Chapter 9
Read chapter 9. Summarize the chapter. What was the most surprising thing you learned? How do personal control beliefs serve to encourage (motivate) or discourage behavior? Provide an example of each (an encouraged and discouraged behavior) and specifically discuss how personal control beliefs would influence those behaviors.
Provide a list of terms at the end of your post that you used from the chapter.
Chapter 9
This chapter was about personal control and how the influences of our past experiences motivate us to produce desired events and prevent undesired events. Expectations are learned when people try to control events. There are two types of expectations: efficacy expectations, which are forecasts about one’s capacity to completely enact a particular course of action and outcome expectations, which are forecasts that a particular outcome will be achieved or prevented once a given action is adequately executed. Efficacy would be like asking, “Can I do it?” Whereas, outcome would be like asking, “Will it work?” Both of these expectations must be reasonably high in order to make people more willing to exert strong of personal control. Self-efficiency refers to a person’s belief that they have what it takes to put together resources to cope with an overwhelming situation effectively. This arises from personal behavioral history of trying to execute the particular course of action in the past, observations of others executing similar behavior, verbal communication from others, and physiological states such as an abnormally fast heartbeat versus a calm one. Once self-efficiency is formed, it effects the person’s choice of activities, selection of environment, extent of effort, persistence, and resiliency, quality of thinking and decision making, and emotional states related to stress and anxiety. Self-efficiency serves as a model for personal empowerment. People show flexible, adaptive, and confident engagements with the world and get rid of anxiety, doubt, and avoidance. Learned helplessness is when a person enters a psychological state and expects the events in their life are uncontrollable. Helplessness is learned because people learn from their behavior and the outcomes that influence it. Mastery motivational orientation is exerting strong influence whereas helpless motivational orientation is exerting little or no influence. There are three components that explain learned helplessness: contingency, which is the objective relationship between a person’s behavior and the environment’s positive or negative outcomes, cognition which includes all mental processes like biases, attributions, and expectancies that the person relies on to translate objective environmental contingencies into subjective personal control beliefs, and behavior which refers to the person’s voluntary coping behavior which vary along a continuum that extends from active and energetic to passive and withdrawing. Helplessness disrupts motivation, learning, and emotion. Like this, the reactance theory explains how people react to uncontrollable events in their life, basically meaning that the expectation to control fosters reactance and the expectation of uncontrollability fosters helplessness. Hope is when self-efficiency functions with mastery versus helplessness and provides energy and direction for one’s coping efforts. People who have high hope possess resilient self-efficiency and strong mastery motivation and out-cope or outperform low hope people in things such as athletics, academics, and physical illnesses.
Majority of the chapter was not too surprising and made sense to me. It was not surprising that people who have more self control and higher self-efficiency are more confident, less anxious, and have less doubt. One thing that did somewhat surprise me was how much our self-efficiency determines hour selection of environment. It makes sense to me, but I don’t think that it is something that we think about often at all. We just think that we are where we are and who we are with simply just because it’s where we ended up, but if you step back and think about the underlying reasons why we choose a certain environment it could explain so much more.
Personal control beliefs serve to encourage or discourage our behavior. They can motivate us to behave a certain way or to avoid certain situations because of how we believe our model behavior should look like. For example, when a student studies for an exam, encouraged behavior would be receiving an ‘A’ on the exam. That behavior will motivate the person to increase their personal control and study more often in order to experience the situation again in the future. If the student did not study for the exam, a discouraged behavior would be receiving an ‘F’ and motivate the person to either improve to personal control so the discouraging event won’t occur in the future, or they will be motivated to explain the discouraging behavior as uncontrollable and goes through learned helplessness.
Terms: personal control, expectancies, learned helplessness, encouraging behavior, discouraging behavior, efficacy, outcome, mastery motivational orientation, helpless motivational orientation, contingencies, cognition, reactance
Chapter 9 was all about our personal control and how our beliefs and past experiences affect our current situations and future decisions.
Expectations play a very important part in our movtivational implications. If you expect your going to fail or not complete something than there is a good chance that you will fail or do a half-ass job. To produce good reseults you need to have a positive belief. There are two types of expectations that affect your chances of suceeding. The first is efficacy expectations which is the judgment of your capactity to execute a particular act. Outcome expectations are focused on the consequences and what the particular outcome will be. For example an astronaut's efficacy expectation would be can I perform this take off into space effectively? An outcome expectation would be once I get there, how will the rest of the mission go.
Self efficacy was a hot topic in this chapter. Self efficacy is how well one can cope with a certain situation. Doubt is the opposite ofself efficacy and can hinder ones ability to succeed in achieving things. Your past can affect whether you attempt to do something or avoid it. Memories and inerpertations of your past is one of the biggest indicators if you re-try something or try something new. Modeling others behaviors that are in the same situations is a way to help decide if you can do it or not. For example you tell your friend to do something first and than compare you ability to theirs. Verbal persuasions can also increase our self-efficacy by giving us support and making us feel better. If you are in a good physiological state, absence of fear and stress there is a good chance you feel pretty good about your ability of doing something. Our self efficacy effects our behaviors and basic human functioning. Choice of acitivity is the most basic. What are you going to do? Can I do this? High self-efficacy beliefs will meet demanding and challenging activities head on. Also effort and persistence, thinking and decision making, and emotionality all is related to high or low levels of self efficacy.
Learned helplessness was also covered in this chapter. When one believes that their ourcomes of their choices are uncontrollable is learned helplessness. This person believes there is nothing they can do to change their outcomes, its out of their hands. For example, if someone cannot keep a job, they don't think about what they could be doing wrong (attitude, showing up late etc) they only focus on what is out of their hands (race, gender, boss didn't like me etc). Experiences is the main teacher in helplessness and what to expect in the outcomes of their choices and events. There are 3 components contingency, cognition and behavior all come together to effect helplessness.
A lot of this stuff makes sense and not very surprising. When you have a pessimistic outlook on things, everything is negative so is your success. However I found the reactance theory to be interesting. I have always wondered why people do the opposite of what they are told or advised to do. People react to a sense of control by being even more aggressive to control their outcomes. The book states, "Expectations of control foster reactance, expectations of no control foster helplessness" There is something for everything you either act on your ability to control or you give up. I liked that.
Personal control motivates behavior by thinking in a positive way. If you think you are able to succeed than you will think more anlytically and be better at problem solving. For example, when you have 4 tests and 6 papers due in one week and you make a list and set a daily goal for what you want to achieve and think positively about finishing it all this will help you get started and keep going. Outcome expectancy is how all of your hard work could effect you. Being as optimistic as possible will help you achieve what you need to. Personal control can discourage your behavior by failing. If you try something new and you fail, that creates a problem when you want to try something new another time, but you have this fear of failure. For example you apply to 5 grad schools and all 5 deny you, it is going to be very difficult to send more applications for fear of rejection. Pessimistic views can affect your outlook on the entire grad school process and you may decide its just not worth it and not continue on.
Terms:Personal control, expectations, self-efficacy, doubt, modeling, persistence, learned helplessness, outcomes, reactence, contingency, behavior, cognition, pessimistic, optomistic, outcome expectancy
Chapter nine continues chapter eights focus on goals by describing personal control beliefs. Motivation for personal control arises from the ability to influence a result (efficacy expectancy) and a desired environmental response (outcome expectancy), which influences approach or avoid behavior. Self-efficacy; however, is a self-judgment of one’s capabilities to perform. It’s caused by personal history (which is the most powerful influence), observations of others, verbal persuasion, and physiological state (whether we are panicked or confidant). One a level of self-efficacy is established, effects arise in the forms of choice (avoidance of overwhelming tasks), effort and persistence (providing resiliency if we fail), thinking and decision-making (keeps us focused), and emotionality (how we handle setbacks). Self-efficacy may also be improved to increase empowerment, which allows people to use knowledge and skills to take control of their situations.
Establishing empowerment is done by providing mastery beliefs (internal perceived control), so people believe their outcomes are linked with their actions (as opposed to being helpless in their lives). This is reflected in the coping methods used, including approach vs. avoidance, social (team) vs. solitary (alone), proactive (prevent problem) vs. reactive (fix after it happens), alloplastic (change problem) vs. autoplastic (change self) and few others. An important difference between mastery and helpless motivation orientations is how they view failure; mastery motivated people see it as information for a more successful attempt next time, and helpless motivated people see it as a personal defeat, which is important for their future personal control.
If people consistently attribute the outcomes of their lives to forces outside of their behaviors, learned helplessness will develop. According to the textbook, a study was done in which dogs either received an inescapable shock, an escapable shock, or no shock, and their behaviors were observed during the second trial (when everyone got shocks). As hypothesized, dogs who received inescapable shocks first gave up and took the punishment without trying to do anything about it. These results were consistent with humans in a different study, showing that those with perceived internal controls tended to outperform those who didn’t in identical future trials.
Learned helplessness can be broken down into three components: contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency can be described as the influence one’s objective behavior has on outcomes in a specific environment (I avoid getting sick at college, because I avoid people, get a vaccine, and keep warm). Cognition is a subjective understanding of control, including biases (illusions of control), attributions (explanations why that outcome happened), and expectancies (subjective personal control beliefs from past experiences) (I never get sick at college, because I must be immune to the flu; I’ve never gotten it). Finally, behavior describes one’s coping reaction (passive for helplessness and active for mastery) (I got sick, but I’m going to get myself better with zinc, medicine, sleep, and water). The above response would demonstrate someone with a mastery motivation orientation. Someone with helplessness would say something like, “I’m always sick, no matter what I do. So, I might as well go with it since I can’t avoid or cure it.” This type of perceived control presents effects in the form of deficits. Motivational deficit occurs, because the person no longer bothers to try to help themselves. Learning deficits occur, because any future responses are dulled (since the person doesn’t believe they can make a difference). Emotional deficits are presented in energy depleting emotions such as apathy and depression. Depending on these effects, people develop an optimistic explanatory style (unstable problems and controllable solutions) or a pessimistic explanatory style (stable problems and uncontrollable solutions). Although people tend to be better off with an optimistic explanatory style, they may overdue it by creating a self-serving bias, in which they ignore personal flaws and blame others narcissistically.
Another theory (reactance theory) suggests that reactance (attempt to reestablish a threatened freedom) rivals helplessness by giving one a sense of internal control to change something. Reactance has been shown to be maintained if control is possible, but falls to helplessness in control is impossible. The chapter ends by stating that hope is possible with one’s capabilities and beliefs in controllable environments, which greatly influences one’s performance. Some final tips for increasing hope include making specific short-term goals, focus on intrinsic behaviors, and reflect on past success to establish meaning.
The most surprising thing I read was how the coping methods people used strongly influenced their masteries, which could be determined as either proactive (approach problem) or reactive (avoiding it). Furthermore, I was surprised that proactive people tended to concentrate on regulation their emotions more than reactive people, which makes sense now since I know emotional resiliency is important to ward off helplessness. Let’s hypothetically say Professor Maclin emails her students and says our book reports are now due at the week’s end, despite what date we originally set. According to our personal control beliefs, some of us would show encouraging behaviors (grit through the project to get a better grade), while others would show discouraging behaviors (do a poor job or not at all). The discouraging behaviors would likely result in poor grades, which would motivate students to try harder to raise their averages, or adopt a feeling of uncontrollability in their grades (learned helplessness). The example demonstrates the how each type of mastery goal affects behavior. Students encouraged to work harder on the report to get a good grade likely had good efficacy outcomes (believed they were capable of performing the actions to get the paper done), which also predicts internal locus’s of control, healthy physiological states, and histories of efficiency. One or more of these things; however, was probably not as good in students who gave up work for poor grades.
Terms: personal control beliefs, motivation, efficacy expectancy, outcome expectancy, approach behavior, avoid behavior, self-efficacy, empowerment, mastery beliefs, perceived control, coping method, mastery motivational orientation, helplessness motivational orientation, learned helplessness, contingency, cognition, bias, behavior, attributions, expectancies, motivational deficit, learning deficit, emotional deficit, optimistic explanatory style, pessimistic explanatory style, reactance theory
Chapter 9 describes personal control beliefs. Motivation to exercise personal control over what happens to you to improve your life and others. If people believe that they have some control in their environment and the environment will respond to that power people will want to be better and be motivated to have that control. Expectations also play a role in the motivation in actions. The person’s expectations depend on their previous experiences and resources. There are two types of expectations. They are efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Efficacy expectations focus on whether a person believes they can do it or not where the outcome expectation focuses on a particular outcome. Both of these needs need to be high of behaviors to have direction and some power behind them. The text also provides us with a graph of how one can perceive their control. First it starts with agent (the self) that leads to the means by efficacy expectations (the action) and finally through outcome expectations it leads to the ends (control).
Self-efficacy is the belief in ones abilities. The opposite of self-efficacy is doubt. Doubt can create one’s performance to not be as good when under stressful conditions. The level of one’s self-efficacy can be a factor in a person’s performance when their skills are stressed. One’s self-efficacy is determined by their previous experience with the task, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states of being. If a person has a positive previous experience with the task, it has given them a heightened self-efficacy. If they may perform lower on a couple occasions, it isn’t likely that it will leave much of a mark. Vicarious experience is observing another person perform the same task. The thought is if the other person can do it, so can that said individual. It is important that the observer and person performing are similar (it will have more of an impact). There is also more of an impact when the observer is less experienced in the task being observed. Verbal persuasion is effective when the persuader is credible, trustworthy, and has an expertise. The pep talks are also more effective when focusing on the positives and efficacies rather than deficits. The final factor in self-efficacy is the physiological state. If someone is without fear, stress and tension the person will have a higher self-efficacy. When someone is performing a task for the first time, physiological information is most important.
Self-efficacy has shown to have effects on behavior in multiple ways. The more someone believes they will do well with a task the more effort they will put into it and push through the difficulties of it. The opposite is just as true. The four effects self-efficacy has on behavior are the choice of activities and where the person is, (people pick tasks that they think they will excel at and stay away from ones they don’t think they would do well at), the effort that is put into the task (high self-efficacy will persist through tough tasks, low self-efficacy leads to quitting), the quality of ones decision making during the task (high self-efficacy thinks critically during the task and stay focused) and finally the emotion (High: optimistic, enthusiastic; Low: pessimistic, anxiety, depression).
Empowerment is also an important topic in chapter 9. Empowerment can happen when doubt and avoidance of a task is taken over by efficacy and engagement in a task. Empowerment can be set in place through the mastery-modeling program. These programs walk people that have never done these tasks through 7 steps which includes coping skills, component skills, modeling the skill and providing feedback, working in groups, presenting them with real life problems that may come up and finally they are given arousal- regulating techniques.
When a person has a strong sense of personal control and they have the belief that they have control over achieving positive outcomes they have mastery beliefs. The opposite of these mastery beliefs would be a form of helplessness. When helplessness occurs the individual does not believe they can do much. It leads to giving up and avoiding these tasks. Learned helpless is a concept that has come up in this area of study. These individuals believe they have no control over the things that happen in their lives. The reactance theory says that people that do believe they have some sort of control will experience any reactance. This would be the attempt to reestablish their freedom.
The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter was the information provided about self-efficacy and the four factors that are affected by an individual’s level of self-efficacy. I thought it was interesting how what we choose and are motivated to do depends on how well we think we will do at performing the task.
One’s personal control beliefs play a large role in the motivation of our behavior. I’ve already discussed much of this from the chapter. It affects what we choose to do. We want to succeed at whatever we do in life and if we feel as if we have control over what happens them we will choose what we will excel in. I would be motivated to classes with a professor that I know I have done well in previous classes of theirs, know other people have excelled in his class. If I think I will do well and have knowledge of others doing well this will help influence my behavior (choosing that teacher). An example of a discouraged behavior would be not playing an intermural sport in college. I know through previous experience that I am not coordinated enough to play other sports, I don’t know anyone else that is on my level of talent that has done any of these sports, I haven’t had anyone try to talk me into playing and I would be really stressed out if I had to take out more time to play as well as being scared to even play.
Terms: personal control, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological states, empowerment, mastery modeling program, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness, reactance theory
What Chapter 9 was all about was personal control beliefs. It talked about many different concepts that were related to personal control beliefs and I will now talk about it. It first talked about what personal control beliefs were and talked about the desire to exercise personal control as being predicated on a person's belief that they have the power to produce favorable results. Expectancy is also very important. There are two types of expectancy. One is efficacy expectation and that is a judgement of one's capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. An example of this could be "Can I do it?". The other type of expectancy is outcome expectations. This is defined as the judgement that a given action, once performed, will cause a particular outcome. An example would be "Will what I do work?". After that it talked about self-efficacy into greater detail than other chapters did. Self-efficacy is a more generative capacity in which the individual organizes and orchestrates his or her skills to cope with the demands and circumstances he or she faces. It is defined as one's judgement of how well or poorly one will cope with a situation. There are four sources self-efficacy. One is personal behavior history which is the extent to which a person believes he or she can competently enact a particular course of action. Personal behavior hsitory stems from the past and has an effect on someone's self-efficacy. Vicarious experience is another source and involves observing a model enact the same course of action the performer is about to enact which could be watching someone perform a task. Verbal persuasion is another source that involves someone telling you that you can perform a task like a teacher or a coach. The last source is physiological state which is how someone feels and how it impacts someone to do a task. Self-efficacy has different effects on behavior too like choice of activities/environment, effort and persistence, thinking and decision making, and emotionality. Empowerment is also talked about in the chapter and it is defined as the possessing the knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow people to exert control over their lives. The chapter then talks about an empowering model that many people use like self-defense teachers. Mastery and helplessness is then talked about. Mastery involves staying focused even when task is not going your way and helplessness involves giving up and withdrawing from a task. Learned helplessness is similar but it expands on it. This means that people think life's outcomes are uncontrollable. Learned helplessness involves three components which are contigency, cognition, and behavior. Helplessness also has effects on a person. It can have effects on motivation, learning, and emotional. They are all obviously negative outcomes. The chapter then changes direction a little by talking about explanatory style. There are two types. Pessimistic and optimistic are the two types and involve two different styles. Being optimistic means that you think outcomes are controllable. Being pessimistic means that you think outcomes are uncontrollable. Lastly, the chapter talks about reacatance theory. This is a theory that says that psychological and behavioral attempt to reastablish an eliminated or threatened freedom.
