Cultural Differences in Self-Efficacy

Introduction Bandura (1997) defined self-efficacy as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to produce given attainments” (p. 3). Self-efficacy refers to the judgments of what one can do with whatever skills one possesses rather than the judgments of the skills themselves. In self-efficacy theory, people evaluate their skills and abilities and convert their beliefs about their capabilities into purposive action (Bandura, 1997).

As people enact their self-efficacy beliefs, they demonstrate a degree of control over (a) the activities they choose to pursue, (b) the persistence they display in the pursuit of goals, and (c) their reactions to challenges and failures (Bandura, 1997). In academic settings, specific skills are needed to master difficult tasks, and important factors like educational opportunities, quality of teaching, and learning ability influence student success. Thus, enhancing self-efficacy is important way to help students achieve positive academic outcomes.

Although considerable research has been devoted to the study of self-efficacy in educational settings, most of the students under study were from Western cultures and were usually in American settings (Klassen, 2004). Therefore, culturally attentive studies are necessary to investigate students’ self-efficacy in a range of social and cultural settings. We cannot assume that self-efficacy functions in the same way with all Asian students or with any other ethnic group of students because they have different culture from Western countries. Different perspectives on the self-enhancement motive were proposed across cultures.

According to the cultural-self perspective, the motive is pervasive in individualistic cultures (the West) but absent in collectivistic cultures (the East) (Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997). Kitayama et al. (1997) found that American people are relatively likely to engage in self-enhancement while Japanese people are relatively likely to engage in self-criticism. Xie, Roy and Chen (1996) also reported similar results with Chinese people. They demonstrate that individuals with a more individualistic cultural orientation exhibit greater leniency in self-rating than those with a more collectivistic cultural orientation.

Such findings in cross cultural studies challenged the universality of the self-enhancement motive (Heine, Lehman, Markus & Kitayama, 1999). When considering the self-enhancement motive directly influence on self-efficacy (DiPaula & Campbell, 2002), there will be cultural difference on students’ self-efficacy between individualism and collectivism culture. Research in learning has also suggested one’s personal orientation of individualism versus collectivism may influence various classroom behaviors such as asking questions (e. g. Hwang, Francesco, & Kessler, 2003), and suggested that students with a collectivistic orientation may be less involved and perform poorer in large lecture courses. Self-efficacy may differ from culture to culture, as a person from a collectivist culture might well develop their self-efficacy from those around them whereas an individual from an individualist society might derive their self-efficacy more from their own experiences of success and failure. From these perspectives, it can be inferred that sources of self-efficacy differ by cultures.

According to Bandura (1997), there are four major sources of self-efficacy: (1) personal mastery experiences, (2) vicarious experience, (3) social persuasion, and (4) physiological or emotional state. Personal mastery or enactive experience refers to the past experience of success and/or failure. People also develop self-efficacy by watching similar other people perform certain tasks; vicarious experience. Other’s success indicates that they themselves could perform the same task while other people’s failure suggests that they may not accomplish the task.

The third source of self-efficacy is social persuasion. Self-appraisals of competence are partly based on the opinions of significant others who presumably possess evaluative power (Bandura, 1997). Last, students rely partly on somatic information conveyed by physiological or emotional states in judging their self-efficacy beliefs through cognitive processing (Bandura, 1997). Hypotheses The purpose of this study is to investigate cultural differences on self-efficacy and its sources. Specifically, higher self-efficacy is expected in ‘individualism’ culture than ‘collectivism’ culture (hypothesis 1).

Two cultures (Korea as collectivism culture and America as individualism culture) will be used in this study. Among the sources of self-efficacy suggested by Bandura(1997), students from collectivism culture will be more influenced by vicarious experience and social persuasion (hypothesis 2). On the other hand, students from individualism will be more influenced by personal mastery experiences and emotional state because personal experiences are often emphasized to a greater extent within individualist societies (hypothesis 3).

An experiment with four different manipulations will be conducted to examine these hypotheses. Method Subjects For Korean group, 160 college students will be recruited from a university located in Seoul, Korea. For American group, 160 college students will be selected from Georgia State University (total: 320 subjects). International students will be excluded from the selection in order to control confounding other cultural variables. Gender is expected to be evenly split within each group. Measures Most previous studies dealing with self-efficacy used self-report measures.

