Instructions for this Report

While reading this book it seemed evident to me that there were three major topics that Albert Bandura tries to cover in his book. Each topic very obviously relates to one another, in that they are based on the idea of self-efficacy. Bandura takes several approaches to looking at self-efficacy, and explaining to us why it is important that we be conscious of our own perceived self-efficacy levels. The three major topics that I found were:

Self-efficacy, and its definition, is never really clearly explained. We do find out how important it is, and how much affect it has on our lives and the world we live in. I would suppose that self-efficacy could be best described as "a person’s feeling of control and ability in the world they live in."

Self-efficacy is a strange little thing, in that it can be affected by just about everything. From your mood to your status in life, this topic is discussed in the book, but not sufficiently in my mind.

This is a very well developed topic within this book, probably the best developed topic. We learn lots about how self-efficacy affects our life and the world we live in.

As I said earlier, this doesn’t ever really get defined very well in this book, and it is one of the disappointing things about these readings. We find a lot of discussion about how efficacy can change your life, and some details about the things that affect your efficacy level. However, what is not very clearly stated is what is self-efficacy, and how it differs from other terms like self-esteem or optimism/pessimism, for example. What would have been nicer is if Bandura placed an article in the beginning of the book that discusses what self-efficacy is, exactly, and how it differs from other terms that we hear in everyday society which could be mistaken for self-efficacy.

I think, in addition, that it not only would be helpful to know these distinctions, but it would also allow us who are reading the book to better understand the readings inside of it. I found that it was hard to decipher what the various authors were talking about when they said self-efficacy, and that I would often mistakenly interpret what they were talking about as self-esteem or other terms of that nature. Is it the same as self-esteem? If not, what is the distinction between the two? These are two questions that I seemed to carry throughout the book, and still seem to have lingering in my mind, in spite of any understanding that I have developed about self-efficacy after this course.

It seems that the next natural progression of Bandura’s topics goes on to discuss the topic of self-efficacy and what affects it. I think that the articles he places into his book very nicely detail the areas of family, culture, and situations and their relationship to an individual’s self-efficacy. I find it very helpful to know that any level of self-efficacy that I may have is not just because of my own personal achievements, etc, but also has a lot to do with my parents, my up-bringing, and my surroundings. This is something I could probably guess to be true before-hand, but really had no solid evidence to prove until this book.

I especially liked the chapter on the "Impact of family processes on control beliefs." I have found, with my observance of my friends’ families, as well as nuclear families within my own extended family, that parents do not always understand that the things they do and say will affect their child’s self-efficacy. This could be because they don’t have and understanding of what self-efficacy is, but it would seem that parents would have a better understanding of how they affect their children, in general. I think that if families had more knowledge of what Schneewind discusses in his article, that we may have stronger nuclear/extended family systems here in America. This could probably also lead to stronger individuals, and in turn, a stronger society.

As I’ve alluded to in my previous paragraph, it seems that this would be an important area for everyone to understand, in that self-efficacy, as we will learn in later chapters, has a strong role in success, physical, and mental health. I am surprised that this term is not one that is utilized more commonly among those who do not have psychology backgrounds. I do feel that this subject, even if very lightly, should be discussed at a high school level, at least to inform people on how their own self-efficacy could affect their lives.

In the last half of the chapter, Bandura inserts articles which discusses self-efficacy in terms of the outside world. We find how perceived self-efficacy plays a role in health decisions, work and school decisions, as well as how it works in stressful situations. It seems that the common theme is, the higher your self-efficacy, the better off you are in life, generally.

When I look at the last chapters of the book, the ones that address this major topic, I think that the one which really seems to interest me the most is "Self-efficacy in stressful transitions." The reason I liked this chapter so much is because I’ve always wondered how various personality and psychological aspects of a person plays a role in how they handle stressful situations in general. In the military, I’ve found myself in many situations which have varying level of stress. One of the things that makes you successful in the military, as an officer and leader, is to be able to take the stress "out of your eyes" and be able to look beyond it and make sound decisions quickly. Through my training and interaction with other future military leaders, I have found that everyone has a different level of stress-tolerance, and the ability to handle and work under pressure. So, it is interesting to me to see how self-efficacy plays a role in the ability to tolerate and work through stressful situations.

Once again, I’d have to say that this is a very important area for others to understand. If we can learn to increase our self-efficacy, and understand how it works in stressful times as well as other areas of life, we can learn to make our lives just a little bit easier for ourselves. Likewise, we will be able to understand how other people are working in our lives and how our self-efficacy affects them and possibly their own self-efficacy.

