Group Interaction and its Effect on Self-Efficacy

Brandon Dorman

Dr. Ted W. Nickel

Social Psychology

November 21, 2002

Abstract: This paper attempts to gather research dealing with the effects of group interaction on self-efficacy. Specifically, how does working in groups affect one's self-efficacy, and what can we learn from these interactions to better refine the theories? Most research on these interactions have been inconclusive, except that positive Self-Efficacy is generally a good predictor of group-based outcome expectancy results. High personal self-efficacy will increase group productvity unless collectiveness is extolled over personal results, in wh

Common sense tells us that if someone feels good about themselves and their ability, they will tend to do well in many situations that they encounter just because of that fact. Theory and research says that self-efficacy tends to increase motivation, efficacy expectancy, and outcome expectancy(Sanna, 1992; Bandura, 1994). Yet research on group interaction and specifically how self-efficacy is related to group performance has shown inconclusive results about the impact of the groups experiences on the individuals self-efficacy(Sanna, 1992). A more conclusive investigation about self-efficacy and group interaction, and how they relate, was needed. The findings of such an undertaking can lead to a better way of instruction, and better building of self-efficacy for learners.

Self Efficacy is defined by Bandura(1986) as, “the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the sources of action required to manage perspective situations.” Perceived self-efficacy is defined as, “peoples beliefs about their capabilities to produces designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives(1994).” Self efficacy is generalized, perceived self-efficacy is how self-efficacy affects our actions. The four major mental processes affected by perceived self-efficacy are: Cognitive; Motivational; Affective, and Selective.

Cognitive processes occur any time our brain attempts to acquire, organize, and use the information that our senses send in. Most people have preconceived notions on how well they will perform at a given task before they even attempt it(Morgan & Flora, 2002). People with high self-efficacy tend to perceive themselves as doing well on previously unexperienced activities before they try them, whereas people with low self-efficacy tend to imagine themselves failing. It takes strong cognitive focus to remain motivated on more difficult tasks(Bandura, 1994).

There are three main systems that help to explain what motivates us. Causal Attributions focus on what it was we did that caused us to succeed or fail, Outcome expectancy research focuses on the internal cognitive processes that predict what will happen for a given situation, and Cognized(understood) goals are our way of assessing performance, which in turn affects outcome expectancies.

Causal attributions are very different for varying levels of self-efficacy. Highly self-efficacious people attribute their failure to insufficient effort. Inefficacious people attribute their failures to insufficient intelligence or ability(Bandura, 1994). People also have situational causation explanations when they are in a group(Nichols, 1994).

Outcome expectancy, or expectancy-value theory, is how motivated we get based on our expectations about what we will gain or lose in a situation by taking a specific course of action(Bandura, 1994). In the words of Bandura(1989), “The effects of outcome expectancies on performance motivation are partly beliefs of efficacy.” Perceived self-efficacy to control future outcomes is a key factor in maintaining and raising self-efficacy(Bandura, 1994). In other words, the stronger we feel in our abilities to predict an outcome for ourselves in a situation, the quicker our self-efficacy rises. These results are enhanced with the level of difficulty as well(Bandura, 1989). Efficacy expectancy is an idea that deserves mention as well. Efficacy Expectancy looks at how much self-efficacy one possesses, then attempts to find a correlation in how one performs in a given situation, that is, how much power one has over a situation because of self-efficacy levels. Outcome expectancy just examines whether or not the outcome was predicted, and how being wrong or right affected that persons self-efficacy(Bandura, 1994).

Motivation is also affected by our goal setting. Cognized goals are governed by three types of self influences: reactions to ones performance; goal attainment, and readjustment of goals based on progress. Highly self-efficacious people adapt to failures and readjust goals to fit current performance quicker than inefficacious people. They also exert greater effort in order to reach their goals after they fail(Bandura, 1994), an important finding in structuring problem solving exercises(Nichols, 1994).