However, self-report measures may have problem when applied to two different groups of people using different languages. For this reason, cross-cultural psychologists suggested to use indirect measures (Biernat, Manis, & Nelson, 1991). In this study, indirect self-efficacy measures will be used by comparing subject’s actual scores to their predicted scores on a cognitive ability task. Instrument; Cognitive Ability Task The short form of the Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM; Raven, Raven, & Court, 1991) developed by Bors and Stokes (1998) was used to test cognitive ability.

As Bors and Stokes (1998) reviewed, APM is one of the best measures of general intelligence and cognitive ability, and is considered a culture-free test because it requires minimal language skills. The short form APM has proven psychometric properties (Bors & Stokes, 1998). The test consists of 12 items, which are puzzles with missing pieces of figures for participants to solve. One correct solution counted for one point, and a perfect test score was 12. Procedure 20 subjects will be assigned to each group of condition, so 80 subjects are needed for each source of self-efficacy condition; total = 80 x 4 = 320.

See table 1 for details. The subjects in each group will be asked to perform the APM task. After the task, they will be asked to predict their scores on it. The differences between subjects’ actual scores and their predicted scores (expectation) will be calculated as indirect measures of self-efficacy. Over-predicted scores will be indirect measures of high self-efficacy while under-predicted scores will indicate low self-efficacy. Four different independent variables will be manipulated to investigate different sources of self-efficacy as stated previously.

Each variable will be divided into two conditions; self-efficacy enhancing condition versus self-efficacy diminishing condition. First, personal mastery experience: before the cognitive ability task is given to the subjects, a pre-test consisting of 5 items that are similar to the cognitive task will be assigned. For the self-efficacy enhancing condition, positive feedback (“Your relative ability level is at 90% in your age group. ”) will be shown to the subjects while the self-efficacy diminishing group will be provided with negative feedback (“Your relative ability level is at 70% in your age group. ) regardless of their actual score on the pre-test. Second, vicarious experience: before the cognitive ability task is assigned to the subjects, the self-efficacy enhancing group will informed that “80% of students in other academic institutions have above 10 points out of 12. ” On the other hand, the self-efficacy diminishing group will informed that “80% of students in other academic institutions have above 6 points out of 12. ” They will expect less successful performance on their cognitive task while self-efficacy enhancing group will expect to succeed on the task as other students did.

Third, social persuasion: for the self-efficacy group, a psychologist will persuade the subjects verbally that they possess the abilities to successfully accomplish the task. In contrast, for the self-efficacy group, the psychologist will tell the subjects that they do not possess enough abilities to successfully accomplish the task. Last, emotional state. According to Bandura (1997), we can enhance perceived self-efficacy by diminishing emotional arousals such as fear, stress, and physical agitation since they are associated with decreased performance.

Emotional arousal can be mitigated with repeated symbolic exposure that allows people to practice dealing with stress, relaxation techniques, and symbolic desensitization. Therefore, different lists of words will be given to the groups and will be asked to read them before doing the cognitive task; positive emotional words (e. g. , happy, calm, and relax) for the self-efficacy enhancing group, and negative emotional words (e. g. , sad, angry, and anxious) for the self-efficacy diminishing group. Expected Results and Discussion

Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test with the type of original culture (Korea and the U. S. ) and self-efficacy (enhancing vs. diminishing) will be conducted to predict self-efficacy. Expected result is that the U. S group will show higher self ratings than Korean group. It will be found from this study if there is cultural difference on the sources of self-efficacy. From this finding, hypothesis 1 will be confirmed. Interaction effects will be also found from the analysis. See Figure 1 for details.

Among the four sources of self-efficacy, ‘personal mastery experience’ and ‘emotional state’ will have more powerful effect on enhancing self-efficacy for the U. S group than Korean group. On the other hand, effect of ‘vicarious experience’ and ‘social persuasion’ on self-efficacy will be more dominant for Korean group that the U. S group. From these findings, hypothesis 2 and 3 will be confirmed. Educational practitioners should make academic environment to enhance self-efficacy for the students’ success in school.

The results from this study will have significant implication to teachers who want to enhance self-efficacy. They may be able to use difference strategies to their students according to the corresponding culture; individualism or collectivism. Reference Bandura, A. (1995). Self-efficacy in changing societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company. Biernat, M. , Manis, M. , & Nelson, T. E. (1991). Stereotypes and standards of judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 485-499.

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