Confidence and self-efficacy

Self-confidence:

The belief that you can successfully perform a desired behaviour.

Trait self-confidence: The degree of certainty individuals “usually” possess about their ability to succeed.

State self-confidence: The belief of certainty individuals possess at a “particular moment” about their ability to succeed.

The self-concept:

"The individual's belief about himself or herself, including the person's attributes and who and what the self is" (Baumeister, 1999) it is how someone thinks about, evaluates or perceives themselves.

Sport confidence:

The degree of certainty individuals possess about their ability to be successful in sport (Vealey, 2001).

Vealey produced a model to attempt to provide an understanding of how achievement motivation and self-confidence work together to influence behaviour. It allows a situation specific approach to sports confidence and can explain how in the same situation, individual players will have different levels of confidence and competitiveness throughout a game.

Explaining the model – The components of Vealey’s model can be explained using a player in a school rugby team playing in the county cup final.

• Objective competitive situation – this refers to the competition or competitive situation. So in this example the player is playing in the final.
• Trait Sport Confidence (SC-trait) – like all ‘trait’ theories, SC-trait refers to stable and enduring sport confidence. It is an innate characteristic which means that a person with high SC-trait is likely to feel capable of being successful in most situations, whereas a person with low SC-trait will have a low confidence in most situations.
• Competitive orientation – this refers to the level of competitiveness of the player and how much effort they put into something to be successful. Highly competitive players are more likely to try to tackle players larger than themselves and take calculated risks throughout the game. Players with a low competitive drive will avoid the ‘risky’ situations and not exert themselves in the game.
• State Sport Confidence (SC-state) – this is the actual level of confidence in the situation similar to self-efficacy (see later). The players will have low, moderate or high confidence; which is dependant on SC-trait and competitive orientation. One player may have high SC-trait and approach the game with high competitiveness, which after the first few minutes of the match, where he has made a few good runs, tackles and passes his SC-state is high. A player from the opposing team has low SC-trait and a low level of competitiveness and therefore has low SC-state.
• Behavioural responses (performance) – these are the actual behaviours that the players exhibit, this often reflects the quality of their performance. Players experiencing high SC-state want to be involved in the action of the game, taking, putting a lot of effort in and performing skills without fear of failure. However, players with low SC-state may avoid the situation where they could be brought into the game and generally shy away from the action.
• Subjective Outcomes – this is how a player perceives or rates their performance. If the performance is perceived to be successful then competitiveness and SC-state is increased. If the performance is perceived as unsuccessful then competitiveness and SC-state is decreased.

For example after playing the first 10 minutes if a player has scored an early try or made a few big tackles they are likely to feel satisfied with the positive impact they have made in the game. This increases competitive orientation and as a consequence SC-state. Both these factors impact on SC-state, meaning in that situation confidence will be high.

‘Self-efficacy’ is similar to sports confidence in that it explains the individual’s belief in their ability to be successful but is the amount of self-confidence exhibited in a specific situation. It is the expectation of success in a particular task and the belief in one’s ability to cope with the demands of the situation. It differs from sports confidence in the fact that self-efficacy theory is not specific to sports but has been adapted to sports situations. The England football team’s failure to succeed in many penalty shoot-outs could exemplify how the players may have high self-efficacy in most situations during the match but low self-efficacy in other situations (e.g. taking a penalty in a penalty shootout).

Bandura proposed the following Self-efficacy theory:

• When there is good skill (an athlete’s ability) and high motivation (the want to succeed) the main predictor for success is self-efficacy.
• Self-efficacy alone does not make a person successful.
• Self-efficacy levels can influence the athlete’s effort and choice of activity. Athletes with higher self-efficacy are likely to persevere under difficult conditions.
• Self-efficacy is task specific but can transfer to similar tasks or situations.
• Self-efficacy is related to goal setting. Athletes with high self-efficacy tend to set more challenging goals.

Bandura’s Sources of Self-efficacy

Performance accomplishments – This is the most obvious source of self-efficacy. If a young gymnast has attempted a specific tumble run during their floor routine and they have failed to execute the somersault at the end of the run frequently, then they are likely to have low self-efficacy performing this in competition. A coach can play an important role in developing this aspect of self-efficacy by structuring practices to give performers success. For example, in a football or hockey passing session coaches may limit the number of defenders to begin with and only increase the numbers when it is obvious that the players are being successful. These performance accomplishments increase self-efficacy. A coach can also increase self-efficacy by setting easier goals for his/her team to achieve. In most autobiographies by sports performers, they will regularly write about being in ‘form’ and how one successful performance can improve self-efficacy leading to a string of successful matches.

Vicarious experiences - Seeing others successfully complete the activity can lead to increased self-efficacy. If a pole-vaulter sees an athlete, who they have beaten regularly, clear a specific height, it may make them think that they can do it too. This is known as a ‘vicarious experience’ and coaches can help their athletes by observing others of a similar or lesser ability, successfully complete the skill they are attempting and pointing this out to the performer. This is linked to the social learning theory and the process of modelling. Coaches will often try to use this ploy in their team-talks when they are playing a team who is top of the league if they have drawn or been beaten by a team languishing at the bottom of the league the week before their match, stating that ‘if they can beat them, then so can we!’

Verbal persuasion is a method commonly used by coaches and captains to increase self-efficacy. England’s Martin Johnson provided inspirational team talks before the start of the 2003 Rugby World Cup games and his verbal encouragement was regarded by many of the players as a key factor for winning the Web Ellis Cup. Verbal persuasion is more effective if provided by a significant other, such as your coach, telling you “you can do this!”

Self-efficacy is affected by levels of arousal, this is linked to the inverted-U theory and if a performer can achieve their optimal level of arousal, performance will be enhanced. If the athlete experiences physiological arousal such as somatic responses including increased heart rate and alertness, before the start of a race and perceives these feelings as exciting and facilitative, self-efficacy will be higher. However, if the athlete interprets these feelings with fear and anxiety, then self-efficacy will be lower. Emotional arousal is the effect of cognitive feelings on confidence and being able to control arousal using stress management techniques; these can either lead the performer to feel energized with high self-efficacy or depression with low self-efficacy.

If a performer who has experienced failure on a number of occasions attributes failure to internal and stable factors, like their ability, they can experience shame, lose confidence and this can result in severe loss of motivation. If they feel that failure is inevitable, that they have no control of the outcome of their result, then they are said to have developed learned helplessness. People with this attitude will attribute success to luck or other similar external factors. This phenomenon can be a big problem because it can lead to avoidance behaviours such as missing training sessions, forging notes to miss a PE lesson or not trying their best. It can also lead to a person giving up on physical activity altogether.

See Attribution Theory