Affective processes regulate emotional and personal states, and affect our emotional reactions. Social Cognitive theory says that mastery experiences are the best way to help instill support in low self-efficacy people. Make the experiences too easy, and they will know they are being tricked, and self-efficacy will decrease due to the lack of others' belief in them.(Bandura, 1989).

Selection of activities is affected largely by the other 3 processes. In accordance with outcome expectancy measures, if people don't think they will succeed at something, they probably won't try it. The problem of course, is that if they don't try new things, and succeed, their self-efficacy will not improve. In one study, if people were not informed that group counseling for sexual abuse could positively assist them, they did not benefit very much from it. If they knew beforehand that group counseling could help, the group sessions went better and were more effective(Lightsey, 1997). Thus, letting people know that they can do something before they do it can significantly improve their selection choice and alter a negative outcome expectancy(Bandura, 1994). In unclear situations, less cognitive and more trait-like expectancies take over and become more influential for self-efficacy results(Litt, 1988). Because those with better self-efficacy also have more control over cognitive processes(Pajares, 2002), if one is given a choice between an unclear situation that may lead them to what they want faster and easier, or a route they know how to get through but will take longer and be harder, they will go with what they know(Pajares, 2002).

By manipulating the four modes of cognitive processes, motivation, affective, and selection through any means of alteration, one can effectively increase self-efficacy. There are four additional ways to alter these four modes. They are: mastery experiences, social persuasion, vicarious experiences, and change stress reactions. Note that these techniques fall under Social Cognition Theory.

Mastery experiences are simply experience that start with simple tasks to let the person know they can do “something,” then leading up to complex tasks. It has been found that having the experimenter do the tasks with the person then quickly withdrawing for the difficult task works well too – they think they still have the help of the experimenter, but they don't(Lightsey, 1997)

Social persuasion theory attempts to define ways to structure situations in ways that bring success and avoid putting people in situations where they will fail. The harder someone tried at a given task, and then succeeds, determines how much their self-efficacy is raised. However, it is harder to raise an individuals self-efficacy through social persuasion than to lower it(Bandura, 1994).

Research has also shown that learning vicariously and by simply observing is also very influential(Bandura & Walters, (1963) as found in Pajares, 2002). Modeling is also very important to learners in group thinking. However the models must be similar to the participant(Morgan &Flora, 2002). Even if one has a high self-efficacy, learning from others that are similar to oneself and endowed with similar efficacy levels can make a tremendous impact on group performance and individual self-efficacy(Bandura, 1994).

Changing one's stress reaction is important for two reasons. One, if one can change how stress is perceived, it can be viewed as a performance enhancement, or as a debilitator. Just ask any Olympic athlete if the incredible pressure of the Olympics led him to perform at his best or choke. Second, after going through a stressful experience, by going back and analyzing affective processes, one can improve their own self-efficacy by seeing how well they reacted. Unfortunately, likewise for people with low self-efficacy.

The main theory guiding group interaction research today is Bandura's Social Cognition Theory(Pajares, 2002). It says that within the context of self-efficacy research, SCT enables people to make true decisions based off of their outcome expectancy, and actually are able to change their environment. The effect of changing the environment around them enables them to have a higher sense of self-efficacy(Bandura, 1989; Pajares, 2002). There are three factors involved in this transformation: behavior, how the person reacts in accordance with the impact of the other two; personal factors, such as efficacy and outcome expectancies; and environmental factors, such as the influence of a group. An example that was used in Pajare's 2002 text: teachers can try to reach their students in such a way to correct or improve their beliefs and self-efficacy(personal factors), which will help improve their academic skills with good instruction(behavior modification), and help create an environment of learning and motivation that will help all of the students(environment).