Honestly I didn't find much in this chapter to be surprising. Everything seemed to be straightforward and I have kind of heard about a lot of this stuff before. The one thing that was sort of surprising was hearing about some of the deficits that learned helplessness has on someone. I can understand all of them but I didn't think that it would have as much of impact as it did.
Everything in this chapter did have something to do with encouraging and discouraging behavior. They have to do with how motivated someone is to do something. An example of encouraged behavior is when you practice hard for a sport like basketball and you win a big game. An example of discouraged behavior is losing a game badly because you were not prepared for it. You had not practiced hard or much and now because of this you do practice to become a better player which will help with winning games in the future.
Terms: Personal control beliefs, Learned Helplessness, Reactance theory, Pessimistic, Optimistic, Mastery, Empowerment, Self-efficacy, Expectancy
Chapter nine discusses how our perceptions of personal control are formulated and how these beliefs influence our behavior and goal outcomes. We develop our personal control beliefs from past experiences and learned behavioral adaptations. There are two types of expectancies: efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Efficacy expectations are how we judge if we can perform particular behavior. Outcome expectations are a judgment of if a behavior will cause the expected or desired outcome. Both of these expectations should be fairly high to give behavior energy and direction.
Self-efficacy is one’s personal belief that performing a behavior that will produce a positive effect or outcome is within their capacity. It comes from one’s past history, observations of others, outside verbal influences, and physiological states. Self-efficacy shapes our choices, efforts, decision making, and emotional reactions. Someone who demonstrates a high level self-efficacy also enjoys a greater level of individual empowerment and minimizing personal anxiety and doubts.
Personal control beliefs show how much someone believes they have an influence over outcomes. When you these beliefs are strong, you perceive a strong link between person action and outcome. When the beliefs are weak, you perceive that you have little control over what is going to happen in life.
Learned helplessness is a personal control belief where you perceive you have little control over the events and outcomes in your life. The helplessness if learned from the perception that past behavior had little influence outcomes and that outside influences dictated what happens to them in life. There are three components to learned helplessness theory: contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency is the objective relationship between behavior and environment. Cognitions are mental processes; the ones of particular interest in regards to learned helplessness are biases, attributes, and expectancies. Behavior in regards to learned helplessness is how we cope with the contingencies and cognitions. Learned helplessness has negative influences on motivation, learning, emotions, and is strongly correlated with depression.
Explanatory style is how we explain why bad things happen to us. An optimistic explanatory style leads one to explain bad events externally while a pessimistic explanatory style leads one to explain the same events internally.
Reactance theory explains how we react to things. Feeling we have control of events promotes reactance and feeling like we have no control promotes helplessness. High hope individuals demonstrate high self-efficacy and optimism. They also achieve more and outperform those with lower feelings of hope.
Personal control beliefs encourage and /or discourage behavior in a number of ways. An example of an encouraged behavior would be getting good grades. If one has a good efficacy expectation like I am able to study every night coupled with a solid outcome expectation of my studying with lead to better grades, they will achieve a better outcome. An example of a discouraged behavior would be smoking. If one has low efficacy expectation like I have no control over my smoking habits and a low outcome expectation such as smoking has no effect on my health they will have poor results and continue to smoke.
Terms: efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, personal control beliefs, learned helplessness, contingency, cognitions, behavior, explanatory style, reactance theory
Chapter nine discusses different types of personal control beliefs and how they effect different expectations, learning strategies, and motives to accomplish a goal, complete a task, or face a challenging situation.
There are two different kinds of expectancies that one has about their control over a situation: efficacy and outcome expectations. Efficacy expectation is when an individual judges him or herself on their capacity to engage in an act or course of action by deciding if they can do it or not. Outcome expectations occur when the individual contemplates what will happen after a certain action or course of actions take place (such as looking over their plan on how to engage in whatever action is being needed). An example would be if I were to have driven during the snowstorm yesterday and seen an accident occur, I probably would have asked myself if I was capable of handling the situation and helping the victims (efficacy expectations) Then, after most likely knowing I would be able to help, I would start thinking about what I would specifically do and if it would help the situation or not, such as calling the cops and being rewarded for it (outcome expectations).
Self efficacy arises from efficacy expectations because it is when one judges themselves on how well they can handle a situation, such as seeing a car accident, by overlooking their skills and abilities (such as possibly knowing CPR, thinking logically and not panicking, and being able to comfort those that might be injured).
The opposite of this is doubt. When doubt occurs, that means the individual has low self-efficacy and does not believe they have the skills or abilities needed to deal with a certain situation. This can lead to anxiety, confusion, and avoidance of the situation.
When first thinking about ones self efficacy in a situation, there are four different ways in doing so according to chapter nine. These are thinking about one’s own past experiences that may influence one to either take action or avoid the dilemma (personal behavior history), watching others and mimicking their behavior (vicarious experience), receiving encouragement or pep talks from others (verbal persuasions), and having homeostasis of physiological needs (such as panicking vs. staying calm for the victims of an accident).
These different strategies of how to view ones self-efficacy have different effects on the individual’s behavior. They can affect behavior through their choice of activities and environments (choice) that will help them decide on approaching or avoiding the situation. Additionally, it can affect the extent of effort and persistence put into the performance (effort and persistence) where self-efficacy can lead to a quick recovery of self-assurance when dealing with setbacks (such as having no cellphone service when trying to reach 911 during the scene of an accident). Also, the quality of thinking and decision making during performance can either deteriorate performance (doubt) or buffer the performance (efficacy). The last thing that these different strategies can have on behavior is the type of emotional reactions related to stress and anxiety. If an individual becomes overwhelmed within the scene of an accident and worries about being blamed for whatever happens, then thoughts of disaster, emotional arousal, and feelings of distress and anxiety arise that reduce performance, thinking, and overall handling of the situation.
Different levels of self-efficacy obviously arise depending on the type of situation that match up to skills and abilities of the individual involved that can lead to personal empowerment or competent functioning. When one has high empowerment, their level of self-efficacy is also high and they are able to translate their knowledge and skills into effective performance when threatened and exert control over intrusive negative thoughts. When an individual needs help on reaching this level of personal empowerment, they have the option of seeking a master modeling program expert who would help to cope with a fearsome situation by having them use their vicarious experience of watching the instructor, mimicking, and gathering positive feedback to overcome real-life future events.
Master beliefs help one perceive how much control they have over reaching wanted outcomes and avoiding unwanted ones. One can either cope positively (approach, social, proactive, direct, control, alloplastic, problem focused) or negatively (avoidance, solitary, reactive, indirect, escape, autoplastic, and emotion focused). When one engages in a mastery motivational orientation, they respond to failure by remaining focused by trying to overcome difficulties and setbacks while focusing on how they can cure the failure, but a helpless motivation orientation will mean they have a weak view of themselves after failing by focusing on the cause of why they failed.
Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable and believe that their behavior exerts little or no influence over those outcomes. After the study of learned helplessness on the dogs, it was later proven that humans also learned helplessness strategies in uncontrolled situations. This means that when it comes to an uncontrollable situation, it is not how smart or intelligent an individual is but how responsive and controllable the environment is while trying to solve a problem(such as not being able to move/help victims out of their vehicle after an accident, so one waits until medical staff arrives).
There are three components that go along with learned helplessness: contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency is the relationship between an individual and the environments outcomes. Cognition involves objective environmental contingencies and a person’s subjective understanding of personal control within those environments through biases, attributions, and expectancies. By paying attention to how controllable outcomes really are (objective) we can then use our own perception of how controllable we really think those outcomes are (subjective). An example would be how bad an accident was would determine the expectancy of those victims getting injuries and needing an ambulance to be cured (objective) and the time allotted to us be able to call 911 and for the ambulance to reach the area (subjective). Behavior is the third component because voluntary behavior can quickly switch from passive to active.
Motivational deficiencies, learning deficits, and emotional deficits are all effects of helplessness. Learned helplessness has also been viewed as a model of naturally occurring unipolar depression, where depressed people actually are the ones to usually correctly judge their efficacy and non-depressed people misjudge their efficacy. When an individual goes to explain why an event has happened, optimistic people will use unstable and controllable attributes and pessimists will use attributes that are stable but uncontrollable.
The reactance theory occurs when there is a threat to freedom. This means there could also be an uncontrollable situation involved threatening this freedom and an individual who knows their freedom is at risk but have little control will experience reactance, and when there is no control they will be more active than aggressive.
Overall, chapter nine describes different ways to handle situations that occur in every day life through one’s efficacy and level of control over a situation. When one is aware of all obstacles in a situation and is positive about overcoming those, they will gain a high level of hope and see more meaning in their lives as they reflect on their lifelong progress in constructing and attaining important goals.
The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter is that depressed people actually have more of a balanced, realistic memory of positive and negative events in their lives are not prone to learned helplessness deficits because of this. I also found it surprising that non-depressed people are the ones who believe they have more control than they really do and harbor their biases from mostly positive events instead of negative ones as well. Most misjudges of control over life occurrences is done by non-depressed people, not depressed. This information makes sense after reading and thinking it over, but before it made sense that depressed people are the ones to have a less healthy balance of their skills because they might not care as much. That is not the idea in this situation though, instead it is the ability to remember experiences (positive and negative) and exert those into action.
Personal control beliefs can motivation behavior when one’s self-efficacy of themselves matches up with the skills needed to take action. When one feels their ability to handle a situation is low, and then they start to feel doubt and avoid the situation. An example would be the car accident mentioned throughout this summary, where if the ones skills to cope with the accident matched up with the level of danger involved then that individual would be motivated to take action. If that individual felt the situation was too dangerous and started to doubt their skills on helping out, then they might keep on driving and avoid the accident all together.
Terms: efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, doubt, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological state, choice, effort and persistence, thinking and decision making, emotionality, empowerment, mastery motivational orientation, helpless motivational orientation, learned helplessness, contingency, cognition, behavior, motivational/learning/emotional deficits, optimistic/pessimistic explanatory styles, reactance theory, and hope.
Chapter nine of the textbook discussed beliefs about personal control. When people believe that they have what it takes to influence their environment and that the environment will be responsible to their efforts, then they will be motivated to exercise personal control over their life’s outcome. There are two types of expectancy: efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Efficacy expectations are guesses as to how likely the individual can complete the task they wish to accomplish. Outcome expectations are a prediction of the consequence that will occur once a task is completed.
Self-efficacy pertains to how competent people believe themselves to be at a certain task. Surprises, difficulties, and setbacks affect a person’s self-efficacy. There are many causes of self-efficacy. Personal history of past attempts at the behavior strongly influences how a person thinks they will do on a task. It is actually the strongest influence on self-efficacy. Vicarious experience, or seeing other people successfully or unsuccessfully complete the task, also weighs in on our self-efficacy. Verbal persuasion plays a role in self-efficacy development. Pep talks can give us the push we need to feel like we could successfully complete a task. We generally do not feel competent when we are experiencing a counterproductive physiological state. Self-efficacy affects what activities we choose to participate in, the effort and persistence with which we complete the activities, what we think about as we perform the task, and our emotions as we participate. Empowerment involves having the knowledge, skills and beliefs that allow people to exert control over their lives. Mastery modeling programs are effective ways to empower people. In these programs, an expert works with novices to help them gain the skills necessary to overcome a scary situation.
Mastery beliefs are the perceived control one has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing negative outcomes. Mastery allows a person to still feel competent when they experience failure. The opposite of this is helplessness. Learned helplessness is a result of a feeling of lack of control over the individual’s own environment. Learned helplessness effects contingency (the relationship between behavior and outcomes), cognition (mental processes that translate contingencies into personal control beliefs), and behavior (coping methods that range from being active to withdrawing). Reactance theory suggests that reactance is a result of predications of controllability, and uncontrollability predictions create helplessness. People with high hope, which is characterized by consistent self-efficacy and mastery motivation, out perform individuals with low hope.
I guess I wasn’t quite surprised when I read that individuals with high hope out perform those with low hope, but it wasn’t something I had really thought about before. Without a sense of personal control, our behaviors would not have the energy that they normally do. For example, since I do not believe that it is possible for me to do really well on both tests that I have this week, I feel overwhelmed and slightly less motivated to study for one test. However, I feel like it is possible for me to do well on a job interview that I have this week, so I will put more effort into my appearance and maybe prepare answers for common interview questions prior to the actually interview.
Terms: Personal control, Efficacy expectations, Outcome expectations, Self-efficacy, Personal history, Verbal persuasion, Physiological state, Empowerment, Mastery modeling program, Mastery beliefs, Learned helplessness, Contingency, Cognition, Behavior, Reactance theory, Hope.
Chapter nine discussed how to exercise your personal control. Personal control is your outcomes in life and how much or how little it influences certain events taking place. There are two types of expectations that have to do with personal control. The first one is efficacy. Efficacy expectations are one's capacity to competently enact a particular course of action. This is asking yourself, "Can I do it?". Outcome expectancy is questioning whether the outcome can be achieved or not. For example, "Will it work?". Self efficacy is the capacity to use one's personal resources well, under diverse and trying circumstances. Such as, if something starts to go wrong do you have the resources within yourself to turn things around? There are different sources of self efficacy also. One source, is personal behavior history, this is when a particular course of action stems from a past personal history of trying to enact that course of action. Memories and recollections influence a persons personal behavior history. The second source of self efficacy is vicarious experience. Vicarious experience involves observing a model enact the same course of action the performer is about to enact. Watching someone do the action first. Pep talks can influence personal resources as well. This is known as verbal persuasion.
Mastery beliefs reflect the extent of perceived control one has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones. When one's personal control belief's are weak the individual perceives initiatives and actions produce little effect on what happens.
Hope is involved with there is both motivation and when you know how to achieve your goal. There are two major factors to make hope happen and they include, a "can do" belief and a belief that you can affect your goal in multiple ways.
Not much in chapter nine actually surprised me. I would have to say that the most surprising thing I read about was that helplessness was learned. My definition of helplessness is laziness but after reading the paragraph about it I changed my mind. Sometimes things happen that we can't control and we can't do anything about it. I always thought that if you didn't want to help yourself that made you lazy. Not necessarily, because if my car broke down on the side of the road, I would be very helpless because I wouldn't even know where to look first.
An example of encourage personal control would be if you studied really hard for an upcoming test and you did really well on it. If you got an A on that test you would continue to study really hard for every test and perform well on all of them. The opposite would be discourage personal control. An example of discourage personal control would be if you didn't study at all for a test and did really bad on it. If you bombed a test and you wanted to do better on the next one you would then study for it.
Chapter nine dealt with personal control beliefs. Involved in this are the motivation to exercise personal control, self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness, reactance theory, and hope. The fist part involves two kinds of expectancy, efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. The first is a judgement of one's capacity to execute a particular action. The second is how likely a certain consequence will follow said behavior. Next we have Perceived control, self, action and control. This is where we get into the model of perceived control that goes self to action to control.
Next in the chapter we move onto Self_Efficacy, this is a capacity in which a person organizes their skills to cope with demands or challenges they face. There are sources of Self-Efficacy like Personal Behavior History, Vicarious Experiences, Verbal Persuasion, and Physiological State. Self-Efficacy also has an effect on behavior in ways like choice, effort and persistence, thinking and decision making and emotinality and empowerment.
Mastery Beliefs are the extent that we perceive having control over achieving wanted outcomes and avoiding bad ones. Mastery also deals with coping skills.
Learned Helplessness is the strength of the perceived relationship between one's behavior and their fate outcome. Helplessness can be learned and we see the example of the dogs in the shock cages. LH also has components such as contingency, cognition, and behavior. some consequences from LH are motivational deficits, learning deficits, and emotional deficits.
Next we have Reactance theory. This is the theory that psychological and behavior attempt to react against threatened freedom. And finally Hope deals with people who know what goals that want to achieve and how to achieve them.
If you believe you can achieve something you are in the mindset and will work harder to achieve that goal and therefore your perceive the ability to do this certain thing. On the opposite if you don't believe you can do it, simply you wont. An example from my own life is when i try and learn a foreign language. I feel like I cannot achieve this and I believe I have no control over how well I learn it. This is discouraged because I don't have the motivation to try as hard. an opposite example of this is my counseling class, I feel i have control over my grades and my amount of learning and I study hard and do very well. Nothing surprise me in chapter nine expect how much each of the terms below really have a lot involved in them. They are not just simple definitions.
Terms: Personal control beliefs, Expectency (outcome, efficacy), Self-efficacy, empowerment, mastery beliefs, coping, learned helplessness, contigency, cognition, behavior, Deficits (motivational, learning, emotional), emotionality. Hope, reactance theory.
Chapter 9 focuses on Personal Control Beliefs. The main topics that go along with this chapter are self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness, and the reactance theory.
Self efficacy is the belief that we as an individual can/has the capacities to achieve a goal or a certain outcome. The book does a really nice job giving examples of this. For example, when we drive a car. Yes, most all of us know how to drive a car, and have the abilities to do things such as steering, braking, knowing how to read road signs, knowing the laws, etc. Yet, there are some factors that can come into play when you are driving as well. The book gives the example of maybe you are driving a car that you have never drove, or you are driving on a road that you have never driven on before, or maybe there is a large snow storm and you aren’t sure how to drive in snow because you are originally from Florida. Even the best of drivers can have problems with driving in certain situations. The driver needs to have confidence, know how to react in this type of situation, and maybe ask for help. This example really helped me understand and put it more into perspective. There are many sources for self efficacy that the book explains, such as personal history-such as past situations. There is also vicarious experience- which is watching someone else and seeing that person’s outcome. It could also be verbal, which for example could be by coaches, teachers, parents, books etc. These people tell you what to do, and how to do it. The last would be your physiological state. The text also explains how self-efficacy relates to our behavior, such as making decisions, our emotions, and our empowerment.
