminding yourself that these emotions are normal—and even helpful—can transform anxiety into motivation.
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Manage Your Stress and Mood: Learning stress-management techniques like deep breathing, mindfulness, or relaxation exercises can calm your physical responses, making it easier to maintain confidence under pressure.
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Focus on Situational Factors, Not Personal Flaws: Instead of viewing physical reactions (like increased heart rate or tension) as evidence of personal inadequacy, try attributing them to external factors like the high-stakes nature of the situation. This perspective reduces negative self-judgments and maintains your self-confidence.
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Stay Physically Healthy: Improving your physical well-being – through regular exercise, proper sleep, and balanced nutrition – helps reduce stress and anxiety, giving you a solid foundation for stronger self-efficacy.
Examples of Self-Efficacy
High self-efficacy has been linked with numerous benefits to daily life, such as resilience to adversity and stress, healthy lifestyle habits, improved employees performance, and educational achievement.
1. Healthy Habits
Health psychologists emphasize that people are more likely to consistently engage in healthy behaviors when they believe they have the ability to succeed (Bandura, 1988).
For example, imagine someone who wants to become physically fit.
If this person has high self-efficacy, they’ll feel confident enough to set realistic fitness goals, consistently attend workouts, and persist even when motivation wanes or obstacles arise.
Each successful workout not only reinforces their confidence but also improves their overall physical health and mental well-being.
Similarly, self-efficacy can help individuals successfully adopt other healthy lifestyle choices, like sticking to a nutritious diet, losing weight, or quitting smoking.
Believing in one’s capability transforms challenging lifestyle changes into achievable steps, making lasting positive habits more likely.
2. Academic Success
Research by van Dinther and colleagues (2011) highlights a strong connection between self-efficacy and educational outcomes.
Students who believe in their academic capabilities tend to use more effective learning strategies, set meaningful goals, and ultimately achieve higher academic performance.
For instance, a college student with high academic self-efficacy might approach studying strategically by organizing their coursework, actively participating in class, and confidently tackling difficult assignments or exams.
This proactive attitude, driven by their belief in their ability, results in better grades and a more fulfilling educational experience.
In short, students with strong self-efficacy don’t just dream about academic success—they actively create it through disciplined and focused behaviors.
3. Treating Phobias
Bandura (1982) demonstrated how self-efficacy could effectively reduce fears and phobias through direct experience.
In a classic experiment, he divided participants afraid of snakes into two groups.
One group directly interacted with snakes (touching or holding them), while the other group merely observed someone else interacting with snakes.
The results showed that participants who directly faced their fear by handling snakes had significantly higher self-efficacy – they felt more capable and were less fearful in subsequent encounters compared to those who had only observed.
This clearly illustrates that directly engaging with a feared situation boosts confidence more effectively than mere observation, highlighting self-efficacy’s crucial role in overcoming fears.
Can Self-Efficacy generalize across different situations?
Usually, self-efficacy – your belief in your ability to succeed – is specific to certain tasks or situations.
But confidence built in one area can actually help you feel more capable in other, seemingly unrelated areas too.
This happens most often when tasks share underlying skills.
For example, if you’re great at organizing and problem-solving at work, you might also feel more confident tackling these same skills at home, like planning events or managing household tasks.
Another reason this generalization happens is because our minds naturally look for patterns.
Even when tasks seem very different on the surface, recognizing similar demands or challenges can help transfer your confidence from one context to another.
Lastly, our core beliefs about ourselves – what psychologists call self-schemas – also play a role.
If you see yourself as someone who consistently handles challenges well, that self-image makes it easier to maintain strong self-efficacy across various situations.
In other words, building confidence in one area can ripple outwards, helping you feel capable and empowered in many areas of life.
How is Self-Efficacy Measured?
Self-efficacy refers to your belief in your ability to succeed at specific tasks or situations -and psychologists measure this by asking people how confident they feel in their skills.
Because self-efficacy is specific, it’s important that measurements clearly match the task or area being evaluated.
For example, some assessments focus on very specific actions, like how confident you feel about solving a particular math problem.
Others are broader and look at your confidence in an entire domain—such as how capable you feel in academic settings or maintaining healthy habits.