(Pajares, 2002)

Social Cognitive Theory has other interesting results as well. One study, on the motivational effects of group effectiveness using social-cognitive theory, found some mixed results. It tried to predict group behavior using individual motivational characteristics (Prussia, 1996). It was found that the group's collective efficacy was in fact positively correlated to the groups’ motivation (Prussia, 1996). Dissatisfaction on, “task 1,” positively improved performance on “task 2” regardless of individual's range of self-efficacy. The groups formed did not have that much time to bond even, suggesting that in this new environment, when forced to compete for leadership, people do perform better at first(Punch & Moriarty, 1997). Yet the Punch & Moriarty (1997) study shows that although competitive groups show performance gains at first, when forced to switch to other means of cooperative learning, they have difficulty, thus overall group effectiveness is graded down. These studies did not take into account the possibility of social loafing and facilitation.

The impact of social loafing and social facilitation on member's self-efficacy in groups was also a question one must ask when considering the impact of groups on individual self-efficacy. Social facilitation theory states that people will do better work in groups because everyone is motivated by the people around them, making them work harder(Sanna, 1992; Punch & Moriarty, 1997), yet social loafing research shows that in groups people succumb to deindividuation and don't work as hard(Meyers, 2000). One such study focusing on these areas of research performed two experiments. Each experiment had three groups in of people trying to solve the same problem: people working by themselves; people working by with a pair whom they could not communicate with but were told that the other was working on the exact same problems as them, that individual performance would be assessed, and group performance scored as a whole, and the third group of people worked in pairs, but were told their two scores would be averaged(Sanna, 1992).

For long-term group effectiveness within a self-efficacy framework, the key is to measure success in terms of self-improvement rather than competitive victories. For when compared to other students completing the exact same task, and doing worse, inefficacious people's self-efficacy sunk even lower(Punch & Moriarty, 1997). People with higher self-efficacy positively associated with outcomes. Likewise, people with lower self-efficacy portrayed negative reactions towards the outcome of the group's work (Lightsey, 1997). Generalized self-efficacy outcome predictions showed significant, if incremental, variance in overall member ratings. In other words, those with different self-efficacy ratings whom predicted about the same outcome were usually all close to being right, but not a very strong correlation was present. The Correlation coefficient was:

R²change= .26F(1,13)=4.78>.05(Lightsey, 1997).

This is important, because it shows that individual self-efficacy is not always a good predictor of collective efficacy and performance (Pajares, 1997). The Author admitted a larger sample size was needed to further this idea (Lightsey, 1997). The experience of group success or failure within one's group contributed to: personal self-efficacy; collective efficacy; perceived links between individual performance and rewards; group performance and group rewards; work satisfaction, and organizational commitments. Not enough data is currently available to present on true results for these variables (Riggs & Knight, 1994).

Earlier studies (Jackson & Williams, 1985 as quoted in Sanna(1992)) had studied the effects of the three types of groups and what generally happened. Those did not study through the lens of self-efficacy, as the Sanna(1992) study did. It was found that coaction participants did better on simple word lists and worse on complex word lists. Coaction is where participants are judged individually but are part of a group. The social facilitation effect was found to be present for this group. The last group, collectively going through the word lists, with only the group being judged, was found to do worse on simple lists, and better on complex lists(Sanna, 1992).

The Sanna(1992) study was unique in the way it manipulated self efficacy. After taking a preliminary test that tested the same reflexes and skills that would be required for the real thing, they were all randomly assigned two outcomes, positively or negatively affirming them. Actual results were recorded, and a correlation between the type of pre-experiment feedback and level of self efficacy and actual performance. Results proved that outcome and efficacy expectancy did affect performance. For the easy list, the average (mean) amount of correct responses was 5.98, whereas for the more difficult tests, the average was 4.04. The impact of the self-efficacy altering evaluations also had a discernible and significant impact, with F(1, 66) = 39.83,p <.001 (significant at .001). Thus, altering self-efficacy is more impacting than the group interaction for this study. The social standards imposed upon the individual do help one to perform, but it is more important about what the person individually feels when under evaluation. When feeling compared to others though, as in the co-active situation, stress can cause them to not perform as well(Sanna, 1992).