The next topic that the book explains is mastery beliefs. Mastery beliefs show the amount of perceived control one has over something, and obtaining positive outcomes over aversive outcomes. This goes into the way we can cope with certain situations, and how that relates to the outcome. The book has an illustration of a table that shows different ways to cope with situations. Some of these are approach vs. avoidance, direct vs. indirect, or problem focused vs. emotional focus. The illustrations really helped me understand the different types of coping.
The third main topic that was discussed in this chapter would be learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is when an individual is in a psychological state where they feel they do not have control over something in their life. This is related to a person’s behavior and ones outcome. The book really tries to state the fact that helplessness is something that we learn, and the book gives a good example of how this relates to an experiment that researchers did on dogs and shock. There are three components that go along with learned helplessness; these are contingency, cognition, and behavior. The book then lastly explains the effects of helplessness, such as learning deficits, motivation deficits, and when it comes to a person’s emotions.
The last main topic that was explained in the text would be the reactance theory. This is when an individual feels that his/her freedom is being threatened.
Honestly there was not much from this chapter that I thought was surprising. A lot of the information was things and topics I have already learned from previous classes, and everything seemed to pretty much flow and make sense for the most part. I guess if I had to choose I would say the most surprising thing from this chapter was all of the different examples that related to learned helplessness about the effects of it. I guess I didn’t realize that there was so much that could be affected by different levels of helplessness.
An individual’s personal control beliefs are there to either encourage or discourage our behavior in different ways. It can either motivate us or make us not want to try or care. An example of this that relates to my life would be when it comes to school, especially homework and tests. When I am studying for a test I am encouraged to get an A. I am encouraged by many different factors such as family, teachers, and graduate schools. Knowing that I have encouragement to get an A makes me work harder, and have more motivation to do so. Then, if I do get an A on the exam, this motivates me to do better as well. Yet, when it comes to discouraged behavior, in this example that would be failing the test. If you totally fail the test, or even just don’t get the grade you wanted then you will want to do better next time, and hopefully study for the test.
TERMS: personal control beliefs, self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness, reactance theory, empowerment, physiological state, vicarious experience, approach vs. avoidance, direct vs. indirect, problem focused vs. emotional focus, reactance theory, contingency, cognition, behavior, and motivation
Chapter 9 is primarily about how people use personal control over what happens to them. There are two different kinds of expectancies: efficacy and outcome expectations. Efficacy expectation is if a person thinks they can do it. Outcome expectation is when a person wonders if a behavior will work. Self-efficacy is a little different. It is when a person organizes and puts together the skills they have to deal with the obstacles they face. Some sources of self-efficacy are: personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological state.
Mastery motivational orientation is when someone is determined to reach their goal even if they fail at first. For example is a person doesn’t reach the time they wanted to run in a marathon they will continue to train even harder for the next marathon. Helpless motivational orientation is when people give up or are highly discouraged when something goes wrong when trying to reach their goal. An example of this is when a teacher tells a student their writing is terrible, after hearing that feedback they give up on a writing career and decide to be a nurse. The reactance theory explains how people react to those things that are uncontrollable in life. If self-efficacy and mastery motivation work together people will have a higher chance of reaching their goals.
The most surprising thing to me was how powerful efficacy expectation can be. I have always heard that if you think positive you are more likely to do better. But I didn’t realize how important it is for me to put together all my strengths to show myself and others how influential I really am. Focusing on what we are best at will help us to reach our goals easier. Besides how powerful efficacy expectation can be, everything else in the chapter seemed to make sense and connect with other things I have learned in the course so far.
Personal control beliefs encourage and discourage our behavior because it helps us to stay motivated in our goal and also helps us to stay away from unnecessary troubles along the way. A person trying to lose weight is encouraged with personal control beliefs because they see how they are losing weight and feeling healthier. By feeling good inside they will feel good outside. But when the tempting donuts and late night snacks come they use personal control to stay away from something that will hold them back. It is the little voice inside your head telling you if you are making a good choice that will help you in the long run or set you back.
Terms: personal control beliefs, mastery motivational orientation, reactance theory, self-efficacy, efficacy, outcome expectations
Chapter nine focuses our attention on three main ideas of motivation which are self-efficacy, mastery, and helplessness. All three of these concepts are large driving forces in humans and how we interact internally within towards our external world.
Starting with self-efficacy As we have previously learned, choice is one of the most powerful motivators we experience as humans. With that choice comes two expectations, efficacy and outcome. examining these two characteristics of expectations we find that efficacy is the self-talk with yourself in the form of, "can I do it," while outcome is more talk like "will this work out the way I want it to." These two traits of expectation must be relatively high for somebody to engage in an activity.
Self-Efficacy itself is a very large entity in our minds. It includes past experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion from others, and the physiological ability of the individual. These four components all run through an individual's head when deciding on engaging in an activity. After all of these traits are formed they can effect, choice, persistence, cognitive processes, and emotional and motivational responses. Self-efficacy is a large part of therapy nowadays as it is beneficial to viewing the world with a more of a glass hall full perspective and allows people to engage in more activities with confidence. Many people still debate on whether being good at something is a need of self-efficacy or of competence (introduced in chapter 6). the explanation given was that self-efficacy is the need to be good at something and then judging yourself based on your success. Competence is more rooted in developmental states. Once something is mastered interest is lost and competence of something else arises.
Mastery is developed from self-efficacy that is the beginnings of self-empowerment. To feel empowered we must have the self-efficacy to translate thought into action. Empowering people translates into the mastery modeling program. Basically it starts with an expert displaying skills, for example, in self-defense. The novices see the skill and emulate it as best they can until mastery occurs. This whole process plays on the four sources of self-efficacy. Mastery ultimately is most effected in coping because it allows people to cope in different ways based on their level of mastery.
Helplessness is, of course, the direct opposite of mastery because it is the psychological belief that there is little or no perceived control in a situation. Learning that behavior controls outcome results in mastery motivation orientation and learning that behavior exerts little on the outcome results in helpless motivation orientation. There are three components of learned helplessness and they are contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency is the direct relationship a person feels between his or her actions and the outcome of the action. Cognition is the processes that occur letting people analyze a situation based on their personal control beliefs. Behavior refers to the individual's coping ability. Learned helplessness is a direct enemy of self-efficacy and confidence and it destroys motivation quickly. The Reactance Theory explains that expectations of control aids in reacting positively and expectations of uncontrollable situations promote a negative attitude and of course feeling helpless.
The chapter finishes by talking about how people can use hope in an agentic way to keep high self-efficacy and diminish the thoughts of helplessness.
Personally I was not so much surprised by any information in this chapter because it makes a lot of sense, but I was intrigued on the debate between self-efficacy and mastery. They seem too similar, but looking closely they can be distinguished. Personal control Beliefs can be demonstrated as a powerful thing through an example of prison. The reason prison is a huge punishment for most people is because all personal control seizes to exist when the bars slam home. Afterwards helplessness ensues, followed by a form of coping after time and knowledge, but the thought of no control is too overbearing for most people, which deters crime. This also serves as the discouraged behavior example. Lack of control discourages people from crime. An example of encouragement would be an bonus at work for whoever has the highest performance. This is almost completely all in the individuals control. They can show up to work on time, get the right amount of work done, be creative and innovative in their process, and they can go the extra mile of they want. Its all in their control because they won't lose their job if they choose not to participate they simply won't get the bonus.
Terms Used: Self-efficacy, mastery, leanred helplessness, coping, choice, mastery modeling program, mastery motivation orientation, helpless motivation orientation, empowerment, contingency, cognition, behavior, personal control beliefs, Reactance Theory, hope.
The idea of this chapter is on personal control beliefs. There are two kinds of expectancy, efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Efficacy expectations is the question of whether or not I can do it. Outcome expectation is the question of will what I do work. These both encourage and motivate behavior because if someone doesn’t think they are able to do something or if what they going to do is going to work, they will most likely not even try to do that behavior. For example, if I didn’t think I was able to start an exercise plan that would help me lose ten pounds in one month, I would not even try. The efficacy expectation of that is that I am able to exercise, and the the outcome expectation of that is that I am able to lose ten pounds.
Perceived Control puts the relationship of the person, behavior and outcome together with motivation. These are based on the self, action and control. If the person (self) can do the behavior, then the outcome will be what the person expected.
Self-Efficacy is the idea of how well a person can perform a task. It is the idea where the knows his or her skills and is aware of them to know what he or she is able to handle. This made more sense to me when I read the example of knowing we are able to drive a car on the highway, having high self efficacy, but if the circumstances change, like a snow storm or an unreliable car, which may then lower our self efficacy. There are many things that self efficacy stems from, and these include our personal history, watching others execute the same task, what others say about the task, and our physiological state. Keeping with the idea of the snow storm, if we were once in a bad accident in a snow storm, our self efficacy is going to be lower than if we had driven in many storms before with good experiences. This may either encourage or discourage out behavior. With the idea of exercising every day to lose weight, if I am hearing from others that I am losing weight or people make comments about it (verbal persuasion) I am going to stay more motivated and keep up more than if no one is saying anything after I lose a few lbs.
Self efficacy has many effects on behavior. One of them is the idea of choice. We chose to avoid tasks that are too difficult for us or have the possibility of being overwhelmed or confused. For example, for me to make a decision to start exercising, I am going to make a choice to do something that is somewhat challenging to me such as joining a fitness class, but I am not going to do something like a class that is full of people who have been working out their entire life or are training for something like a triathalon.
Effort and persistence also effects behavior. If we keep trying and succeeding we are more likely to continue the behavior. The other effects are thinking and decision making and emotionality. We want to know how a task is going to make us feel before we do it, if its going to make us feel good, we will probably go for it, and knowing something is going to make us sad or upset, we will do our best to avoid it. Gaining in self efficacy helps us get rid of anxiety, avoidance and doubt.
Learned helplessness happens when someone expects that something in their life is uncontrollable, and therefor stops trying. I know lots of people that just say that no matter what they do, they cant lose weight, so they are just going to stop trying to eat healthy and not going to exercise because it doesn’t do anything for them anyway. When in all reality, they didn’t see instant results and just gave up. This is similar to the reactance theory, and explains how people react to these events that they feel are out of their control. They may first think that it is in their control and use their assertiveness to in their behavior to try and gain control, but if it fails, they show a helplessness response.
The reactance theory is something I don’t completely understand yet and hope to get better understanding tomorrow in class.
In the example of working out in effort to lose weight, the personal control beliefs would greatly influence this behavior. Someone has believe that exercise will help them lose weight, and they have to put the effort and persistence into doing so. I know many people who just don’t try because of learned helplessness.
Terms Used: efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, Self efficacy, verbal persuasion, physiological state, personal behavior history, learned helplessness, personal control beliefs
Chapter 9 talks about personal control and our belief in things, based on pervious events.
There are two types of expectation: efficacy and outcome. Efficacy expectations are a judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. It is the “Can I do it?’ factor. An outcome expectation is a judgment that a given action, once performed, will cause a particular outcome. It is the “Will what I do work?” factor.
The book also talks about self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is that beliefs come from personal behavior history, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. There are many factors that go into believing if you can or cannot do a certain task. Past experiences and memories are a few factors that go into believing you can or can’t. Doubt is the opposite of self-efficacy. Doubt can become a problem when your past experiences and memories were not pleasant ones.
Self-efficacy can impact many different areas of your life, such as, choice, effort and persistence, thinking and decision making, and emotionally. Self-efficacy can affect your choice because people usually prefer situations that they feel comfortable and ones that they are capable of adjusting to. Therefore, people usually avoid situation that they are not comfortable in, avoiding the possibility of being overwhelmed. Self-efficacy can affect your effort and persistence because it influences how much effort you will exert and how long you are willing to put forth the effort, even in the face of adversity. People who believe strongly in their self-efficacy for solving problems remain remarkably efficient in their analytic thinking during stressful situations, whereas people who doubt themselves think erratically. When it comes too emotionally, people with a strong sense of self-efficacy attend to the demands and challenges of the task, whereas people with a weak sense of self-efficacy, dwell on personal deficiencies and see obstacles they may encounter.
Personal control beliefs serve as encouraging behaviors sometimes because of the positive thoughts you have from past experiences. I will use batting in softball as an example because I work with the softball team, as a batter if you have to come up in a pressure situation when the team really needs a hit, it would be better to come up to the plate with at least a hit off the pitcher your facing, instead of, say, having stuck out every time up because you will have at least some positive thoughts running through your head. Personal control beliefs can also serve as a negative behavior because if something negative has happened in the past, you will more likely have negative thoughts running through your head. I will use softball again for an example. If you are the pitcher for your team and you have a pressure situation, where you only need one out, but up comes a batter that smacked a home run last time up, you will be more than likely thinking of negative thoughts in your head because of the recent experience, instead of good thoughts that could be there had you had stuck the batter out the last time up.
Terms Used: Efficacy, Self-efficacy, Efficiency Expectations, Outcome Expectations, Doubt
Chapter 9 discusses personal control beliefs; the motivation to exercise personal control over what happens to you. First, the text describes two different types of expectancy’s. Efficacy expectation is a judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. An outcome expectation is a judgment that a given action, once performed, will cause a particular outcome. These expectations help energize and direct behavior. Related to efficacy expectations is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the capacity in which the individual organizes his or her skills to manage demands or obstacles he or she faces. Self efficacy allows an individual to make changes their performance when things aren’t going well. There are four sources for self efficacy; personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological state. Personal behavior history involves a person’s past experience with trying to execute the same behavior. If a person did well with a task in the past self efficacy is boosted. If they didn’t do well with the task self efficacy is lowered. Vicarious experience is observing another individual performing the same task. If the task is performed well by another person it raises the observers self efficacy. Verbal persuasion includes the “pep talks” one receives from other individuals and from their inner self. These pep talks increase self efficacy if the persuader is credible and trustworthy. Physiological state can determine one’s ability to cope with demands. If tension, fear, and stress are present self efficacy is lowered. If these are not present self efficacy is heightened. Self efficacy has an impact on our behavior. People seek out environments and activities that they feel comfortable with because of self efficacy. A person with high self efficacy generally puts forth more effort in challenges, and persists for a longer amount of time. They tend to use more critical thinking skills whereas those will low self efficacy think erratically. Being able to cope with difficult situations includes the ides of empowerment. In order to empower oneself self efficacy must be present to use the needed knowledge and skills for a task and to control negative thoughts. The book uses an example of women taking self defense classes. These classes were effective in helping the women feel confident, be flexible and adaptive in situational challenges, demands, and threats. The extent of perceived control one has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones can be described with mastery beliefs. Master motivational orientation includes a person’s responses to failure by remaining on task and focused despite setbacks and challenges. The opposite, helpless motivational orientation, includes a negative view of one’s self when dealing with failure. The next section of the chapter focuses on outcome expectancies and their role in learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. There are three main components to the learned helplessness theory; contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency is the objective relationship between a person’s behavior and the environment’s outcomes. Contingency can be described as a continuum that ranges from uncontrolled outcomes to controlled outcomes. Cognition and learned helplessness are related in that cognitive interpretation takes place between the actual environment contingencies that exist and a person’s subjective understanding of personal control in these environments; how controllable a person believes outcomes are. The behavior to achieve or avoid outcomes is on a continuum of learned helplessness. Behaviors range from passive to active. Learned helplessness can have negative effects on a person’s well-being. When activities don’t go the right way, or end in failure it decreases a person’s willingness to try when they already have learned helplessness. The same person had a difficult time learning that a new response can affect outcomes. They already have a pessimistic disposition that disrupts learning of new responses. Emotional deficits such as lethargic, depressive reactions in situations that require active, assertive emotion can come from learned helplessness. The way people react to negative events that happen to them can be described as explanatory style. A person with an optimistic explanatory style would explain a bad event as something that was controllable. They would take credit for a success, but not blame themselves for a failure. A person with pessimistic explanatory style would explain a bad event as something that was uncontrollable and stable. This type of person is more likely to quit a task during a setback. The third topic the book discusses is the reactance theory. Reactance is the psychological and behavioral attempt at reestablishing an eliminated or threatened freedom. People experience reactance is they have an expectation for having control over what happens to them and that control is lost. After a lot of uncontrollable experiences a person becomes passive and sinks into learned helplessness. The last topic discussed is hope. When people have motivation to work for their goals and have knowledge of ways to achieve them they experience hope. People who have hope generally succeed farther in life than those who do not.
The most surprising thing I learned was that reactance enhances performance. I would consider myself to have a high level of reactance. I always thought I was just stubborn and wanted things to go my way. But after reading this and really examining my behaviors I can think of many instances where reacting to a loss of control has really benefited me.
When a person has high self efficacy it motivates their behavior because they perceive and visualize themselves as doing well in that particular task or activity. This can come from personal history, persuasion of others, and seeing others perform the same task. A person with self efficacy is more likely to engage in a challenging activity and will persist longer at it. A person with learned helplessness however is the opposite. Instead of believing they have control over situations, like a person with self efficacy, they think challenging situations are out of their control and will most likely end in failure. Therefore, they lack motivation to engage in a task that seems difficult or challenging. They believe the outcome will be out of their control and end in failure.An encouraging behavior would be getting on the Dean’s list. This gives a person good feelings, and motivates them to try for it again the next semester. Because of their personal history their self efficacy would be high and they are more likely to persist in school work and achieve Dean’s List status in the future. A discouraging behavior would be earning a poor GPA a few semesters in a row. This could cause a person to adopt learned helplessness; no matter what they do they will always receive a low GPA. This could cause them to put in less effort, or some may drop out of school altogether.
