Drew Hickman and Justin McGee University of Dallas

Biographical Information Born December 4, 1925 in Alberta Canada B.A. from University of British Columbia in 1949 M.A. (1951) and Ph.D. (1952) from the University of Iowa

Biographical Information Joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at Stanford University in 1953, where he remains today. In 1974, he was elected President of the American Psychological Association.

What is Self-Efficacy? “Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the sources of action required to manage prospective situations.” –Albert Bandura (1986)

Self-Efficacy Defined Self-Efficacy is the degree to which people believe in their abilities to perform certain actions or tasks, not necessarily correlating to one’s actual abilities.

Importance of Perceived Self-Efficacy In 1982, J.L. Collins put children into 2 groups according to their math skills and asked them about their opinions on their abilities. He gave them all some difficult math problems, and as expected the children with better math skills outperformed those with poorer math skills.

Importance of Perceived Self-Efficacy However, self-efficacy also had an effect. In each of the 2 groups, the children who believed they were good at math solved more problems, chose to work on more of the problems they failed, and displayed a more positive attitude towards math.

Self-Efficacy Appraisals One’s judgments of his general abilities are called self-efficacy appraisals. These appraisals have powerful effects on our levels of motivation. Bandura suggests that there are four sources of self-efficacy appraisals –Actual Performance –Vicarious Experiences –Verbal Persuasion –Physiological Cues

Sources of Self-Efficacy Appraisals Actual Performance –Repeatedly succeeding at tasks increases our sense of self-efficacy while repeatedly failing decreases our sense of self-efficacy. Vicarious Experiences –If we watch others succeed at a task, we believe that we can succeed at it too.

Sources of Self-Efficacy Appraisals Verbal Persuasion –When another person tells us that we can perform a task, we tend to perform better. Physiological Cues –When we become fatigued or tension rises, we feel that the task is becoming too difficult for us.

Our Questions How does actual performance effect the self-efficacies of middle school football players? How will a player’s opinion of his inherent ability, performance in an individual game, and satisfaction with playing time change after a win and a loss?

Our Participants We studied a group of 8 th grade (13-14 years old) football players from Trinity Christian Academy in Addison, TX. (N = 15)

Procedure The participants were given three surveys, the first of which was given at practice and asked the players to rate their abilities on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. The second two surveys asked players to rate their abilities, their individual performance during a game, and their satisfaction with playing time. One was given after a win and the other was given after a loss.

Hypothesis Players’ self-efficacies will increase after a win, in that they will rate their abilities higher, rate their individual performances higher and will be more satisfied with their playing time. Players’ self-efficacies will be effected inversely after a loss. Leon and Self-Efficacy

Raw Data

Results

Conclusions Our hypothesis proved true in that players self-efficacies increased after a win, in that they rated their abilities higher, rated their individual performances higher, and they were more satisfied with their playing time and that the inverse occurred after a loss. However…

Problems However we are not able to generalize our findings because of a small sample size. Also, our study focused on actual performance and neglected to study vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological cues. We cannot be sure what impact, if any, this had on the players’ self-efficacies. Loss conundrum.