Originally posted in the Santa Monica Daily Press October 17, 2012
www.smdp.com
Dear New Shrink
I met you at the Taste of Abbot Kinney food event. As I told you, I
was there because of the food. I had no idea what the charity was about
and even though you tried to explain it to me, I am still confused about
what self-efficacy is. I really thought it was the same thing as
self-esteem and would appreciate it if you would explain it.
Thanks,
Confused
Dear Confused,
I appreciate your question because I imagine many people do not know
the difference. The event supported Inside Out Community Arts, an
organization that has won numerous awards, including national ones for
their excellent curriculum.
When I was a doctoral student I learned about the importance of the
arts to enhance learning. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover
that Dr. James Catterall, a member of my doctoral committee at UCLA, had
done research on the results of the educational programs at Inside Out.
If you look into their curriculum, you will see that they have a
number of after-school programs and a weekend program where students
camp in the Santa Monica Mountains and write a play together.
More importantly, Dr. Catterall’s results show that the students
learn how to work together, how to be team members, how to deal with
interpersonal differences, problem solving skills and how to cooperate
and make friendships. They also learn how to express feelings and use
their imagination and to develop metacognition, which basically means to
be reflective, which helps us learn, think, come up with new ideas and
think before we act.
All of these things are important and certainly lacking in many young
people today through no fault of their own. We need a lot more of this
type of help for kids and we need to have the arts put back into school
curriculums. Santa Monica is lucky to still have it and for those of us
who had it understand how lucky we were.
Don Novak, one of the owners of Hal’s restaurant who helped fund the
event, told me that as a businessman, joining Hal in the restaurant 25
years ago definitely increased his ability to deal with interpersonal
differences and increased his sense of cooperation and sensitivity.
Joining others in artistic adventures can be incredibly fruitful and
rewarding.
Now you specifically asked about self-efficacy and I deliberately left it for last.
It is not self-esteem, but it could be considered similar.
Self-esteem is the worth we place on ourselves. It is also called self-worth.
We are not born with it, we develop it after we develop our sense of
self and it is directly related to how we see, think or feel others are
seeing and reacting to us. If those around us think we are truly
special, we usually will come to believe it. Unfortunately the reverse
is also true. I have seen many people who really do not think they are
worth much because they were treated as if they weren’t.
But things can also happen along the way to change our self-esteem.
Really bad situations, like repeated sexual assaults, being bullied, or
having a parent divorce or die and then a stepparent, makes us feel bad about ourselves. The
list is endless but self-esteem is fundamentally based on deeply rooted
beliefs that we hold about ourselves. The good news is that they can be
changed with work in psychotherapy, if need be.
Self-efficacy is related, but it is not the same. Self-efficacy is
the belief in ourselves that makes us feel effective. It’s a feeling
that we can do it if we try. Some people who like themselves and have
self-worth can be greatly lacking in the feeling or belief that they can
be effective in general or at something specific.
An example might be a woman who knows she is beautiful and worth more
than she has but feels helpless to make something different for
herself. Another might be the guy who is great at sports and popular
with the girls but cannot imagine getting through college; doesn’t
believe he can do it.
So you can see that it certainly is a branch of that same tree of
self-esteem but it is really about how effective we believe we are or
can be. What are we capable of, what can we accomplish or contribute to
this world?
In this economy, many unemployed people have given up and are losing
their self-efficacy. Students without a decent education can be in the
same boat. And it is a boat called hopeless.
We all need self-efficacy to help us try and to accomplish and then, to keep or build self-esteem.
Inside Out is doing a great job at building self-efficacy and we really need more programs like it.
Hope I answered your question and I hope you have self-efficacy.
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