Terms: Personal control, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, self-efficacy, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological state, empowerment, mastery beliefs, mastery motivational orientation, helpless motivational orientation, learned helplessness, contingency, cognition, motivational deficits, learning deficits, emotional deficits, optimistic explanatory style, pessimistic explanatory style, reactance, hope
Chapter 9
This chapter was mainly about how in control we feel and how this can motivate us to act in certain situations. When thinking about how in control we are in situations there are two kinds of expectancy. The first is efficacy expectations; this is the belief of a person’s ability to complete or execute a certain action. It is whether or not you think you can do something. The second kind of expectancy is an outcome expectation. This is a judgment of if a certain action will produce a particular outcome, or the “will it work” scenario. Both of these expectancies need to be fairly high for the individual’s behavior to become energetic and goal directed. Along with the two kinds of expectancy comes perceived control: self, action, and control. This theory puts the individual’s belief that he or she can control the outcome into a diagram or model. The self portion represents the person or individual. If the individual believes they can do a certain action (efficacy expectation) then the action pert of this model comes into play. If the person believes the action will work (outcome expectation) then control or the end product comes in place.
Self-efficacy was also an important concept in this chapter. Self-efficacy is the belief a person has in oneself or in his or her ability. If a person believes that he or she is good at something they tend to put more effort into it. There are four sources that can guide or determine self-efficacy; they are personal history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological state. Personal history is the big one. If individuals have a lot of past experiences that tell them they can do something and do it well they have a high self-efficacy of that activity. However, if they have past histories of failing or being bad at certain things their self-efficacy for that action is probably low. Vicarious experience is watching someone else do a task. If a person is trying something new and they watch someone model and succeed at the task they are learning this can help create self-efficacy. Verbal persuasion can also influence self-efficacy. If a coach or teacher gives an individual a pep-talk to psych them up this can help increase self-efficacy even if it is just enough for one more attempt. The last is the individual’s physiological state. This is the sweaty palms or racing heart rate feeling. If a person has a racing heart and is nervous this is the body telling that individual maybe this action isn’t a good idea at the moment. Self-efficacy also has effects on people’s behavior. It can affect the selection of activities and environments people participate in. For example if someone doesn’t believe they are good at volleyball they may choose to avoid the activity, verses someone who believes they are good may choose to find opportunities to play the sport. Effort and persistence is also affected by self-efficacy. People with high self-efficacy tend to put forth more effort and persist longer than those with low self- efficacy. The next thing affected is thinking and decision making. If an individual has high self-efficacy they perform well under stressful situations and are still able to come up with useful strategies; whereas a person with low self-efficacy tends to get to frustrated and easily distracted. Emotionality is the last behavior affected by self-efficacy. If an individual has low self-efficacy they tend to be depressed and anxious. On the flip side if a person has high self-efficacy they tend to be optimistic and enthusiastic. As a final point, self-efficacy can invoke the feeling of empowerment. This is the feeling one has when they believe they are in control or can change their circumstances instead of feeling trapped.
Learned helplessness was also an important concept within this chapter. This is due to the fact that if we experience circumstances over and over that we can’t control and get negative outcomes we get in this mind frame that we cannot control our circumstances. There are three components of learned helplessness. They are contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency is the relationship between a person’s behavior and the environment’s outcomes. Cognition is the interpretation between the actual environment contingencies and the person’s perception of personal control over the environment. The coping behavior refers to how a person reacts whether it be passive and lethargic or active and assertive. Helplessness also creates effects on people. Motivational deficit is one of them. This is when helplessness over time decrease a person’s willingness to try. Learning deficits is another helplessness effect. This happens when we are so used to our efforts not affecting outcomes of certain things that we neglect to find or invent new ways to work out problems. The last effect is emotional deficits. This is when lethargic and depressive emotions replace situations where active and assertive emotions are called for.
The most surprising concept I learned throughout this chapter was the optimistic explanatory style. This is when the belief or illusion of control over time fosters and creates positive explanations for events. People with this style take credit for everything positive, whether they really controlled it or not, and do not take credit for any losses or negative outcomes, even if it really was their fault. This is almost taking a view of a narcissist. The book says this is a healthy position to take (the way of thinking not narcissism).
Personal control beliefs are very important to motivate or discourage behaviors. If you don’t believe your effort can affect any outcome why would you even try? If someone had a positive personal control belief, they would take charge of their life to get the most out of it and succeed in the things they want. For example, if someone took this view they would be more likely to study for an important test because they would take the position that their behavior directly has an effect on an outcome. On the flip side if someone believed that what they do doesn’t have much effect on what happens they would not study because they would take the view that the score they get doesn’t have anything to do with how they act or study.
Terms: efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, perceived control: self action and control, self-efficacy, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological state, choice: selection of activities and environments, effort and persistence, thinking and decision making, emotionality, empowerment, learned helplessness, contingency, cognition, behavior, motivational deficits, learning deficits, emotional deficits, optimistic explanatory style
Chapter 9 talked about personal control beliefs. People want to know that they have some form of control in their life and their motivated behavior will be centered around this sense of control. Expectations play a large part in motivating our behavior. There are 2 basic types of expectancies that the book talked about. The first is efficacy expectations. This is the expectation of being able to enact the behaviors one needs in order to cope effectively with the situation at hand. To put this in a simpler way, “can I do it”. Outcome expectation is the expectation that one’s behavior will produce positive outcomes. The explanation that the book gave on this was “will it work”. Both of these forms of expectancy play a huge role in the regulation of our behavior.
Self-efficacy was discussed in great deal in this chapter and the basic concept behind it is how well you perform in certain situations. Self-efficacy is not the same as ability but rather whether or not you have the resources to cope with the situation and turn things around for the better. The example involving driving a car really put this into perspective for me. Even the most skilled drivers have difficulty reacting to certain events (rock hitting windshield, blizzard, broken windshield wipers, etc.). These types of events rely on how well you keep your emotions in check and whether or not you can adapt to the conditions.
There are 4 basic sources of self-efficacy and each one of them is pretty self-explanatory. Personal behavior history is looking back at their past memories and interpret whether or not to execute the same behavior. If you pulled it off in the past you have a higher self-efficacy and believe you can do it again. Vicarious experience is watching somebody else do the intended behavior. An example I can think of for this was when I went off a snowmobile jump for my first time. I had my dad do it before me so I could see whether or not he could pull it off. When he did, I felt more confident and figured that I could do it as well. If he were to fail, there would be no chance in hell that I would try it. Verbal persuasion is a pep talk and I don’t feel that it needs to be explained. We have all had a pep talk at some point in our life and we know that a good one can motivate us to do something that we wouldn’t do otherwise. Physiological state is about the physiological signals that say whether or not we can cope with the task at hand. If we are in a scary situation, our heart rate rises and it feels like we can’t move. It is our body telling us that it doesn’t feel comfortable in the situation at hand.
Mastery beliefs are about the amount of perceived control one has over something. Helplessness on the other hand is the psychological belief that there is little or no perceived control in a situation. Seligman and Maier’s dog experiment helped me understand this a little better than reading it out of the book. In this experiment they took dogs and controlled whether or not they could control being shocked. Dogs that had no control of the shocking learned to accept the pain and stop exhausting energy trying to avoid it. This applies to our everyday lives because there are certain situations where we just accept the results and don’t try to change them.
The most surprising thing that I learned in the chapter was the information on the sources of our self-efficacy. These sources are the cause of whether or not we can perform in certain situations. After reading through this section of the book, I found myself looking at events in my past that related to each one. Each of these sources play a huge role in our everyday lives and it took me reading this section to realize how important our history and environment play such a huge role in whether or not we can do some things.
Personal control beliefs serve to encourage or discourage our behavior. The best example that I can think of for this would be grades. Receiving an A motivates us to study for the next test in order for the A to occur again. Our personal control belief in this instance is studying. We believe that if we study enough we have control of the information and can do well on the test. On the other hand receiving an F can discourage us from studying again. If we study all week for a test and get an F, we believe that we have no control over the situation and don’t study because it couldn’t help us last time.
Personal control belief, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, self-efficacy, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological state, mastery belief, helplessness, Seligman/Maier study
Chapter 9 discussed personal control beliefs and focused on self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, and learned helplessness. Self-efficacy is defined as the capacity in which the individual organizes and orchestrates his or her skills to cope with the demands and circumstances he or she faces. The four sources of self-efficacy are personal behavior history (past experiences), vicarious experience (watching someone else do the task), verbal persuasion
pep talks), and physiological state (fatigue, pain, confusion). Of these four sources, the first two seem to have the most influence on self-efficacy. The Mastery Modeling Programs combine all four of these when teaching novices how to cope with situations they might otherwise find fearful.
Another personal control believe highlighted was learned helplessness. Learned helplessness occurs when perceived outcomes are deemed uncontrollable to the individual. Like the dogs experiencing the shock or people experiencing the obnoxious noise, they view these situations as out of their control and therefore do not take steps to prevent or control the situation. What I found interesting about this section was that the effects of helplessness can result in deficits in motivation, learning, and emotion. Another
Chapter 9 discussed personal control beliefs and focused on self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, and learned helplessness. Self-efficacy is defined as the capacity in which the individual organizes and orchestrates his or her skills to cope with the demands and circumstances he or she faces. The four sources of self-efficacy are personal behavior history (past experiences), vicarious experience (watching someone else do the task), verbal persuasion
pep talks), and physiological state (fatigue, pain, confusion). Of these four sources, the first two seem to have the most influence on self-efficacy. The Mastery Modeling Programs combine all four of these when teaching novices how to cope with situations they might otherwise find fearful.
Another personal control believe highlighted was learned helplessness. Learned helplessness occurs when perceived outcomes are deemed uncontrollable to the individual. Like the dogs experiencing the shock or people experiencing the obnoxious noise, they view these situations as out of their control and therefore do not take steps to prevent or control the situation. What I found interesting about this section was that the effects of helplessness can result in deficits in motivation, learning, and emotion. Another interesting part of this section was the fact that learned helplessness is often derived from the expectation, and not the trauma itself.
The last section of the chapter discusses reactance theory. Reactance Theory states that people experience reactance only if they expect to have some control over what happens to them. After a few trails, when one realizes they have no control over the situation, their reactance decreases and eventually turns into helplessness.
An encouraged behavior can be seen in those with an optimistic explanatory style. These people often feel they have control over what happens to them and allows them to find reason in failure. An encouraged behavior could be working hard for good grades, if a person has an optimistic explanatory style and mastery beliefs, the person is more likely to work harder to obtain their desired grades. On the other hand, a discouraged behavior could arise from having a pessimistic explanatory style. If someone with this style is entering college with thoughts such as "I'm not smart enough to get A's" they are more likely to not try as hard or not sign up for more difficult classes. This would lead to more discouraging behavior in other aspects of their life as well.
Terms: self-efficacy, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological state, mastery modeling program, mastery beliefs, helplessness, motivational deficits, learning deficits, emotional deficits, optimistic explanatory style, pessimistic explanatory style, reactance theory
This chapter focused on personal control beliefs. Personal control is based on efficacy expectations where judgement of one's capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. It is the likelihood that a person will behave a certain way. Outcome expectations are a judgement that a given action will cause a particular outcome or estimate how a consequence will follow a behavior. Self efficacy plays a big part in personal control. This is one's judgement of how well one will cope with the situation. A person can have many different sources of this through personal behavioral history (interpretations and memories), vicarious experience (seeing others do it first), verbal persuasion (help move us to action), and psychological states (whether we have fatigue, pain, tension, etc). This shows that high self efficacy can be acquired and changed. Empowerment is also an important factor of self efficacy. This predicts the way a person copes and whether it is competent functioning once it is enhanced. Specifically, empowerment is possessing the knowledge, skills, and beliefs allowing a person to control their life. Sometimes a person needs the right idea or encouragement from someone else. In this case they might use a mastery modeling program where an expert works with that person and their coping skills. There are many ways of coping and each person is different based on the extent of perceived control of attaining desirable outcomes and preventing adverse ones. The chapter also goes into learned helplessness. This is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life's outcomes are uncontrollable. Through many studies, like the dog shock study, scientists found that helplessness is learned and there are three components that support it: contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency is the objective relationship between the behavior and environmental outcomes. Cognition is the mental events that can distort relationship of personal control and cause a margin of error between the truth and understanding. This can happen because of personal biases, attributions, and expectancy. When a person does feel helplessness it can cause motivational, learning, and emotional deficits. Lastly, the chapter discussed the reactance theory. This explains how people react to uncontrollable life events and how it may foster reactance or helplessness because there is a threat to a person's freedom. This actually can trigger performance because people don't want to lose that freedom. All together hope is still attainable. Hope shows how self efficacy and pathway thinking functions together to provide energy and direction for coping efforts.
The most surprising thing I found in this chapter was that helplessness is learned. I liked the example given with the dog and shock theory. Those dogs that were given a shock in an uncontrollable environment still didn't do anything but whine and cry. When the dogs were given an escapable situation (ie: press the button and the shock will stop) they stopped the shock and controlled the situation. The same occurred in the control group. I guess it makes sense now that I think about it that helplessness is learned. Why wouldn't a person try to better their situation if there was some way that they could?
Personal control beliefs serve to motivate or discourage behavior. The best example I can think of for this would be studying and grades. If a person studies really hard for a test and receives an "A" than that will motivate them to study the same way for the next test to receive another high grade. On the other hand, if a person studies really hard for a test and receives a "C-" they may not study as hard the next time because they feel they can't control the situation. It is out of their hands, so no matter how much they study it wouldn't be worth it because their grade won't improve that much. When a person is encouraged it promotes their personal control beliefs whereas when they are discouraged it doesn't happen the same way.
TERMS: personal control, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self efficacy, sources of efficacy, personal behavioral history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, psychological state, empowerment, coping, mastery modeling program, learned helplessness, contingency, cognition, behavior, bias, reactance theory, hope
Chapter 9 discusses personal control beliefs. The focus of this chapter is on the motivation to exercise personal control over what happens to us. We try to make desirable outcomes more likely by manipulating our environments and exerting person control. We want to improve our lives, making undesirable outcomes less likely to occur. In order for us to believe we have the power to influence our environments we need to have a “got what it takes” attitude and also having a responsive environment will motivate us to try.
Expectancy, the subjective prediction of how likely it is that an event will occur, is a big part of our personal control beliefs. We rely on our past experiences to make assumptions about what the future holds in store for us, and whether or not we will be able to cope with what happens. The two types of expectancies are: 1) efficacy expectations and 2) outcome expectations. The first expectation is simply the judgment of one’s own capacity to accomplish a particular task (“Can I do this?”). The second refers to a judgment of whether a certain outcome will arise once a particular task is accomplished (“Will what I do work?”). Both efficacy and outcome expectancies have to be relatively high before behavior becomes energetic and goal-directed. Negativity regarding either expectancy brings forth reluctance and avoidance behaviors.
Self-efficacy (SE) refers to the capacity to use one’s resources properly even under diverse conditions. SE utilizes ability (processing skills) as well as the capacity to translate those processing skills into effective performances during trying conditions. When we lack efficacy, we have doubt. Doubt leads to surprise, anxiety, difficulties, and so on. SE comes from our past experiences, our observations of others’ experiences, positive talks from others, and physiological states during the situation (e.g. in book- racing heart vs. a calm one). Of all four of those sources, numbers 1 and 2 are the most utilized, possibly the most important. SE leads to quick recovery following disappointments or setbacks/failures. Researchers claim that the root cause of anxiety is low SE, so raising your SE could, in turn, lower your personal anxiety and improve your well-being. We need SE so we can exert control over negative thoughts and turn knowledge into effective performance during a threatening situation.
There are 7 steps experts can use when utilizing a mastery modeling program to teach empowerment. The 7 steps are: identify component skills involved in effective coping, measuring each novice’s efficacy expectations on each, have novice perform each skill, while expert gives feedback, novice again emulates skills within simulated performance with mild obstacles, cooperative learning groups are introduced, giving novices a chance to see others’ performance and each give tips and feedback in turn, novices then perform realistic performance involving numerous obstacles and gaining expert feedback, and finally the expert models desirable behavior including arousal-regulating techniques and confident demeanor.
Mastery beliefs reflect the extent of perceived control a person has over attaining desirable outcomes, preventing negative ones. There are various ways of coping. A few of these are: approach vs. avoidance, direct vs. indirect, control vs. escape, and problem-focused vs. emotion focused. Mastery oriented individuals seize the challenge while helpless oriented individuals shy away. Also, mastery oriented people use failure as a stepping stone to learn from and as an opportunity to change for the better, while helpless oriented people will resort to negative moods and immature strategies to avoid the outcome.
Learned helplessness (LH) is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. LH Theory includes three components: contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency refers to the objective relationship between a person’s behavior and the environment’s outcomes, using a scale of 0-1 (or not controllable – controllable). Cognition involves three components as well: biases (or the illusion of having control), attributions (or explanations of WHY we think we have control), and expectancies (the subjective personal control beliefs we carry over from our past experiences). The third and final element of LH Theory is behavior, which refers to the coping responses ranging from passive to active, and lethargic to assertive.
Helplessness can affect our motivations, our learning abilities and processes, and our emotional health. LH and depression are interrelated in that they both share the expectancy that bad, unwanted events are going to happen regardless of what is done to try to prevent them. Interestingly, studies have shown that non-depressed people are MORE apt to develop LH than depressed individuals.
Cognitive-based personality variables reflecting the way people explain the reasons why negative events happen to them is their explanatory style. You are either pessimistic (negative) or optimistic (positive). Although you would think optimistic would be all around better, sometimes it is not. Optimists can be narcissistic and delusional in their explanations to themselves, neglecting negative reasons for things. However, optimism can be an asset, raising self-esteem and efficacy. Pessimism is usually associated with academic failure, impaired job performance, social distress, and physical illness.
