In my journey over the past few months I have placed a high level of importance on trying to make myself more confident in my abilities to pick up women.

My main inspiration for working on the confidence side of my game was inspired by my dissertation at uni on Self-Efficacy. I thought I would share a section of that work with you guys. Hopefully it may help you to see that any self-limiting beliefs you have are going to have a negative effect on your performance!

Background to Self-Efficacy Theory

The term self-efficacy can be used to describe a person’s perceived capability to accomplish a certain level of performance (Duda, 1998). Bandura (1997) described self-efficacy as the belief that one can successfully execute a specific activity in order to accomplish a certain outcome. Self-efficacy beliefs are not about individuals skills objectively; they are about the individuals judgements of what they can accomplish with those skills (Duda, 1998). Bandura (1997) proposed that self-efficacy beliefs have an effect on psychosocial behaviour. These beliefs influence thought patterns, emotional reactions and thought patterns in various situations. For example, people will avoid situations they believe they are not capable of handling; their level of self-efficacy will also influence their amount of effort and determine how much they persist in the face of failure. People with high self-efficacy can focus more effort on the task in hand and persevere more than those with low self-efficacy (Gencay, 2009).

Bandura (1997) suggests that efficacy beliefs are formed as a result of complex thought processes of self-appraisal and self-persuasion from different efficacy sources of information; he categorised these sources of information as past performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion and physiological states.

Past performance accomplishments have been shown to be the most influential source of efficacy information because they are based on a persons own experiences of success or failure (Bandura, 1997). Individuals who view past performance as successes will have higher self-efficacy beliefs; however, if these experiences have been viewed as failures, then self-efficacy beliefs will generally decrease (Feltz et al, 2008).

Vicarious experiences have an effect on self-efficacy as information can be derived through individuals observing and comparing themselves to others (Feltz et al, 2008). Bandura (1997) suggests that this process involves observing the performance of others, coding the information that has been observed, noting the consequence of the performance and finally using that information to make judgements about ones own level of mastery. Vicarious influences also include social judgements, for example, looking at other individuals in terms of their physique may have an effect on self-efficacy (Weinberg, Gould & Jackson, 1979, cited by Feltz et al, 2008). Vicarious sources of efficacy information are generally thought to be weaker than past performance accomplishments (Duda, 1998).

Verbal persuasion information effects self-efficacy through factors such as evaluative feedback, expectations by others, self-talk, imagery and other cognitive strategies; self efficacy beliefs based on these sources are also said to be weaker than those of performance accomplishments (Duda, 1998).
Physiological information effects self-efficacy as people cognitively assess their physiological condition and state to form judgements about their efficacy (Feltz et al, 2008). Physiological information is derived from factors such as fitness, levels of fatigue and pain; as well as psycho-physiological factors such as arousal, fear, self doubt and ones ability to get psyched up and ready for performance (Duda, 1998). Physiological information has been shown to be a more important source of information effecting self-efficacy in physical activity tasks than in nonphysical tasks (Chase et al, 1994; Feltz & Reissinger, 1990, cited by Duda, 1998 and Feltz et al, 2008).

Research suggests that the relationship between self efficacy and behaviour is a reciprocal one in nature (Weinberg & Gould, 2003). In a sporting context, an athlete or coach with previous high levels of performance will have higher self efficacy, these feelings of high self efficacy in turn have a positive effect on performance.