When measuring self-efficacy, researchers typically consider three main aspects:
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Level: How confident you feel handling tasks from easy to challenging.
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Strength: How strongly you believe in your capability.
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Generality: How widely your confidence applies across different situations or tasks.
In practice, psychologists often use surveys or questionnaires.
Participants rate their belief in their abilities, usually on a scale from 0 (not at all confident) to 100 (completely confident).
This provides a clear, practical picture of someone’s self-efficacy across various activities within a specific area of their life.
General Self-Efficacy Scale
The General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) was developed by Matthias Jerusalem and Ralf Schwarzer – the scale is composed of only 8 items, rated on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
- “I will be able to achieve most of the goals that I have set for myself”
- “When facing difficult tasks, I am certain that I will accomplish them”
- “In general, I think that I can obtain outcomes that are important to me”
- “I believe I can succeed at most any endeavor to which I set my mind”
- “I will be able to successfully overcome many challenges”
- “I am confident that I can perform effectively on many different tasks”
- “Compared to other people, I can do most tasks very well”
- “Even when things are tough, I can perform quite well.”
The scores are then calculated by taking the average of all eight responses (these will respectively range from 1 to 5).
The way the test is supposed to work is so that the higher one’s score is, the greater the level of self-efficacy in said individual.
Self-Efficacy and Related Ideas
Self-efficacy refers to a person’s belief in their ability to successfully perform a specific task or behaviour.
It is a key concept within social cognitive theory and is distinct from broader concepts like self-esteem or self-concept.
While self-concept is a more general evaluation of self that includes feelings of self-worth and can be domain-specific but not task-specific, self-efficacy is a context-specific judgment of one’s capability to achieve a specific outcome.
For example, someone might have a generally positive self-concept regarding their academic abilities, but their self-efficacy for passing a particular difficult exam might be low.
Self-efficacy judgments are typically measured at a microanalytic level, focusing on specific tasks and situations, and are considered a strong predictor of behaviour.
Learning Activity
Develop a measure of self-efficacy for any health-related behavior that avoids the confounding of self-efficacy with related constructs such as confidence or motivation.
Health-related behaviors include:
- Smoking cessation
- Alcohol use
- Eating
- Pain control
- Exercise
Design an intervention program that will enhance self-efficacy for a health-related behavior and a research design to measure changes in self-efficacy.
References
Bandura, A (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change. Psychological Review. 84 (2): 191-215.
Bandura, Albert (1977), Social Learning Theory Vol. 1). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-hall.
Bandura, A. (1997b). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman.
Bandura, Albert (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist. 37 (2): 122-147.
Bandura, A (1988). Organizational Application of Social Cognitive Theory. Australian Journal of Management. 13 (2): 275-302.
Bandura, A., & Schunk, D. H. (1981). Cultivating competence, self-efficacy, and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of personality and social psychology, 41(3), 586.
Beattie, S., Woodman, T., Fakehy, M., & Dempsey, C. (2016). The role of performance feedback on the self-efficacy-performance relationship. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 5 (1), 1.
Dinther, M.V., Dochy, F., & Segers, M.S. (2011). Factors affecting students’ self-efficacy in higher education. Educational Research Review, 6, 95-108.
Gaumer Erickson, A.S., Soukup, J.H., Noonan, P.M., & McGurn, L. (2016). Self-Efficacy Questionnaire. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas. Center for Research on Learning.
Kolbe, Kathy (2009) “Self-efficacy results from exercising control over personal conative strengths”, Wisdom of the ages.
Maddux, J. E. (Ed.). (2013). Self-efficacy, adaptation, and adjustment: Theory, research, and application. Springer Science & Business Media.
Maddux, J. E., & Meier, L. J. (1995). Self-efficacy and depression. In Self-Efficacy, adaptation, and adjustment (pp. 143-169). Springer, Boston, MA.
Redmond, B. F. (2010). Self-Efficacy Theory: Do I think that I can succeed in my work? Work Attitudesand Motivation . The Pennsylvania: State University, World Campus.
Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (1995). Generalized self-efficacy scale. Measures in health psychology: A user’s portfolio. Causal and control beliefs, 1 (1), 35-37.