Reactance Theory involves the psychological and behavioral attempt at reestablishing an eliminated or threatened freedom. Reactance is experienced when we want to have control over what happens to us. Loss of this control causes aggression or more active behaviors. After a period of failed reactance, helplessness occurs.
People generally want too much control over their environment, and understanding objective control can be as important as boosting perceived control.
Hope is defined as when people have both the motivation to work toward their goals and when people know ways to achieve those goals. Hope involves agency and pathways. Pathway thinking is the belief that one has multiple routes to their desired goals. High-hope persons outperform and out-cope those with low hope.
It surprised me to learn that depression does not associate with or cause learned helplessness. It is kind-of odd knowing that there are no surprises when you are depressed, you will always think the same way and react the same way, expecting the same negative outcome. It makes you wonder if that is not always such a bad thing, despite the other effects of depression.
One way personal control beliefs serve to encourage behavior is when you have learned in the past that studying for an exam days before it is scheduled to be taken causes you to get a good grade, which now motivates you in subsequent exams. You realize that you have control over the grade you receive and act accordingly. On the flipside, you have seen the way another student has been treated for coming into a class late, causing him/her to be embarrassed, so you make sure you do not stay up too late, which would cause you to oversleep and be tardy.
TERMS: personal control beliefs, expectancy, efficacy (expectations), outcomes (expectations), self-efficacy, empowerment, mastery modeling programs, mastery beliefs, coping, mastery-oriented, helpless-oriented, learned helplessness (theory), explanatory styles, optimistic/pessimistic, reactance (theory), personal control, hope, agency, pathways (thinking)
Chapter 9 discussed personal control beliefs, and how our past experiences motivate us to produce desired events and prevent undesired ones. Expectations are learned when people try to control events. There are 2 types of expectations. The first type is efficacy expectations, which are forecasts about one’s capacity to completely enact a particular course of action. The other type is outcome expectations, which are forecasts that a particular outcome will be achieved or prevented once a given action is adequately executed. Both of these expectations must be reasonably high before behavior becomes energetic and goal directed. Self-efficacy is a more generative capacity in which the individual organizes and orchestrates their skills to cope with the demands and circumstances they face. People learn their current self-efficacy from their interpretations and memories of past attempts to execute the same behavior. Self-efficacy serves as a model for personal empowerment. People show flexible, adaptive, and confident engagements with the world and get rid of anxiety, doubt, and avoidance. Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. Helplessness is learned because people learn from their behavior and the outcomes of that behavior. There are 3 components that explain learned helplessness: contingency, which is the objective relationship between a person’s behavior and the environment’s positive or negative outcomes; cognition which includes all mental processes like biases, attributions, and expectancies that the person relies on to translate objective environmental contingencies into subjective personal control beliefs; behavior, which refers to the person’s voluntary coping behavior which vary along a continuum that extends from active and energetic to passive and withdrawing. Helplessness disrupts motivation, learning, and emotion.
The thing I found to be the most surprising from this chapter was that people who have more self control and higher self-efficacy are more confident; less anxious, and have less doubt.
Personal control beliefs can motivate us to behave a certain way, or to avoid certain situations because of how we believe our model behavior should look like. So if someone studies really hard for an exam or quiz, the encouraged behavior would be getting a good grade (B or higher). This will motivate them to increase their study time and/or ways for future exams because it felt good to them when they got that good grade. On the other hand, a discouraged behavior would be receiving a failing grade on a test that someone did not study for. This would motivate that person to improve their personal control so that the discouraging event won’t happen to them again.
TERMS: Personal Control; Expectancies; Self-efficacy; Learned Helplessness; Behavior; Contingency; Cognition; Discouraging Behavior; Encouraging Behavior
Chapter 9 focuses on motivation to exercise personal control over what happens to you. Expectencies of what will happen and how well we will cope have important motivational implications. When people have high expectations of themselves and the environment, they will exert control over predictible aspects of the environment. A person believes that they are more likely to have the power to produce a favorable result when they believe they have what it takes and the environment will be responsive to their influence attempts. These two factors combined determine motivation to exercise control. People rely on past experiences and outcomes to define their expectencies and forecast what the future holds.
There are two kinds of expectencies. The first is efficacy expectency which is the judgement of one's capacity to perform an action. The second is outcome expectency, or the judgment that the environment will react to the performed action. Both efficacy and outcome expectations must be high before high energy and goal directed behavior occur. Thus, reluctance to participate in an event can be understood by analyzing efficacy and outcome expectations. Percieved control explains explains efficacy expectation and outcome expecation as revolving around interrelationships between self, action and control. The self determines efficacy expectations and outcome expectations before and during commitment of the action. Control is defined as the ends to this process.
Self efficacy and efficacy expectations are not the same thing. Efficacy expectations refer to a specific action. Self efficacy is a more generalized term defining how well or poorly a person will cope with a situation. Self-efficacy is also different from ability. Environment impacts ability, because performance circumstances are always changing. Even experts sometimes perform poorly when circumstances are dismal. Doubt is the opposite of efficacy, and can cause anxiety, confusion and negative thinking in changing circumstances. So, it is a combination of self efficacy and doubt that determine whether a person will experience motivation to perform and action and how well they will perform.
Self efficacy has 4 main causes or influences. The first listed in the book is personal behavior history, which is the most influential. Memories and recollections of past attempts to succesfully execute a behavior make up personal behavior history's influence on expectation. The next topic listed is vicarious experience, or observations of others who execute the same behavior. Seeing others perform a behavior succesfully raises ones own sense of self efficacy. It also works negatively.The less experienced an individual is, the more potent vicarious observation can be. Verbal persuasion is another influence of self-efficacy. Verbal persuasion, or 'pep talks' from any form of interaction can temporarily boost self-efficacy. Lastly, a person's psychological state affects their self-efficacy. People's percieved ability to cope is greatly affected by psychological state. A heightened state of arousal fuels inneficacy. These four sources of information allow a person to make an overall self-efficacy judgemnet.
Once this judgment is reached, it has a great impact on behavior functioning. In general, people with high self-efficacy put forth more effort and persist more than those with high inefficacy. The book specifically defines 4 effects of strong versus weak efficacy, the first being 'choice.' Choice is a persons decisions about what activities to pursue and what environments to spend time in. A person will often exclude a particular activity or environment
if they believe the outcome will be overwhelmingly challenging. This is called avoidance behavior, and has a detrimental effect on development. Effort and persistance is the next category discussed as an effect of self-efficacy. Doubt influences people to weaken efforts and give up while strong efficacy does the opposite. strong sefl-efficacy also leads to a more rapid recovery from failure following setbacks, encouraging resiliency in the development of expertise. Thinking and decision making is another effect of self-efficacy. People who doubt their capacities tend to think more irratically while people who have faith in their efficacy tend to remain efficient during stressful situations. Emotionality is the last of the four effects of self efficacy. People who have weak efficacy react with anxiety and deppresion regarding obstacles while people with high efficacy beliefs react with enthusiasm and interest. If a person strongly believes they are not capable of coping with a certain task or situation, feelings of distress and anxiety occur. Enhanced self-efficacy provides motivation to exert control on ones environment. This is referred to as empowerment. Empowerment can be improved through self-eficacy training. In efficacy training, a masterful individual works with relative novices to show them how to cope with an overwhelming or fearsome situation. An example is the empowerment of women through self defense skills taught by experts. Performance dibilitating arousal is decreased by observing experts, which helps to increase efficacy.
Learned helplessness is determined by outcome expectations. When a person expects desired outcomes of behavior to be independent of their behavior, learned helplessness develops. The three components that explain learned helplessness and how it influences peoples expectations of their personal control are contingency, cognition and behavior. Contingency is how much a persons behavior exerts on an outcome. The book asks you to imagine how much influnce a person has over particular outcomes, such as getting a job, avoiding the flu and escaping cancer. Cognition is defined as the combination of subjective understanding and objective truth regarding continency. Behavior is the last component of influence on learned helplessness. Passive versus active behavior are examined and passsive behavior is defined as characterizing helplessness. Once learned helplessness develops, 3 deficits occur. These are motivational deficits, learning deficits and Emotional deficits.
I was most surpised by the correlation between learned helplessness and deppression. Both helplessness and depression effect a person's percieved outcome of events. In both cases, an individual expects bad events to occur, and they share the same symptoms of passivity, low self-esteem and loss of appetite. This made sense when I think of times I have felt high self-esteem and I realized I can pinpoint these times with succesful behavior.
Personal control beliefs encourage behavior because they allow a person to believe they are capable of the behavior, and that the behavior will have a desired effect. They can also discourage behavior if efficay is weak. When someone believes they are not capable of controlling their environment or succesfully executing a behavior they will obstain from the behavior. An example of an encouraged behavior would an ahtlete preparing for a race. If the competitor has high self-efficacy, he or she believes they can cope with the difficulties of completing the task at hand. If they have completed a similar task, have seen others of their skill level do the same, recieve support and have a positive physiological state then it is likely they will finish again. On the other hand, if the athelete believes they cannot finish the race, and that their training will have little impact on ability, then it is likely they will not even engage in the behavior. If they still do attempt the race, they will be more likely to react negatively to setbacks and eventually give up.
Terms: motivation, self-efficacy, perceived control, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, self, action, control, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological state, emotionality, competence, empowerment, mastery modeling program, coping, helplessness, learned helplessness, contingency, cognition, behavior, perceived control, pessimistic explanatory syle, optimistic explanatory style
Chapter 9 discusses the topic of personal control beliefs, involving expectations, self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, and learned helplessness. Expectations are a subjective prediction of how likely it is that an event will occur. There are two types that influence our motivation, such as efficacy expectations, which asks the question “can I?” and outcome expectations, which asks the question “will it work?” Both must be high before behavior becomes energetic and goal directed. Self efficacy is the judgment of how well or not a person will cope with a situation, given the skills they possess and the circumstances they face. It is to be noted that self-efficacy is not the same thing as ability or efficacy expectations. There are four sources of self-efficacy that the book portrays, such as personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. Self-efficacy also impacts a person’s behavior. For instance, it affects the choice of activities and environments, the extent of effort and persistence, thinking and decision making, as well as emotional reactions. The chapter then clarifies that high self-efficacy beliefs can be acquired and changed, as well as predicts a certain coping strategy, or personal empowerment. This empowerment holds the knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow people to exert control over their lives. A way of developing empowerment is possible through the mastery modeling program, which involves an expert showing beginners how to cope in a specific situation by following seven steps that directly play on the four sources of self-efficacy. The next topic the books discusses is mastery beliefs, which reflect the extent of perceived control a person has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones. People can either be proactive or reactive in their coping strategies. Therefore, compared to helplessness, a person with mastery orientation responds to failure by staying focused, seizing challenges, and become energized by setbacks. Meanwhile, helpless oriented people are fragile, shy away from challenges, and fall apart after a setback. However, it should be emphasized that failure is in fact a good thing because it produces constructive information to help reform performance effort and strategies. Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable and therein, develop the expectation that their future actions will have little or no effect on what happens to them. Research has shown that both animals and humans learn helplessness. This aspect involves three components, such as contingency, cognition, and behavior. Just as it plays on these three components, helplessness also produces three deficits, such as motivational, learning, and emotional. People who are helpless oriented have a decrease willingness to try, have difficult time learning, and affective moods like lethargy and depression. In fact, it’s shown that there is a correlation between helplessness and depressed individuals. However, in a positive light, depressed people can accurately judge how much control they have over a situation compared to nondepressed people. The way in which people describe why events happen to them is termed explanatory, which falls into two categories, optimistic and pessimistic. The reactance theory predicts that people will experience reactance only if they expect to have some control over what happens to them. This theory is similar to learned helplessness because they both deal with how people react to an uncontrollable event.
The most surprising and interesting thing I learned from this chapter was the fact that you can perceive these terms in different ways, either pessimistically or optimistically. For example, when discussed the explanatory style, it states that people act passively to minimize trauma, while most people perceive acting passively is an avoidance strategy. Another example is that it’s normally perceived that being optimistic is an all-around good thing to have, while indeed there are good components of this style it also has downfalls, such as these people ignore negative self-information and take little blame for their failures. The book even stated “an optimistic explanatory style is delusional”. I’d like to state, in my opinion, that instead focusing on the good and bad, we need to focus on what is realistic. If it’s realistic that you won’t get a job, that’s not being pessimistic. If it’s realistic that you will get a job, you shouldn’t label yourself as optimistic.
An example in which the personal control beliefs will encourage a specific behavior would be going in for a job interview in hopes to get a job. According to the book, if you have high efficacy and outcome expectancies then the individual will feel more confident and will be assured the performance will pay off. Having high self-efficacy itself will help to test the interviewee’s abilities and to overcome the challenge of the interview. Not only will if produce a positive affect, it will discourage a negative affect such as anxiety, which is noticeable to the interviewer. A person may prepare for an interview by comparing their performance to past interviews they had; a personal behavior history. They may also observe a person in an interview to model their behavior; vicarious experience. Another way is to have pep talks in order to focus on personal strengths and potentials. Personal control beliefs can also discourage this behavior. For instance, the individual going in for an important job interview will experience doubt about getting the job. If the person doubts their own capacity to cope, then it produces anxiety, confusion, negative thinking, and aversive physiological arousal and tension. Doubt also leads people to slacken their efforts or give up when faced with difficulties. Therefore, this individual may cancel the interview if perceived overly challenging of their capabilities. On the other hand, if the person is in the interview, they may self-doubt and only focus on their deficiencies. In fact this person may be helpless-oriented that make then shy away from challenges and question their ability.
TERMS: personal control, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, doubt, empowerment, mastery modeling program, mastery-oriented, coping, helplessness, optimistic explanatory style, pessimistic explanatory style, depression, passive
Chapter 9 discusses the topic of personal control beliefs, involving expectations, self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, and learned helplessness. Expectations are a subjective prediction of how likely it is that an event will occur. There are two types that influence our motivation, such as efficacy expectations, which asks the question “can I?” and outcome expectations, which asks the question “will it work?” Both must be high before behavior becomes energetic and goal directed. Self efficacy is the judgment of how well or not a person will cope with a situation, given the skills they possess and the circumstances they face. It is to be noted that self-efficacy is not the same thing as ability or efficacy expectations. There are four sources of self-efficacy that the book portrays, such as personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. Self-efficacy also impacts a person’s behavior. For instance, it affects the choice of activities and environments, the extent of effort and persistence, thinking and decision making, as well as emotional reactions. The chapter then clarifies that high self-efficacy beliefs can be acquired and changed, as well as predicts a certain coping strategy, or personal empowerment. This empowerment holds the knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow people to exert control over their lives. A way of developing empowerment is possible through the mastery modeling program, which involves an expert showing beginners how to cope in a specific situation by following seven steps that directly play on the four sources of self-efficacy. The next topic the books discusses is mastery beliefs, which reflect the extent of perceived control a person has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones. People can either be proactive or reactive in their coping strategies. Therefore, compared to helplessness, a person with mastery orientation responds to failure by staying focused, seizing challenges, and become energized by setbacks. Meanwhile, helpless oriented people are fragile, shy away from challenges, and fall apart after a setback. However, it should be emphasized that failure is in fact a good thing because it produces constructive information to help reform performance effort and strategies. Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable and therein, develop the expectation that their future actions will have little or no effect on what happens to them. Research has shown that both animals and humans learn helplessness. This aspect involves three components, such as contingency, cognition, and behavior. Just as it plays on these three components, helplessness also produces three deficits, such as motivational, learning, and emotional. People who are helpless oriented have a decrease willingness to try, have difficult time learning, and affective moods like lethargy and depression. In fact, it’s shown that there is a correlation between helplessness and depressed individuals. However, in a positive light, depressed people can accurately judge how much control they have over a situation compared to nondepressed people. The way in which people describe why events happen to them is termed explanatory, which falls into two categories, optimistic and pessimistic. The reactance theory predicts that people will experience reactance only if they expect to have some control over what happens to them. This theory is similar to learned helplessness because they both deal with how people react to an uncontrollable event.
The most surprising and interesting thing I learned from this chapter was the fact that you can perceive these terms in different ways, either pessimistically or optimistically. For example, when discussed the explanatory style, it states that people act passively to minimize trauma, while most people perceive acting passively is an avoidance strategy. Another example is that it’s normally perceived that being optimistic is an all-around good thing to have, while indeed there are good components of this style it also has downfalls, such as these people ignore negative self-information and take little blame for their failures. The book even stated “an optimistic explanatory style is delusional”. I’d like to state, in my opinion, that instead focusing on the good and bad, we need to focus on what is realistic. If it’s realistic that you won’t get a job, that’s not being pessimistic. If it’s realistic that you will get a job, you shouldn’t label yourself as optimistic.
An example in which the personal control beliefs will encourage a specific behavior would be going in for a job interview in hopes to get a job. According to the book, if you have high efficacy and outcome expectancies then the individual will feel more confident and will be assured the performance will pay off. Having high self-efficacy itself will help to test the interviewee’s abilities and to overcome the challenge of the interview. Not only will if produce a positive affect, it will discourage a negative affect such as anxiety, which is noticeable to the interviewer. A person may prepare for an interview by comparing their performance to past interviews they had; a personal behavior history. They may also observe a person in an interview to model their behavior; vicarious experience. Another way is to have pep talks in order to focus on personal strengths and potentials. Personal control beliefs can also discourage this behavior. For instance, the individual going in for an important job interview will experience doubt about getting the job. If the person doubts their own capacity to cope, then it produces anxiety, confusion, negative thinking, and aversive physiological arousal and tension. Doubt also leads people to slacken their efforts or give up when faced with difficulties. Therefore, this individual may cancel the interview if perceived overly challenging of their capabilities. On the other hand, if the person is in the interview, they may self-doubt and only focus on their deficiencies. In fact this person may be helpless-oriented that make then shy away from challenges and question their ability.