It seems that this book’s purpose is more to inform its audience on what self-efficacy is, and how it affects life and what parts of your life affect your own personal self-efficacy. In this capacity I think that the book does very well. As I said earlier in this report, I don’t feel that it adequately addresses the true definition of self-efficacy, or how it differs from other terms that we hear in everyday life. But, even with that in mind, through the various articles presented in the book, we can still formulate a fairly concrete idea of what self-efficacy is through learning how it affects us in our everyday lives. With these three areas of interest, as well as utilizing this book as an informative source, I found that this book was very good.

However, an area that it does not seem that the book touches very well is that of HOW to increase your self-efficacy. We hear lots about what it does, how other things affect it, and how it affects our lives, but we never hear a concrete answer to the question "So what, how do I help it?" This is a concern of mine because now Bandura has just informed his audience of the topic, and stressed very well how important of a topic it is, but has failed to explain what they can do about the situation they may be in. This would be a very good topic to discuss, and perhaps for business reasons, Bandura hopes to discuss this in a different book.

This book has a very logical progression of chapters and articles. We start off with articles that introduce us to the topic, then move on to articles that describe how the outside world affect our self-efficacy, and then articles that demonstrate how self-efficacy affects our outside worlds. This was a very simple book in structure.

The diagrams that are presented in the different articles are very useful, and also very "normal." In all actuality I really couldn’t find much about this book that "wow’d" me. It was a plain book with the purpose of informing its readers, period. When looking at the indexes, I found it helpful to have a subject index and a names index. There were a couple instances where I wanted to look up either a name or subject, and the indexes were both helpful.

Other areas of the book that I have looked at are the titles of the chapters and the overall enjoyment factor of the book itself. The titles are very fitting of their topics. They’re straight-forward, and give you a good idea of what the topic will be in the article you are about to read. However, I think that the book read like an encyclopedia. It could have been a little more interesting in its presentation by utilizing some color to break the monotony that is built up by reading purely black and white for the long chapters.

Overall, as you can tell from my various sections, I found the book very informative and a useful source to find out about self-efficacy. It puts forward good information on the topic, and looks at various aspects of self-efficacy. I would not say that I "enjoyed" the book, because I have a different idea of "enjoyable" media of information. However, I would say that this was a very useful book. It gave me a very good insight into my own life and how I engage in various activities, and how these activities affect me.

A chapter that I did find very interesting, and quote-worthy was the chapter on self-efficacy and occupation related decisions. In the very beginning of the chapter it states "There are few other decisions that exert as profound an influence on people’s lives as the choice of a field of work or career. Not only do most people spend considerably more time on the job than in an other single activity, but choice of occupation significantly affects one’s lifestyle." This is a very important statement, in that it takes the realization that the most important, and possibly the most stressful thought in many people’s minds, especially college students nearing graduation, is that of selecting an occupation. We need to select an occupation that we are willing to live with, spend considerable amount of time on, and we think we will be good at.

We find in this chapter that self-efficacy plays a role in the career path we choose for our self. A person with higher self-efficacy will choose a path that will be challenging and rewarding, with lots of work. A person with lower self-efficacy may not be as willing to select a career path that will be challenging, for fear of failure or the perception that they will not be able to make it. This is a very important idea. I know many people who are very good at a particular skill are area of interest, but never get into that career field because they don’t think they have what it takes. If they knew about self-efficacy and how it plays a role in their career futures, they would have been able to make a decision that they may be happier with in the long run.

The strength of this book comes from the wide range of authors that it puts together under a looking glass. This allows us to see the various people who have written on the topic, so we know that it is not just Albert Bandura who thinks this is important. However, a weakness that this book does have, aside from it’s boring presentation, is that it does not sufficiently address the definition of self-efficacy or how to actually increase it in yourself or others. Chapter after chapter we see how self-efficacy affects things, or what affects it, but what we can never get a clear picture of is what we can actually do about it. It almost makes me feel like there is nothing we can do, or that it is so hard that Bandura can not address it in the same book as these other topics.

Unfortunately, as odd as I find this, I have not been able to locate any other actual reviews of this particular book. Through my searches on msn, yahoo, and google, I’ve found numerous summaries and descriptions of this particular book by Bandura, but nothing that actually reviewed the book and gave opinions on its content. Regardless of my findings, if I did find something and what it said, I would still stand by my review of the book. I feel it did give good information about self-efficacy, but lacked in certain areas. I did find this book informative, and I am glad that I had the opportunity to read from it.

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