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Self esteem, self efficacy, and locus of control

This lesson explores self-esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control. Self-esteem is how much respect we have for ourselves. Self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to succeed in specific situations. Locus of control is our perception of control over events in our lives. These concepts play a key role in our motivation and behavior. Created by Shreena Desai.

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  • leaf green style avatar for user Brooke
    Can someone have a high internal locus of control for positive outcomes, but a high external locus of control for negative outcomes?
    (25 votes)
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  • piceratops tree style avatar for user TheSqueegeeMeister
    It should be noted that nearly every piece of vocabulary in psych/soc is an example of the black and white extremes of psychological theory and often illustrates the minority. When we build a sense of self, interact with others or the environment, we use mixtures of all of these based on the situation and a multitude of other factors. Psychology is not like politics, it's organization is just easier to illustrate using extremes.
    (24 votes)
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  • leafers seedling style avatar for user Egle
    What do people with weak efficacy lack?
    (4 votes)
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  • ohnoes default style avatar for user Nicholas
    How are people more towards internal locus of control happier ?

    Wouldn't people be happier if they stop blaming themselves for failures and accept the fact that there are things that they could not control and eventually let nature take it's course ?
    (6 votes)
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    • starky sapling style avatar for user kassie
      It's not so much about blame as it is control. If you fail a test and attribute it to yourself not studying enough, even if the questions were too hard you still believe that there are actions you can take to do better.
      If you fail the test and blame it on the difficulty of the questions, then you lack the belief that you have control over your own life and outcomes. This can lead to learned helplessness and depression because a person feels that no matter what they do, things will not improve because they don't have control.
      (3 votes)
  • piceratops sapling style avatar for user Sean Snyder
    At , you discuss Bandura's fourth source of self-efficacy as "psychological responses", however how I understand it to be, is more of "physiological responses" (e.g. sweating, shaking, increased heart rate) and how we psychologically perceive those responses. I am not sure if the distinction is necessary, but I was wondering if this was a correct interpretation.
    (5 votes)
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  • leafers ultimate style avatar for user gaurav.shinde
    This video felt like a personal attack
    (4 votes)
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  • piceratops ultimate style avatar for user tian1di2 jax
    Ukraine's govt is using media censorship to jail or prosecute violators, is this an example of social persuasion?
    -For agitation in social networks against mobilization can collect up to 8 years - SBU
    http://censor.net.ua/news/325910/za_agitatsiyu_v_sotssetyah_protiv_mobilizatsii_mojno_poluchit_do_8_let_sbu
    (3 votes)
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    • piceratops tree style avatar for user Siyuan Yu
      I don't think so, it rather serves as an external challenge to see whether of not a violator has strong or weak self-efficacy. Censorship isn't a directed personal message, nor a public message meant to seem personal, so it's unlikely to act as persuasion.
      (1 vote)
  • blobby green style avatar for user NG321
    Wouldn't someone with a high internal locus of control be more depressed as they are attributing everything going "wrong" to themselves and would therefore be seen as being unchanging?
    (2 votes)
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  • leafers sapling style avatar for user yasminhooman
    In the first twenty seconds she says "self concept is derived from self esteem and self efficacy" BUT in the last video she said self concept comes from our existential understanding of ourself (and gave an example of how a baby can tell it is distinct and separate from other objects) which leads to our categorical understanding of our self and therefore our traits develop from our comparison to others (she even drew it all out with little arrows). So is self concept derived from and begin with our existential understanding of ourselves OR from self esteem and self efficacy? Bc I'm pretty sure a baby's self concept isn't derived from self esteem or its idea of self efficacy.
    (2 votes)
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    • female robot amelia style avatar for user Vi Nguyen
      the arrows she used doesn't always mean "lead to" or "therefore". Sometimes it means different categories. For example, self concept derives from the understanding of ourselves. And self concept consists of 2 categories: self esteem and self efficacy.
      (1 vote)
  • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user Kitty
    Around -, I have a question. If self-esteem is defined as how much values one has for oneself, then how does a person with low self-esteem relate to him feeling that he is not good at relationships? I feel like isn't he having a high self-efficacy in architecture, but a low self-efficacy in relationships? I say this because I have some friends who feel very confident in their people and relationship skills, in terms of interpersonal communications, persuasions, conflict resolutions...etc.
    (2 votes)
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    • blobby green style avatar for user eataylor.nw
      Great question. A career prioritizes achievement over self-respect, but a relationship requires both; so, if you have high self-efficacy, and low self-esteem, you will probably be more successful at work than in your relationships. If both are high, you will probably excel in both, raising your potential to build a career in relationships.

      My guess is that your friends probably have high self-efficacy and high self-esteem, so they wouldn't fit into the example of someone with low self-esteem who can excel at tasks and struggle with relationships. I may be wrong, this is just my assumption.

      If you flip it backwards - someone with high self-esteem and low self-efficacy - they also would probably struggle in building meaningful relationships, and also in a career, but they could get by on their charm, maybe even find a perfectionist to balance each other out.

      Hope that helps!
      (1 vote)

Video transcript

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.