TERMS: personal control, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, doubt, empowerment, mastery modeling program, mastery-oriented, coping, helplessness, optimistic explanatory style, pessimistic explanatory style, depression, passive
This chapter talked about how much personal control influences what we do and the different aspects of this concept. The first subject it covered was the two kinds of expectancy, efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. The main difference between these two concepts is the questioning that goes into the decision. When thinking is terms of efficacy expectations, the question tends to be along the lines of “is this doable”. Outcome expectations, on the other hand focus on what will happen.
I found the books definition of self-efficacy very interesting. There is a difference between self-efficacy and the ability to do something. Self-efficacy involves knowing if you can apply your specific ability to a certain situation. Self-efficacy comes from many different sources, such as personal behavior, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological state.
An example of an encouraged behavior is reading the text book before class. If you believe that you are able to gain an understanding of all the material simply by taking notes, your self-efficacy would discourage you from reading the book.
However, if you are very doubtful about how much you can learn from the lecture, your personal control beliefs will encourage you to read the book.
Terms: personal control, expectancy, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, personal behavior, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, physiological state,
You came up with some really good examples!
This chapter talks about personal control and how our past events and environmental influences motivate us to produce desired and undesired outcomes. Motivation to exercise our personal control comes from when people believe they “have what it takes” to influence the environment around them and having the environment respond to the influence, otherwise known as expectancy. The strength to exercise this personal control comes from (a subjective prediction of how likely an event will occur). An event that can be either a straight forth outcome or a variety of actions that bring the outcome to life. The two kids of expectancies that exist and yet separate are efficacy and outcome expectations. An efficacy expectation (is the judging of one’s own capacity for executing an action). This is usually followed by a question such as “Can I do it?” which evaluates the likelihood of a person to behavior in a certain way. As for outcome expectation that (is a judgment of what an outcome will bring after performed), bringing about what possibility a consequence(s) will follow after performed. In order for a behavior to become energetic and goal directed both efficacy and outcome must be in a reasonably high state.
Self-efficacy comes from the individuals capacity to judge and use personal resources under diverse and trying situations to cope with the situation at hand. Self-efficacy sound the same as “ability” but in regards it is not. The thought process involved doesn’t only relay on the use of skills at hand but also to be able to use those skills effectively under difficult circumstances. The sources of a person’s self-efficacy beliefs lie in their behavior history; (the interpretation and memories of past attempts to execute a behavior) that can be either competent or incompetent, raising or lowering self-efficacy, vicarious experience; (observing a model enact the same course of action the individual themselves are about to act). Vicarious experience affects on efficacy depend on two factors: how similar the model and observer are and the how experienced the observer is at the behavior. Verbal persuasion; is only as strong as the source it comes from and provides the performer with just enough boost to temporary motivate an individual to try again, physiological state; (is the absence of tension, fear, and stress providing bodily feedback that allows one to cope properly with a task). The effects on behavior that self-efficacy have are split into four sources, the first being, choice over activities and environment which to pursue and spend time in or avoid. Second, effort and persistence in silencing doubt following failure and rejection in everyday events which leads to a “quick” recovery. Third is thinking and decision making; is buffered by efficacy improving the quality of a performer’s thinking and decision making, followed by emotionality. With all of the above stated and said self-efficacy beliefs can be acquired and changed. It is with this knowledge, skills, and beliefs that gives an individual empowerment over their lives.
Mastery beliefs are the result of a viewed control one has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones. Mastery motivational orientation people respond to failure with an open hand, that is they remain see difficulties and setbacks as a way to better themselves. Helpless motivational orientation people have the opposite effect, giving up and withdrawing in response to a failure. So were one gets energized by setbacks the other shy’s away from challenges.
Learned helplessness comes from uncontrollable outcomes with a random relationship between behavior and outcomes that leads to a psychological state where the individual expects life’s outcomes to be uncontrollable. The components involved in helplessness are as follows: contingency (the objective relationship between a person’s behavior and the environment’s outcomes) and often has a range from 0 (being uncontrollable) and 1 (controlled outcome), cognition (the interpretation of the environmental that exist in the world and the understanding of control in that environment) has three important elements: biases, attributions, and expectations, lastly is behavior on how one copes with varying events. When an individual expects their behavior to have little effect on outcomes it leaves a deficit in motivation, learning, and emotions. I’d have to say the most surprising thing that I learned out of chapter 9 is that in order to have empowerment and truly feel like one has control over outcomes, one has to go through the wide spectrum of self-efficacy. Personal control beliefs show encouraging behaviors by (overcoming difficulties to better a grade) and master their beliefs, where as discouraging behavior shows (getting a poor grade or not doing it at all) and adapting the feeling of uncontrollability (learned helplessness).
Terms: expectancy, efficacy and outcome expectations, Self-efficacy, ability, behavior history, vicarious experience, competent, incompetent, Vicarious experience, Verbal persuasion, physiological state, effort and persistence, thinking and decision making, emotionality, choice, empowerment, Mastery motivational orientation, Mastery beliefs, Helpless motivational orientation, Learned helplessness, psychological state, contingency, cognition, biases, attributions, expectations, behavior, motivation, learning, emotions.
Chapter nine discusses personal control beliefs. Individual’s expectancies of a task or situation have a great impact on the level of motivation they will exert. When someone expects to fail or expects a poor outcome they are more unlikely to be motivated to try or put a lot of effort into the task or situation. However, people have personal control over what happens, and they are able to exert control over the predictable aspects of the environment. In doing this, people are able to make desirable outcomes more likely and undesirable outcomes less likely. Two types of expectancies exist. These include efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. An efficacy expectation is a judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. An outcome expectation is a judgment that a given action, once performed, will cause a particular outcome. Expectancy motivation encompasses person, behavior, and outcome. This perceived control is demonstrated with questions such as, “Can I improve my health?” and “Can I improve my marriage?” Self efficacy is a belief that arises from one’s person history in trying to execute that particular behavior, observations of similar others who also try to execute that particular behavior, verbal persuasions from others, and physiological states, such as a racing heart verses a calm one. Once formed, self efficacy beliefs contribute to the quality of human functioning in multiple ways. People’s choices, effort and persistence, thinking and decision making, and emotions are all affected by it. High self-efficacy beliefs can be acquired and changed; also the level of self-efficacy predicts ways of coping that can be called “competent functioning” or “personal empowerment.” Mastery beliefs reflect the extent of perceived control one has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones. The higher the mastery one exercises over outcomes depends in a significant way on how one elects to cope with the situation at hand. Learned helplessness develops when an individual learns that no matter what they do, it will have no impact on the outcome of the event, so they do nothing to try and change the outcome. There are three components to this. They include contingency, cognition, and behavior. Some of the effects of helplessness include motivational deficits, learning deficits, and emotional deficits. Learned helplessness can be compared to depression in that the same expectations can cause both. In this chapter the reactance theory was also discussed. This theory questions and tries to answer why people do precisely the opposite of what they are told to do sometimes. The theory predicts that people experience reactance only if they expect to have some control over what happens to them.
The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter is how people are willing to torture dogs in order to prove that when animals have no control in a situation, they develop the expectation that their future actions will have little or no effect on what happens to them. This was a depressing example of learned helplessness. One of the most interesting correlations I found in this chapter was the connection between learned helplessness and depression. This makes a lot of sense how someone who feels they don’t have control over their lives could develop a learned helplessness and depression. Personal control beliefs serve to encourage or discourage behavior. A good example of this is people’s take on recycling. When people believe that they are making a difference in the world they will go out of their way to recycle. Even if it means giving up a couple hours to sort out their recycling and taking it out to the recycling bin. They still do it because they are motivated to make a difference in the world. They believe that their small contribution really will make an impact, so they are willing to sacrifice their time and effort for it. On the other end, when people believe that they are only one person and it won’t make any difference if they recycle, then they don’t bother with it. They aren’t motivated to recycle because they don’t believe that it will make any real difference worth putting the effort into it. They believe that the outcome in the end will be the same regardless if they recycle or not.
Terms: personal control beliefs, expectancy, motivation, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, person, behavior, outcome, self efficacy, competent functioning, personal empowerment, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness, contingency, cognition, behavior, motivational deficits, learning deficits, and emotional deficits, reactance theory
Chapter 9 covers personal control beliefs such as self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness, explanatory styles, reactance theory, and lastly, hope. Our personal beliefs pertaining to how much control we have over our environment and ourselves have many motivational implications, and are therefore important constructs in the study of motivation and emotion. Personal control motivation relies on the person believing two things: 1) that the person “has what it takes” to influence their environment and 2) the environment will be responsive to those actions. A major component of personal control motivation is what we expect to happen. Expectancy is a subjective prediction of how likely it is that an event will occur based on past experiences and personal resources. There are two types of expectancies: 1) efficacy expectations and 2) outcome expectations. Efficacy expectations are described as being able to enact the behaviors one needs in order to cope effectively with the situation at hand. The question being asked here is, “Can I do it?” On the other hand, outcome expectations are defined as the expectation that one’s behavior will produce positive outcomes (or prevent negative outcomes). The question you can think of for an outcome expectation might be, “Will what I do work?” While these expectations are separate, causal determinates of behavior both expectations need to be high in order to have personal control motivation.
The book then goes into detail about efficacy expectations, which is termed self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is defined as a more generative capacity in which the individual organizes and orchestrates his/her skills to cope with the demands and circumstances he/she faces. A more concise definition would be the capacity to use one’s personal resources well under diverse and trying circumstances. When self-efficacy is high, the person has an approach orientation whereas when self-efficacy is low (self-doubt), the person takes an avoidance orientation. There are four sources that contribute to our self-efficacy beliefs: 1) personal behavior history, 2) vicarious experience, or observing another perform the behavior, 3) verbal persuasion, or a “pep talk”, and 4) physiological state (i.e. heart rate). People use these four sources to develop a judgment about their ability to cope with the current situational demands (aka self-efficacy). Our self-efficacy beliefs effect our choice of activities and selection of environments, the extent of effort and persistence put forth in activities, the quality of thinking and decision making in activities, and emotional reactions, such as the amount of stress or anxiety we feel about a certain task.
Self-efficacy expectations provide the cognitive-motivational foundation underlying personal empowerment. Empowerment is defined as possessing the knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow people to exert control over their lives. Empowerment occurs when efficacy and engagement replace doubt and avoidance. Employers or teachers can empower their workers/students with the Mastery Modeling Program. The Mastery Model Program is a formal, seven step program that is designed to empower people by having experts work with novices to help them acquire a skill or behavior. This program can be used in a number of circumstances where someone wants to develop a person’s mastery belief, which will empower them. A mastery belief is the extent of perceived control one has over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones. This leads into the next major section of the text.
There are two orientations in relation to mastery beliefs: mastery motivational orientation and helpless motivational orientation. A mastery motivational orientation refers to a hardy, resistant portrayal of the self during encounters of failure whereas a helpless motivational orientation refers to a person that responds to failure by giving up and withdrawing, acting as if the situation were out of his/her control. When approached with a challenge or setback, a mastery-oriented person will approach the problem while a helpless-oriented person will avoid it. These different orientations come from the interpretations of failure feedback.
While some people have a helpless motivational orientation, if prolonged, this orientation can become a state. Learned helplessness is a phenomenon studied by psychologists that is defined as the psychological state that results when an individual expects that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. This person has learned that their behavior has little or no effect on their situation, which results in apathy and depression. There are three components involved in learned helplessness: 1) contingency, or the objective relationship between a person’s behavior and the environments’ outcomes, 2) cognitions, or the interpretation that takes place between the actual, objective environmental contingencies that exist in the world and a person’s subjective understanding of personal control in such environments (includes biases, attributions, and expectancies), and lastly 3) behavior, which lies on a continuum from very passive (helpless) to very active (mastery).
For the sake of time/length, I will briefly summarize the remaining text in the chapter. The author also goes on to describe different types of explanatory styles, which are relatively stable, cognitively based personality variables that reflect the way people explain the reasons for bad events that happen to them. There are two explanatory styles: optimistic and pessimistic. The author also mentions Reactance Theory, which explains how people react to uncontrollable events that threaten our personal freedom. Reactance is defined as the psychological and behavioral attempt at reestablishing an eliminated or threatened freedom. In general, when faced with an undesirable circumstance, people react to that environment with the expectation that they have some control over it. However, if that contingency is not there, the person will stop reacting and resort to a helpless orientation.
Lastly, the author pulls all the concepts together into the construct of hope. Hope emerges out of an integration between self-efficacy (or the expectancy to be able to accomplish our goals) and mastery motivation (or the expectation that the environment is controllable). Central to hope is the idea of pathway thinking, or the belief that one can generate multiple viable routes to the desired goal (ex: “There’s always a way”). It has been found that people who are high in hope outperform their low-hope counterparts in academics, athletics, and physical illness (among many others I’m sure).
*Deep breath*. I apologize for the length. Believe it or not, I am trying to be concise. I will now answer the questions pertaining to this chapter.
I found the most interesting thing to be the section “Helplessness and Depression” because the author mentioned a study (Alloy & Abramson, 1979) that found that depressed individuals do not have a distorted personal control belief but have a clear idea of how much control they have over their environments. Interestingly, they found that the participants without depression were actually more likely to over-estimate their personal control beliefs. So perhaps depressed individuals are just more realistic whereas non-depressed people tend to have an optimistic explanatory style. I find this topic to be particularly fascinating.
Personal control beliefs greatly influence our motivations to engage or avoid certain behaviors. For instance, I am more likely to volunteer to speak up in a math course because I have a high efficacy belief pertaining to my abilities in mathematics. I have formed this judgment based on my past grades in math (personal history), by comparing myself to my classmates (vicarious experience), through encouragement from my teachers (verbal persuasion) and the reduced amount of anxiety I have towards raising my hand in class as my efficacy belief has increased (physiological states). My outcome expectancy is slightly lower, because I do tend to make silly errors, but overall, I have a high motivation towards my math performance because of my personal control beliefs.
On the other hand, I tend to avoid sports like the plague. Unfortunately, I learned early on I do not particularly enjoy the pressures that accompany sports. When I am put under pressure in a sports setting, I often make silly mistakes (such as completely missing the ball when trying to hit it with the stupid whiffle ball bat). In other words, I am very low in self-efficacy when it comes to my sports abilities. Because I have such a low efficacy and outcome expectancy for my sports performances, I have not engaged in sports since my sophomore year in high school and I probably will never do so again unless it is a low pressure scenario or purely for leisure. These examples demonstrate how our personal control beliefs encourage or discourage us from certain behaviors.
Terms: expectancy, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, self-doubt, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, empowerment, mastery modeling program, mastery beliefs, mastery motivational orientation, helpless motivational orientation, learned helplessness, contingency, cognitions, behavior, explanatory styles, reactance theory, reactance, hope, pathway thinking
Chapter 9 is titled personal control beliefs. Our current expectancies of what will happen and our expectancies of how well we can deal with what happens have important motivational implications. The main focus of this chapter is the motivation to practice personal control over what happens to you. Most of the time environments are somewhat predictable when it comes to what is going to happen to you. Through the power of prediction, an individual can make desirable outcomes more likely and undesirable outcomes less likely. When people have they “have what it takes”, the environment will be responsive to their influence attempts, and then they will try and make it happen for the better. Expectancy is a subjective prediction of how likely it is that an event will occur. There are two types of expectancy. The first one is efficacy expectations is a judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. Outcome expectancies is a judgment that a given action will cause a particular outcome. Self-efficacy refers to the person’s belief that they either have or they don’t have what it takes to cope with an overwhelming situation effectively. Once self-efficacy is formed, it affects the person’s choice of activities, selection of environment, extent of effort, persistence, and resiliency, quality of thinking and decision making, and emotional states related to stress and anxiety. Learned helplessness is a psychological state that a person may enter when they think the events in their life are uncontrollable. There are three factors that go into learned helplessness. These are; contingency, which is the objective relationship between a person’s behavior and the environment’s positive or negative outcomes, cognition which includes all mental processes like biases, attributions, and expectancies that the person relies on to translate objective environmental contingencies into subjective personal control beliefs, and behavior related to the person’s voluntary coping behavior which varies.
The material in the chapter was straight forward and not very surprising to me. It made sense that if an individual had a higher level of self-efficacy, effective “healthy” coping mechanisms and have a higher level of confidence are typically more sure of themselves and therefore have less doubt in their capabilities. However, this is still an interesting concept. If someone has a lower sense of self-efficacy could it possibly be one particular event that occurred? Could this one event have enough power to disrupt an individual’s ability to function normally? I think it definitely could. It is not uncommon to hear of people developing mental illnesses later in life due to never coping with something that happened earlier in their life. When a horrible thing happens to a child they often feel alone and scared. This lack of confidence may stay with them their whole life if they never seek help and persistently try to recover.
Personal control motivates behavior by thinking in a positive, hopeful way. If you think you are able to succeed you will think more analytically, in a problem solving way, and behave in a way that is specific to the desired outcome. For example, if you have something due everyday of the week, work 16 hours, have 15 hours of class and still want to maintain a social life to avoid going crazy, it is important to have personal control. By making a list of everything you have to do and prioritize it in a manner that will work best with your schedule the task will be much more attainable.
Terms: personal control beliefs, expectancies, motivational implications, personal control, environments, predictable, desirable outcomes, expectancy, efficacy, outcome, self-efficacy, persistence, learned helplessness, uncontrollable, objective relationship, cognition, voluntary coping behavior, personal control, positive, prioritize, attainable
Chapter 9 explained how personal control is affected by beliefs and past experiences. When people believe they have what it takes and the environment will compromise, they will have a better outlook on life. Expectancy is a subjective prediction of how likely it is an event will occur. Efficacy expectations are one type, where a judgment of one’s capacity to execute a particular act or course of action. This is basically asking if the person thinks they can do something. Judging by the skills one has gained from previous situations, people will ask themselves if they have the correct knowledge to fulfill the task, or Able to cope with it. The other type is outcome expectation. This is a judgment that a given action, once performed, will cause a particular outcome. This means people take what they learned from past outcomes and apply it to the current one.
