Self esteem, self efficacy, and locus of control

Voiceover: Hi everyone, welcome back. So in this video, we're going to talk about three terms. Self esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control. So self concept, as expanded upon in the previous video of this series, is derived from self esteem and self efficacy. So self-esteem is the regard or respect that a person has for oneself. And self-efficacy is the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required in certain situations. So in other words, self-efficacy is a person's belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. And, self-efficacy was developed by Bandura because of his dissatisfaction with the overall general concept of self-esteem. So self-efficacy is much more specific than self-esteem. Self-efficacy can have an impact on everything from psychological states to behavior to motivation. And virtually all people can identify goals they want to accomplish, things they want to change, things they want to achieve. However, most people also realize that putting these plans into action is not so simple. So an individual's self-efficacy plays a major role in how goals, tasks, and challenges are approached. And we can split self-efficacy up into two two types. People with a strong sense of self-efficacy versus people with a weak sense of self-efficacy. So people with a strong sense of self-efficacy view challenging problem, problems as tasks to be mastered, so I'm going to write out the acronym RISE, R-I-S-E. So people with this strong self of sense of self-efficacy also develop deeper interests and activities in which they participate. They form a stronger sense of commitment to their interests and activities. And they also recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments. So there you have it. They can recover quickly. They have strong interests. They have a strong sense of commitment, and they enjoy problems or challenging tasks. And then we have people with weak senses of self-efficacy and we'll use the acronym FALL. So people with a weak sense of self-efficacy avoid challenging tasks. They believe that difficult tasks and situations are beyond their capabilities. They focus on personal failings and negative outcomes. And they quickly lose confidence in personal abilities. So you have fail, avoid, lose, and lack. Now there are four major sources of self-efficacy. So we look at these sources to determine whether the person will have a strong or weak sense of self efficacy. And the first is mastery of experiences. So that means performing a task successfully will strengthen our sense of self-efficacy. Then there's social modeling. So seeing people similar to ourselves successfully complete a task raises our beliefs that, we, too, have the capabilities to master comparable activities, and also succeed. The third source is social persuasion. So, think about a time when someone said something positive and encouraging, that helped you achieve a goal. Getting this verbal encouragement from others helps people overcome self-doubt and focus on giving the best effort at the task at hand. And the last source is psychological responses. Consider a person who becomes extremely nervous before speaking in public. They may develop a weak sense of self-efficacy in this situation. But by learning how to minimize stress and elevate mood when facing difficult or challenging tasks, we can improve their sense of self-efficacy. Now here is the little catch. It's important to remember that a person with a low self-esteem can have a high sense of self-efficacy and vice versa. So this is actually interesting. Perfectionists, you may know a couple, you may be one yourself, have this mismatched. They have a low self esteem and possibly a high sense of self-efficacy. And that's because they tend to be overly critical, and negative about themselves, and yet still see themselves as quite capable in certain areas. For instance, a perfectionist might see himself as uninteresting and unlikable, but see himself as a competent architect. They're often competent at tasks with clear guidelines, but they feel a little uncertain and lose a little confidence in situations without these clear rules in things such as relationships. Now let's move on to our last term, locus of control. Locus of control is the extent to which people perceive they have control over events in their lives. And there are two types, internal and external locus of control. So internal locus of control is when a person believes he or she can influence events and their outcomes,. They attribute the results to their own traits. And a person with an external locus of control blames outside forces for everything. They attribute events to environmental traits or causes. Individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that events in their life come primarily from their own actions. So, if a person with an internal locus of control does not perform as well as they wanted to on a test, for example, they would blame it on lack of preparedness on their own part. And if they performed well on a test, then the outcome would be attributed to their ability to study. Now using the same example, if a person with a high external locus of control does poorly on a test, they may attribute this outcome to the difficulty of the test questions. And if they perform well in a test, they may think that the teacher was lenient, or that they were lucky. Some external factor is why they performed well. People with an internal locus of control feel that they control their own destiny, rather than their fate being largely determined by external forces. So they tend to be happier, less depressed, and less stressed. Hopefully, this video was to clarify the differences between self-esteem, self efficacy, and locus of control.