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Self-efficacy and Confidence
Ann Laverty, PhD, R Psych
slaverty@ucalgary.ca
Learning Objectives
Building self-efficacy and confidence through:
 Understanding the value of self-efficacy
 Adopting a growth mind-set
 Developing strategies to manage mental challenges
 Remembering past success and learning from it
 Reflecting on your values
 Living with self-compassion & gratitude
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Differentiating Terminology
 Self-esteem: general feelings of self-worth or selfvalue.
 Self-efficacy: belief in your capacity to succeed at
tasks.
 Self-confidence: belief in your personal worth and
likelihood of succeeding… a combination of selfesteem and general self-efficacy.
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Why is self-efficacy important for graduate students?
 Strong sense of self-efficacy helps us:
— View challenging problems as tasks to be mastered
— Develop a deeper commitment to interests and activities
— Recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments
 Weak sense of self-efficacy deters us by:
— Avoiding challenging tasks
— Believing difficult tasks and situations are beyond our
capabilities
— Focusing on personal failings and negative outcomes
— Quickly losing confidence in personal abilities
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Brainstorm Discussion
 What factors might help a graduate student feel
confident in their capacity to succeed in their
program?
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How to strengthen self-efficacy
 Performance accomplishments: Successful experiences
lead to greater feelings of self-efficacy.
 Vicarious experience: Observing someone else perform a
task or handle a situation can help you to perform the
same task by imitation.
 Verbal persuasion: When other people encourage and
provide constructive feedback that you can perform a
task, you tend to believe that you are more capable of
performing the task.
 Mental health : Moods, emotions, physical reactions,
and stress levels may influence how you feel about your
personal abilities.
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Normalizing
 Stress and self-doubt are part of the graduate
student experience.
 Self-critical thoughts occur for everyone.
 Anxiety equation:
Magnify the difficulty of the situation/task
Minimize our ability to cope
 Let’s focus on some tips to help!
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Adopting a Growth Mind-set
 Fixed Mind-set: Intelligence is fixed & unchangeable.
 Growth Mind-set: Intelligence is malleable. You can
become smarter through effort, hard work, and
persistence.
— Affirming, encouraging statements reflect a more positive,
accepting, honest, flexible and rational outlook help you to
develop a growth mind-set.
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The Human Triangle
 Cognitions: how we think about things
 Behaviours: how we act or behave
 Emotions: how we feel about things
Interactional Pattern
• Just get started – give it 20
minutes of concerted effort
and see what happens
• If you get 5 pages completed,
take a break as a reward
• I’ve written other papers, I
can approach this one in the
same way.
•
••
•
•
•
••
Low motivation
A
bit of anxiety
Increased
Some
fear of
motivation
failure
Decreased
Distraction
anxiousness
Overwhelmed
Decrease in
feeling
overwhelmed
Feeling
Thinking
• I know I should get started, but
I’ll first grab a snack
• I don’t know where to start.
I’ve tried this before and it just
didn’t start in the right way.
• I’m not insightful enough to do
this.
• Break things into
small steps
• Grab a snack, then
sit down to work,
• Find
starting
withaa task
snack
that gets
me
• Check my
engaged.
email
Acting
• Talk with a
colleague
Exercise
 Think of a time when you questioned your ability to
proceed in your graduate degree.
 On a piece of paper draw a triangle:
— Identify what might be occurring in the triangle when
problem is present
— Create different thinking and action options – reflect on
what new feelings might emerge.
History Review
Accomplishments & Disappointments
 When was the last time you faced an academic challenge?
 What did you accomplish?
 How did you overcome the challenge? (Resources, personal
strengths)
Creating Your Own Thesis/Dissertation Guidelines
 What resources and personal strengths did you use then that
you can use now?
 What has been the secret of your successes and
accomplishments to date? What worked well?
 What has helped me be productive?
 What strategies worked?
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What Are Your Values?
 Values are qualities that help you live a fulfilled life.
 Values are something you do, or a quality of
something you do.
 Assess your values:
https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/
 (go to VIA Survey of Character Strengths under
Questionnaires)
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Values: Guidance and Affirmation
 Wisdom and Knowledge: creativity, curiosity, judgment, love
of learning, perspective
 Courage: bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest
 Humanity: love, kindness, social intelligence
 Justice: teamwork, fairness, leadership
 What values help guide your determination to complete your
graduate degree?
 What values will you be able to demonstrate by completing
your graduate degree?
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Strategies for Building Self-Efficacy
 Establish specific, short-term goals that are
challenging yet attainable (SMART!)
 Reflect on each small/large success before moving on
to the next. Take time to acknowledge your
achievements.
 Calmly and rationally, challenge any doubts.
 Create a supportive setting
 Understand how you learn & how you work
 Minimize new changes in your life that may impede
completing your graduate program
 Others…???
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Self-compassion & Gratitude
 Self-compassion: extending compassion to one's self
in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or
general suffering.
— Dr. Kristin Neff: http://self-compassion.org/
 Gratitude: positive emotion or attitude in
acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received
or will receive.
— Gratitude
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Closing Thought
http://sbluman2.blogspot.ca/p/quotes-and-helpful-links-regarding-self.html
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