Perceived control focuses on how people can use control. If someone thinks positively about an action, it will succeed because they view that they have control over it. However, if they think negatively about an action, they chance of success lessens. They kind of need confidence in themselves to have control. For example, if someone feels they have studied sufficiently, their confidence will make them fell in control, which produces a better grade. But, if a person wants to ask a crush out on a date but feels they might say “no,” their low confidence is displayed, which makes them feel less in control. Therefore, the person probably won’t get a “yes” for the date.
Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. When someone expects that making friends or getting a job is something that just happens, they experience “learned helplessness.” This is also when people assume that their actions didn’t get them fired, it just happened. People need to put themselves out there and make an effort to accomplish or prevent an action from taking place.
I feel most of this is common knowledge, not surprising. If you think you are going to do badly on a test, you will; vice versa. If people just had more confidence, they would feel they could do anything. This ties in with chapter 8, 4 predictors of goal choice because once they get the “I can do that” feeling of self-efficacy, they have confidence. Once they have confidence, they feel they can achieve any goal through their control.
Personal control belief can encourage or discourage behaviors. When a person is doing well, their motivation is increased to put in more effort. However, when they expect they won’t do well, they don’t have motives to push them to put in effort. For example, for my goal to lose weight, if I do well and the environment works with me I will feel more in control; which pushes me to put even more effort into my workouts and/or diets. Yet, if I have a bad day, which results in negative attitude and effort, I will not be motivated to keep trying to accomplish my goal.
Terms used: expectancy, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, perceived control, learned helplessness, self-efficacy, control, motivates, goal
Chapter 9 was about personal control beliefs. The author states that, “the motivation to exercise personal control over one's outcomes in life emanates from the expectations people harbor as to how much or how little influence they have in producing desired events and in preventing undesired events”. To sum this up people basically try to control events and eventually learn expectancies about their control. Expectations come in two types: efficacy and outcome. Efficacy expectations are thoughts in your about whether or not you have the capacity to competently enact a particular course of action. Outcome expectancies are forecasts that a particular outcome will be achieved or prevented once a given action is adequately executed. Both efficacy and outcome expectancies must be reasonably high before people are willing to exert strong coping efforts in order to exert personal control.
Self-efficacy is the individual's belief that he/she thinks they have what it takes to put together the resources needed to cope effectively with the potentially overwhelming demands of a situation. This comes from that person's past personal behavior of attempting to execute that particular course of action in the past. Self-efficacy has so much to do with everyday choices in life. Having high self-efficacy is crucial to determining a person's “success”. Once the self-efficacy is formed it effects the persons choice of activities and selection of environments (approach vs. avoidance); extent of effort, persistence, and resiliency; the quality of thinking and decision making; and emotional reactions, related to stress and anxiety. Tony Robbins a motivator and life coach has high self-efficacy and teaches others how to gain it. Personal empowerment is his central theme to his programs because beliefs can be acquired and because self-efficacy beliefs enable productive ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Learned helplessness is the psychological state that results when an individual expects that events in his or her life are uncontrollable, therefore making helplessness learned. As people learn that their behavior exerts a stronger influence over their outcomes than do outside influences, they learn mastery motivational orientation.
Exercising more is an encouraged behavior (exercise three times a week for 2 hours each time) . That person would need to expect that they can adequately perform the action. This would lead to more willingness to put forth effort and persist in facing difficulties that may arise.
In contrast, a negative behavior stemming from self-efficacy would be that the person would not expect that they can adequately perform the required task (exercise three times a week for 2 hours each time). This would lead to less engagement. This would mean a slack in effort and a settling for mediocre outcomes and early quitting.
Terms: Self-efficacy, approach, avoidance, persistence, resiliency, stress, anxiety, emotional reaction, personal empowerment, learned helplessness, encouraged behavior, negative behavior, outcome expectancies.
Chapter 9 discusses our motivation to exercise personal control. We learned from this chapter that the desire to exercise personal control can be based on the individual’s believe that they have what it takes and that it will be receptive to what they are trying to change. If both of these are met, then the person will be motivated to exercise personal control over the outcomes of life. The strength that people use to try to exercise personal control is influenced by the strength of their expectancies to do so. There are two kinds of expectancies, efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Efficacy expectation is a person’s view of their own ability to do something. Outcome expectations look at the odds of certain consequences occurring after the behavior occurs.
There is a difference between self-efficacy and efficacy expectations. Self-efficacy is someone’s view of how they think they can and will cope with a situation. It is how we think we can do. There are four sources of self-efficacy. These four sources are personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological state. These help to form self-efficacy. Our self-efficacy believes can have an effect on our choice of activities, the amount of effort we put forth, the quality of thinking and decision making during performance, and emotionality. Once we have self-efficacy, we have to look at the way that we cope with things and this is called empowerment. Empowerment is actually having the skills, beliefs, and information to put control over our lives.
Efficacy expectations are used to create self-efficacy, but what about outcome expectations? Outcome expectations are used to create learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is the state that occurs when we believe that life’s outcomes are uncontrollable. There are three components of learned helplessness and they are contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency is the relationship between a person’s behavior and the outcome in the environment. Cognition is the interpretation of the environmental conditions and the person’s view of their control over that. Lastly, behavior is what we do to prevent an outcome or to achieve an outcome. Learned helplessness will leave deficits in motivation, learning, and emotions. Helplessness also may have an influence on depression.
Most of this chapter didn’t particularly surprise me. One thing that really fascinated me, however, was the relationship between efficacy expectation and outcome expectation. It makes perfect sense but it was fascinating. We have our self and then the efficacy expectation question of “can I do it?” That then determines our behavior. After and during our behavior, we experience our outcome expectation question of “will it work?” Then, we experience the actual outcome. I am a big picture person and so I was fascinated by and enjoyed seeing how they all fit together to affect our actions.
Personal control beliefs encourage behavior by asking ourselves if we can do it and helping us to do so. Let’s say I want to run a mile on a treadmill. In this theory I would ask myself if I can do it (efficacy expectation) and I know that I can because I have done it before (past experience). Then I would run the mile and ask the outcome expectation question of will it work (help me lose weight). If it will, then I will achieve that goal. It can discourage behavior because if you can’t meet the efficacy expectation question or the outcome expectation question, you will not do the behavior or not reach the outcome. So if I can’t run that mile (no to the efficacy expectation question) because I have a broken leg then I won’t do that behavior and I won’t reach the outcome.
Terms Used: Motivation, Personal Control, Expectancy, Efficacy Expectations, Outcome Expectations, Self-Efficacy, Empowerment, Contingency, Cognition, and Behavior
Chapter 9
Chapter 9 discusses personal control beliefs, specifically self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, and learned helplessness and putting all three together to have hope. As people learn from their experiences, they start to expect things about what they can control in order to have desirable things to happen and avoid undesirable things from happening. Self-efficacy is about being able to cope through situation and having what it takes to make it through the valleys of life. Mastery beliefs are based upon things that you become good at and having empowerment in your accomplishments. Learn helplessness is when a person believes that the events in their life is uncontrollable and they feel that they can not do anything to change things in a positive way. The three components of learned helplessness are contingency, cognition, and behavior. All of these things are brought together in order for people to have a sense of hope when going through tough situation by functioning together to give you energy and direction to get through it.
The most surprising this I learned from the chapter was about the reactance theory. I was surprised to learn that when people loss control of situations they try to regain control and if it fails they fall into learned helplessness. I would have thought that people would be more likely to try to gain control until they reached it, however that doesn't seem to be the case after reading this section of the chapter. I think personally I am highly motivated by failure, so it surprises me that people fall into helplessness.
Personal control beliefs both motivate us and discourage us depending on where we are in the process. If we are striving for self-efficacy and think we have what it takes to deal with the situation at hand, it encourages and motivates us to keep going and be strong through the process. If we are doing well at something and we feel empowered by what we are doing, we are encouraged to continue to do it and strive to keep being great at it. On the other hand, if something is not going the way that we want and we fail to regain control over certain things in our lives, then we tend to give up and get discouraged and blame the situation and we stop trying to do better. So our personal control beliefs can have a huge impact on whether or not we are encouraged or discouraged.
An example of self-efficacy is if we are going through a break-up and it's finals week. If we have the notion that we are tough enough to get through it and our attitude reflects that we are going to make it on our own, then going through this break-up and establishing self-efficacy is encouraging for us. An example of mastery belief would be if we were trying to get into Juilliard and we are really great at dancing. We know that we are great at dancing and if we perfect something that we are already great at them our mastery belief encourages us to get even better at it and strive to be the best. An example of learned helplessness would be if we get behind on our homework and we try to regain control over our homework and still can't get caught up because of other things going on then we fall into learned helplessness because we blame the things around us and it discourages us because we think we can no longer control the situation.
Terminology: Personal control beliefs, self-efficacy, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness, hope, desirable/undesirable, cope, empowerment, accomplishments, uncontrollable, positive, contingency, cognition, behavior, reactance theory, motivates, failure, control.
Chapter 9 was about personal control beliefs, which includes self-efficacy, mastery, learned helplessness, reactance, and hope. Expectations about efficacy and outcome influence motivation towards tasks in the environment. Efficacy expectations asks "Can I do this?" or "Am I able?". For example, when I'm going to try a climbing route, I ask myself "Do I have the energy to climb?". Outcome expectations ask the question "Will my behavior give me the desired outcome?". Once I decide if I have enough energy, I have to ask myself "If I have the energy to climb, will I complete the route?".
Our self-efficacy affects our behavior in the tasks we perform as well as our choice over what we want to do. Self-efficacy has many different sources. One of these sources is personal history, which is just how it sounds. If somebody has positive previous experiences, they will feel like they are more capable of successfully doing something. Vicarious experience helps increase a person's self efficacy as long as the person they are observing is similar to them and is competently performing the task. This is something I use to help me climb quite frequently. One of my partners in considerably better than I am, so when I'm struggling on a route I'll watch how he does it to learn what I need to do. Even though I haven't practiced any more and the route hasn't changed at all, I feel better about my own abilities to complete the route. Verbal persuasion is also useful in increasing self-efficacy, but only if the person is actually capable of completing the task. A person's physiological state has a lot to do with the self-efficacy as well. If a person is worn out, run down, and mentally tired, their perceived level of ability is going to be significantly lower.
Self-efficacy beliefs play a large role in what we choose to do. we will put ourselves in environments and situations that we feel we can successfully navigate.
Learned helplessness comes about when people do not believe that they don't have a very big, or any, effect on their environment and that other uncontrollable influences create outcomes. The thing that surprised me the most is that learned helplessness can lead to depression. I guess this makes a lot of sense, because people would feel like they can't do anything to make their situation better.
A lot of my rock climbing behavior (and that of my partners) revolves around personal control beliefs. From time to time I'll try and drag a new victim down to the wall with me to climb, and their beliefs play a huge role in whether or not they'll even attempt the climb. Doubt gets in the way a lot. Most of the time I hear "There's no way I could ever do that". After hearing that, I can almost always assume that even if I get the person to go, they usually will not get all the way up the wall before I hear "I can't do this, let me down". I try all sorts of verbal persuasion tactics and some vicarious experience when getting people to say yes. I tell them that I can help them make it super easy for them. I try to talk up their abilities and convince them that it's doable. Once I get them to go to the wall with me, I use vicarious experience and will do a climb first on something that I know I have totally mastered to make them know that it's 100% possible. I help them understand that I'm either just like them or weaker by reminding them how tiny my arm muscles are. It usually works really well to get somebody to feel better about themselves and their ability to climb. When people doubt their ability or run into a struggle up on the wall, I can almost watch their self-efficacy plummet and their anxiety increase. They start looking to me for advice more, letting go more easily, and ultimately giving up faster. I took one person who was afraid of heights. He did great until his hand slipped and suddenly he wasn't climbing as easily as before. As soon as the slip happened, his legs were shaking and he got really nervous about being up so high. The more scared and anxious people get, the less likely they are to come back and join me again.
Terms: learned helplessness, depression, self-efficacy, doubt, personal control beliefs, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, vicarious experience, persuasion, previous experience
This chapter discusses a two-part cognitive motivational system, where the perception of an opportunity to exercise personal control (i.e., the initiation and regulation of an intentional behavior) is causally determined by two types of expectations: 1) the belief that you can influence the environment (efficacy expectations); and 2) the belief that the result will be beneficial (outcome expectations).
Self-efficacy refers to the judgment you make regarding your ability to cope with a situation, given the skills you possess and the circumstances you face (233). Self-efficacy beliefs are grounded in 1) personal history; 2) vicarious experience; 3) verbal persuasion from others; and 4) feedback from physiological states. Personal history and vicarious experiences are the strongest sources for these beliefs. The degree of self-efficacy you have affects: 1) your choice of activities and selection of environments; 2) the extent of your effort and persistence; 3) the quality of your thinking and decision making during the behavior; and 4) your emotional reactions (237).
Efficacy beliefs can be acquired and changed. Locus of Control (LOC) mediates the correlation between self-efficacy -> empowerment, such that internal locus of control -> Mastery (which will be expressed in an optimistic explanatory style) and external LOC -> helplessness (which will be expressed in a pessimistic explanatory style).
In other words, a high degree of self-efficacy plus an internal LOC will yield an optimistic expectation (encouragement), generating the motivation to perform an activity (ex: John is intelligent and does his homework because he knows this will lead to better grades; he feels confident that he will do well on the next exam). A low degree of self-efficacy plus an external LOC will yield a pessimistic expectation (discouragement), which will negatively impact motivation (ex: Jack is overwhelmed by the material, and so avoids studying; he does not believe that he can do anything to improve his grades and so stops trying).
I was surprised that Reeve didn’t give a better explanation of ‘hope’. Or is hope really completely separate and distinct from faith? I’m thinking of a religious person (one who has low self-efficacy and an external LOC), who believes that a higher power will intervene, yielding a positive outcome. This person would feel encouraged and optimistic, even though Reeve’s model suggests the opposite.
Terms: initiation, regulation, intention, behavior, personal control, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, empowerment, internal locus of control, hope
This chapter focused on the influence and effects of personal control over an individual’s life. Personal Control varies from person to person and stems from two types of expectations: efficacy and outcome. An individual’s competency level determines their efficacy expectations because they base their expectations on what they are comfortable with and what they think they can accomplish. For instance, Math is my worst subject and communication is my best, therefore I do not expect to become a mathematician anytime soon; however I do think I am competent enough to become a psychologist. Outcome expectancies are based on the execution of a particular event, whether it was successful or not.
My self-efficacy has improved over the years. At first I displayed learned helplessness relentlessly because every difficult situation that came my way I saw as a stopping point instead of a challenge point. When I was just starting college I was reckless and didn’t realize what I was capable of. I was scared to start this semester too because I have never taken 20 credits before and had to hold down a job. Yet it is already half way through the semester and I am doing fine. With this in mind, I have never felt more accomplished. This is proof to me that self-efficacy is acquired and I have enabled myself to be more productive by believing in myself. Managing my chaotic schedule with 8 completely different classes, working, and keeping up with my social life has made me realize that I can handle whatever comes my way, I just have to deal with it when it approaches. My personal behavior history reflects the other three factors that self-efficacy arises from. I considered my personal history and compared it to now, realized how much I have achieved, observed others in my major field and took advice to enhance my opportunities and knowledge and I have learned to take deep breaths when I get stressed and tell myself that I will get through this like I have everything else.
What I find most interesting about this chapter and every other chapter we have read is that the information provided can be related to anyone that reads it. Everyone inevitable sets goals whether they are small, big, easy or difficult. To set goals we need to have a perceived control to understand our capabilities. Any goal, or event that we are involved in has to start with us (self) in order for there to be any action (behavior) and to see the outcome of what we choose to be involved in. I also thought it was interesting to read about vicarious experience in which people’s own sense of efficacy is heightened by watching others successful performance. I can relate to this because I felt the same way recently. I went to a psych club meeting and listened to a few students’ success stories and what they have accomplished. They are all my age or younger and just hearing about it made me want to try harder and made me think that if they can do it so can I. Since then I have increased my expectations for myself. Verbal persuasion is also effective for some people but it is more of a stepping stone that helps increase your self-efficacy.
Overall, self-efficacy can be influenced by many environmental factors and learned over time. It starts with yourself and the outcomes depend on how realistic our goals and activities are. Success also depends on effort and persistence that relies on our self-efficacy and how much we believe in ourselves. As self-efficacy can be learned, so can helplessness. If we set abnormally high standards that we don’t achieve then it may reflect on our probability of trying that same situation in the future and we may avoid certain situations or goals more often.
Terms: Personal control, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, learned helplessness, self, behavior, action, control, outcome, personal behavior history, goal, perceived control, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion
Chapter 9 discusses personal control beliefs that people have for themselves, and what motivates them to act or not act in a certain ways. The goal of a person is to produce favorable results by controlling and manipulating one’s environment, thus they feel control over the outcomes of their efforts. When it comes to wanting to manipulate things in order to feel in control people have a sense of expectancy, which is when they predict the outcome or a course of action that will bring the outcome they want.
There are two types of expectancies that people have which are efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. An example of an efficacy expectation is the idea of, “Can I do it?” and they estimate the likelihood that a person will behave in a certain manner. Outcome expectancy will estimate the likelihood of certain reactions that occur after a behavior happens, and an example of outcome expectancy is the question of, “Will what I do work?” Both efficacy and outcome expectations cause and regulate a person’s behavior to act in ways that will either benefit or hinder them and the outcome that they are looking for.