Another study that specifically looks at the relationship between group interaction and its effect on self-efficacy and individual performance was done by Ellie Hanlon and Yasemin Schneider. In a summer school class for remedial math students, a control group was assigned as well as a self-efficacy oriented group. The control group went through the class like normal, whereas the self-efficacy group focused on getting together in small groups with a lot of personal interaction, and a, “math card,” that would remind them of what to do to solve the problem, so that they would know what to do when they got stuck. The math card then, was a way to help increase outcome and efficacy expectancy. By knowing they had access to it, they always knew they had control over the problem. Students were also asked to track their outcome expectancy (and thus see an indication of their self-efficacy) by predicting their grade on the next quiz, taking the quiz, and recording the difference.(Hanlon and Schneider, 1999)

As seen in the table below, there was clearly a significant improvement in the efficacy-focused group over the standard teaching method group.

As seen by the sharp decrease in standard deviation, not only did the students score an average of almost 20 points higher, but the test scores were closer together, showing a general decrease in outliers. According to this, 99.7% of scores were between 48.59% and 100%, whereas before, the scores literally ranged from 0 to 100. At the end of the course, 80% of students were sure they would pass the math proficiency exam. Compared to 60% at the beginning of the course, in a class that had initially failed it, this is a marked improvement.

Throughout this paper, we have seen how groups do in fact affect self-efficacy. For people with high self-efficacy, working in groups that keep the individual accountable tend to increase efficacy. If one has low self-efficacy, working in groups that keep one individually accountable tends to decrease efficacy. To improve self-efficacy, then, it appears that one would focus on first giving many opportunities to enhance positive appraisal, or doing small things, then having them attempt complex tasks as a group, keeping each individual somewhat accountable to his or her own progress, but letting them know that their results will be averaged. This will maximize collective efficacy and if they fail the first or second times, minimize impact to personal self-efficacy(Sanna, 1992; Hanlon and Schneider, 1999).

References

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall

Bandura, A.(1994). Self Efficacy in Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Vol. 4, p71-88). New York: Academic Press

Hanlon, Ellie H., & Schneider, Yasemin(1999). Improving Math Proficiency through Self Efficacy Training. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), April 19-23, 1999.

Lightsey, Owen Richard Jr.(1997). Generalized Self-Efficacy expectancies and optimism as predictors of growth group outcomes. Journal for Specialists in Group Work, V22, n3, p189-202

Litt, M. (1988). Self-efficacy and perceived control: Cognitive mediators of pain tolerance, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 149-160.

Morgan, Robert D., & Flora, David B.(2002). Group Psychotherapy with incarcerated offenders: A research synthesis, Group Dynamics, v6 n3, p203-218

Nichols, Joe D. & Miller, Raymond B.(1994). Cooperative Learning and Student Motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 19, 167-178
Pajares, F. (1997). Current Directions in Self-Efficacy Research. Advances in Motivation and Achievement, 10, 1-49 Retrieved 11/14/02 from http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/eff.html

Pajares (2002). Overview of social cognitive theory and of self-efficacy. Retrieved November 14, 2002 from http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/eff.html.

Sanna, Lawrence J.(1992). Self Efficacy Theory: Implications for Social Facilitation and Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, V62, N5, p774-86

Prussia, Gregory E., & Kinick, Angelo J.. A motivational Investigation of Group Effectiveness using Social-Cognitive Theory. Journal of Applied Psychology, V81, n2, p187-198

Punch, Keith F., & Moriarty, Beverly. Cooperative and Competitive Learning Environments and their effect on behavior, self-efficacy, and achievement. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, V43, n2, p158-160

Riggs, Matt L.& Knight, Patrick A.(1994). The Impact of Perceived Group Success- Failure on Motivational Beliefs and Attitudes: A Causal Model. Journal of Applied Psychology, v 79, n5, p755-766