Self-efficacy also plays a major part in determining a person’s behaviors in various situations. Self-efficacy is when an individual looks at the their skill level of how well or poor they will do in certain situations that test our abilities. If the individual feel like they have a capability to do well and under little stress, then they will probably engage in the activity. However, if a person lacks efficacy they feel doubt. Doubt will cause a person to feel anxiety, confusion, and experience negative thinking and unpleasant psychological arousal and bodily tension. Doubt is what will potentially prevent people from engaging in certain activities and behaviors, and hinder motivation or motivate them to not act at all.
Sources of self-efficacy and doubt (inefficacy) include: personal behavior history (from a person’s own memory and experiences they’ve had and how they reacted); vicarious experience (watching people model behaviors); verbal persuasion (the attempt to convince a person to complete an action), and psychological state (person must be able to cope with the demands of the action). If a person has positive reinforcement from the four sources they are likely to engage, use a good amount of effort, and persist in the wanted behavior. However, if a person has had a negative reaction to a certain behavior, they will likely avoid the behavior or react poorly while engaging in the behavior.
The goal is to get people involved and engaged in certain behaviors and activities; therefore, the goal is to empower people. Empowerment happens when a person feels that they possess the knowledge, skills, and belief to exert control over their life. The mastery modeling program is utilized to make people feel and believe that they that the knowledge and skills to positively perform activities and overcome any negative thoughts that they have. The mastery modeling program takes the four sources of self-efficacy and applies the to a person so they may take the concept of mastery belief, and hopefully respond to failures as a learning experience and to overcome the failure. However, an individual may learn the idea of a helplessness, in which they take failures harshly and they may give up or withdraw from their actions and see the problem as being out of their control. Helplessness will effect a person’s motivation, learning, and emotional capabilities negatively and take a passive role in their life. A person who has learned helplessness will be less likely to feel any sense hope compared to a person with high self-efficacy, and will continue with their pessimistic views in their life.
Terms used: personal control beliefs, motivate, goal, expectancy, efficacy expectations, outcome expectations, self-efficacy, doubt, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, psychological state, empowerment, mastery modeling program, mastery belief, learned helplessness, passive, hope
This chapter was about personal control beliefs. This has to do with an individual’s control of their life situation. There are two types of expectations that determine our motivation, and those are efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. Self efficacy is ones belief on how well or poorly they can perform on a certain task. This is derived from an individual’s past, their perception of others doing that task, verbal suggestions from peers, and one’s physiological response. An individual who is looking at their past may think they will do poorly on their history exam, because they have done poorly on their last two exams in that course. An example of an individual who is watching someone solve a rubix cube, may think that they too can solve the rubix cube because this other person is able to do it. An individual who is on a volleyball team may believe they can get all their serves in the other teams court because their coach and teammates are encouraging them and telling them that they can do it, and they have what it takes. An example of an individual who is following their physiological response may be someone who is being chased by a dog would have an increased heart rate, so they believe they can out run the dog because of their adrenaline and heart rate is increased allowing them to do more activity.
Personal control belief also encompasses learned helplessness. This is occurs when an individual is lacking the control of their situation outcomes. For example if a student believes their teacher hates them and will give them a bad grade on their essay no matter what, they are not going to put good effort into their essay, because they know they don’t have control of this situation. Motivation deficit is also included which is really just lack of motivation, so not wanting to do something because you aren’t motivated to do it. Reactance theory is the motivation for an individual to perform a certain behavior because they are told that they can’t do it, so it makes them want to do it. I know a lot of students who have the urge to push the blue emergency buttons on campus just because we aren’t allowed to do that unless it truly is an emergency. It is very interesting to look at the little things that can motivate us or even cause us to have a lack of motivation.
What I found most interesting/surprising was about hope. Hope is something that is always mentioned, but it is usually not broken down to the intricate details of it. If an individual would say “I have hope that my new job will be successful” but normally wouldn’t say “I have the goal of being successful at this job and I have the capacity and ability to achieve this which could be done in a number of ways”. Although, when we hope we really are saying the second statement, we just simplify it and it has become a commonly used term in our everyday lives, but it is more complex. I also just enjoyed this because hope is a very positive thing and it can really impact our motivation.
Personal control beliefs can help encourage behavior as well as discourage behavior. They can encourage behaviors because it can motivate an individual to do something so that they experience success. For example if an individual practices shooting free throws and then they make 100 percent of their free throws in their game it will encourage them to continue to practice so that they will experience the same outcome again. If another individual practices shooting free throws for hours and then misses all of their free throw in a game they might experience some learned helplessness and just give up and be discouraged to practice that again. These encouragers and discouragers are evident in our behavior and most individuals can identify some of each in their own lives.
Terms: Self efficacy, learned helplessness, hope, goal, motivate, beliefs, history, physiological,reactance, motivation deficit,
Chapter nine takes about personal control beliefs and their power to produce favorable results. There are two kinds of expectations: efficacy and outcome. In efficacy expectation one judges their capability to execute an action. Outcome expectations are judgments when actions are performed will cause a particular outcome. Different from efficacy expectation is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is how one judges how well or poorly one copes with a situation based on the skills they have and the circumstances they are in. There are four sources of self-efficacy, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological state. In personal behavior history, a person learns their present self-efficacy from past experiences and try to copy the same behavior. In vicarious experience, a person observes a model and copies what the person does. Verbal persuasion is given by parents, teachers, coaches, friends, etc., who try to convince the person that they are competent in an action if they try. Physiological state includes, pain, tiredness, tension, and mental confusion that indicate that the task at hand exceeds one's ability to cope with those demands.
Self-efficacy can also predict ways of coping call personal empowerment. Empowerment is having the knowledge, skills, and beliefs that allow people to have control over their own lives. To empower people, there is a mastery modeling program. In this program, an expert in a skilled area works with a group of novices and teach them how to cope with a fearsome situation. The mastery program also uses the four sources of self-efficacy to build confidence. Mastery beliefs are one's perceived control over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing aversive ones. When personal control beliefs are strong and resilient, there is a strong link between actions and outcomes.
In learned helplessness a person expects that life's outcomes are uncontrollable. Helplessness is learned. In the Seligman and Maier experiment there were three groups, inescapable shock, escapable shock, and no shock. Dogs were put into each of these categories. The dogs in the escapable shock and no shock learned how to escape the shock. The dogs in the inescapable shock category would try to escape, but after a few trials the dogs gave up trying to escape and dealt with the shock until the trial was over. Learned helplessness causes deficits in the motivational, learning, and emotional areas. It decreases one's motivation and willingness to try. It interferes with one's ability to learn new outcomes. And can cause people to act lethargic and depressive.
The most surprising thing I found in this chapter was about self-efficacy. I have heard about self-efficacy many times throughout my college experience, but I have not learned about it as I had in this chapter. I did not realize that there were four sources of self-efficacy or that self-efficacy has things to do with empowerment. I did not realize there was more to self-efficacy than how one judges whether they can cope or not in a situation with their skills and the circumstances.
Personal control beliefs influence whether we engage or avoid certain behaviors or circumstances.An example of an encouraged personal control would be if a person had a test coming up, but they found the class entertaining or enjoyable. The person studied and understood the material well and received an A. If the person enjoys the class, the person is more likely to study for the test and want to receive an A in the class. On the flip side, a discourage personal control would be if a person disliked the class and the teacher and the teacher did not explain things well in class. The person is less likely to want to study for the test or would not really care what grade they got in the class.
TERMS: personal control beliefs, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, self-efficacy, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological state, empowerment, mastery modeling program, mastery beliefs, learned helplessness
Chapter 9 is titled Personal Control beliefs and it continues to build off of chapter 8 in exploring and explaining our cognitive perspective of motivation. It began by looking at two different types of expectancies. The first being efficacy expectations which is a judgment of whether or not you can complete a particular action. An outcome expectation is a judgment about whether doing a particular act will result in the desired results. Both of which are essential to motivating individuals behavior. If both of these are high/positive then individuals will be very likely to attempt a behavior because they will believe that 1) they can successfully accomplish the behavior and 2) that when they accomplish the desired behavior that it will lead to their desired consequences. An example of this would be snowboarding in the terrain park. If I have high efficacy expectations then I will believe that I can stomp a trick then I will be more likely to succeed at this attempt. In addition to this, if I have high outcome expectations then I will especially be motivated to attempt the jump, and let’s say that my desired outcome is to be recognized by the other fellas on the hill and respected. My high sense of efficacy and the high reward I imagine to be possible would greatly motivate me to pursue the behavior. In addition to this there are certain factors that play into building self-efficacy. The first of these is your personal behavior history. This pertains to how you personally have faired at the proposed behavior in the past. If you have sucked then your self efficacy isn’t going to be the highest and if you have done well then you will have a higher self efficacy. The second of these is vicarious experience, which means how well have other people performed at the task at hand that you have witnessed. If someone who is of the same caliber as you falls flat on their face you are much less likely to pursue the same behavior. These first two are the most influential of the four factors shaping self efficacy. The third of these is basically a pep talk which only really amounts to giving you the initial push you need but wont really have any long lasting effects. The last is physiological state, which is your body telling you whether or not you can adequately cope with the stressor/event/behavior at hand. If you are already maxed out(stressed, anxious, etc.) then your body will likely tell you that you should pass this time. After this part of the chapter it went on to talk about helpless, which I will write about in the remainder of this paper.
The most surprising thing I read about in the chapter was the experiment that demonstrated that helplessness is in fact a learned behavior. After subjecting a dog to electrical shocks and putting them in various situations, being able to escape, inescapable, or no shock at all. The dog that was put in the inescapable shock situation developed and exhibited learned helplessness when it was subjected with a shock in an escapable situation. This is very helpful for us to understand exactly what is behind helplessness and how it develops. It helped us understand that if individuals are in a past situation where they perceive that they don’t have any control over their environment then they are very unlikely to perceive that they will have control in the future. When this was also applied to humans I thought it was even more interesting. When people were subjected to situations where their efforts were met with failure no matter what they did they also adopted a mental framework of helplessness. This is applicable to everyday life when you are teaching someone a new task. If you really want someone to learn something then you cannot have their every attempt met with failure or they will think that their effort has not impact on their future and that it is all outside forces.
Having self efficacy and strong personal control encourage behavior because they put it in their mind that these tasks are readily achievable. In addition to that it puts the power to achieve a set goal in your own hands rather than in the hands of your environment. People with this mindset believe that their behavior will have a direct impact on what happens to them with minimal influence from the outside world. On the other hand personal control beliefs that are low in self efficacy and high in helplessness will feel as though they can in no way impact what will happen to them and that outside forces will determine it. This is a very depressing way to live unless you have a great faith in the outside forces acting on your life. An example of strong personal control would be that I know that I can learn Arabic because I have had great success with foreign languages in the past and have the free time to apply myself to the activity. Some factors feeding into this idea of strong personal control would be my own past success, the self pep talk of how I can and should do this, and I have several friends who speak Arabic. This causes me to believe that I can achieve my goal and that my environment has little to say about it. If, however, I had weak personal control beliefs then I would think that my environment had the final say as to whether or not my goal would be reached. I would probably think of all the ways in which my environment could act upon me and thus ruin my goal rather than focusing on the necessary steps that I need to take to accomplish my goal. If I ran into any difficulties I would probably throw in the towel because I would, based on past experience, think that there is no point in trying to make a change. That is one example of strong and weak perceived sense of control.
Terms: efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, learned helplessness, personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological state, self efficacy, perceived sense of control, environment, mastery
Our expectancies are important motivation implications for us. This allows us to cope with what the future has in store for us and gives us an expectation of what will happen. This allows one to have control over what happens to us, this makes a person to think they can produce favorable results. There are two types of expectancy, efficacy expectations and outcome expectations. An efficacy expectation estimates the likelihood that an individual will behave a certain way. Outcome expectations estimate the outcome of the situation following the action by the consequences that follow. Both expectancies are separate.
Self-efficacy is the ability it takes to be able to cope with situations if obstacles may arise. It’s being able to pull together the necessary resources if a problem occurs. The opposite of self-efficacy is doubt; this can affect a person’s success rate. Past experiences can determine whether or not a person attempts to do something. Our past influences the activities we participate in and the environment we choose to be in.Verbal persuasion can convince us that we are capable of completing a task. Verbal persuasion boost the self-esteem and motivates the person to try the activity. An example of this would be a coach motivating his player to make a touchdown by giving him a pep talk. Physiological state can also affect a person’s performance, if they are in a good state with little to no fear or stress they will perform better.
Learned helplessness is when a person thinks that the events that occur in their lives are uncontrollable. They don’t think they are able to control future situations. This is a learned behavior, there are three components to helplessness contingency,cognition and behavior. The reactance theory responds to lifes uncontrollable events.
personal control beliefs allow a person to think they can do something an example of this would be a person trying something that they dont normally do but when motivated by someone else they will attempt to do the task.
Key words: self-efficacy, expectations, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, verbal persuasion,
Chapter 9 focused on finding the motivation to exercise personal control over what happens to you. The way one feels about their competency in a particular situation can greatly affect the outcome. The individual needs to control what they can in order to get the result that they want. To do this, that person needs to answer the question, “Can I do it?” This is referred to as an efficacy expectation. Outcome expectation refers to the likelihood that a particular consequence will follow a certain action. The Model of Perceived Control puts these concepts together in a self-action-control model. A section of the chapter was dedicated to self-efficacy sources and the effects of self-efficacy on behavior. A big lesson from this part of the chapter was that self-efficacy can be changed. This is good news for those who have low-self efficacy. Having a high self-efficacy will help you succeed in whatever task you are performing. Empowerment and mastery are also important in positive personal control beliefs. Empowerment deals with having the skills, knowledge, and beliefs to control one’s life. Mastery deals with the extent of perceived control one has over achieving desirable outcomes and avoiding undesirable ones. Perceived control is how much you believe you can influence something. If you believe that you have a strong influence, you have a high sense of perceived control.
I was most surprised and interested by the effects of helplessness. This chapter stated that helplessness is learned and it can occur in three different ways. Motivational deficits, learning deficits, and emotional deficits are these three different ways. They are all three pretty self explanatory: There is a shortage in each one that leads to disruptions in the way a person functions.
An encouraged behavior is a behavior that is encouraged to occur. Personal control beliefs would play into encouraging the behavior. Take running five miles for example. If the personal believes that they can run five miles (efficacy expectations) and believes that it will help them be in better shape (outcome expectation), they have a good start. If they have successfully ran five miles in the past, it is likely that they can do it again (personal behavior history). Seeing someone similar to them succeeding in the same task would also help (vicarious experience). Supporters and a good physiological state help as well. This will allow the individual to work hard to achieve their goal.
A discouraged behavior is one that is discouraged from occurring. Personal control beliefs effect this behavior. In the same situation, if the individual has low efficacy expectations and outcome expectations, they are off to a bad start. The behavior is discouraged from occurring. In addition, if they have not been able to do it in the past and have no example, no support, and their body is hurting, they are even more unlikely to participate in the behavior.
Terms: personal control beliefs, efficacy expectation, outcome expectation, model of perceived control, self, action, control, self-efficacy, empowerment, mastery, perceived control, motivational deficits, learning deficits, emotional deficits, personal behavior history, vicarious experience
Chapter nine follows the work of chapter 8 as it also takes a look at goals by looking at personal control and its effects on our past experiences that now motivate us to seek out or influence our desired results and avoid or prevent undesired events. The motivations we have come from our influential abilities on results (efficacy expectancy) and the environmental response (outcome expectancy). The efficacy expectancy and outcome expectancy effect our decision to either approach or avoid specific behaviors. The chapter introduced a few new terms like self-efficacy which is a self-judgment of our own performs abilities or what we are capable of doing. The most powerful influence of self-efficacy is personal history. Self-efficacy is also influenced by observations of other, verbal persuasion, and physiological state. Physiological state could look at whether someone is scared and in a panic or calm and collected. The chapter also talks about the various levels of efficacy. The levels are choice, effort/persistence, thinking/decision-making, and emotions. All of these make up the previously discussed parts of goal setting and goal striving discussed in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 also looks at learned helplessness which is an example of something that people learn as a result of the outcomes of their behaviors. Contingency, cognition, attributions, and expectancies all are parts of learned helplessness and aspects of personal control beliefs that are looked at in Chapter 9 as well.
It was surprising to me how easy the chapter was able to make efficacy as it broke it down. I always thought that efficacy was much more complex. I’m not surprised that there are several parts to it, however, I like the simple statements/questions that very easily clarify efficacy through examples. Efficacy is like asking “Can I do it?” where as outcome is a little different and more like asking “will it work?” I didn’t realize how much of a role efficacy played on personal control and I didn’t realize how many aspects there were to efficacy. I found the levels of efficacy to be especially interesting and surprising. I didn’t realize that efficacy could be broken down into choice, effort, thinking/decision-making, and emotional categories. It’s really cool that it has so many parts. Efficacy effects our empowerment and the use of what we know and our skills in controlling situations. Choice, persistence, effort, the decision making, and our emotions are huge parts of goal setting. It’s clear that without efficacy, it would be difficult to be successfully motivated in our goals.
Personal control beliefs can motivate us to avoid situations or approach situations. When it comes to taking a test, students have a couple options that may either encourage or discourage the behavior. If the student wants to receive an A on the test, they will be encouraged to study harder and more productively. If they get an A on the test, they will be encouraged to up their level of personal control and continue to study often and efficiently so that they may continue to get A’s on their tests. If they fail their test, perhaps they will be discouraged. If the person is discouraged by a failing grade, they may be motivated to either work harder to improve their level of personal control so they can avoid the discouraging outcome in the future. They may also just curse and quit passing the behavior off as being out of their control. If they do the second behavior, the will be showing learned helplessness.
Terms: efficacy, self-efficacy, goal setting, goal striving, motivation, efficacy expectancy, outcome expectancy, avoid, approach, influence, verbal persuasion, physiological state, choice, effort, persistence, decision-making, emotions, learned helplessness, contingency, cognitions, attributions, expectancies, personal belief control.