Control beliefs and the self…. This lecture gave me a better sense of how, what and why we desire for a mean of control, that is, control over our environment in order to maximise positive outcomes and minimise negative outcomes. Of cause… this comes down to the our perceived level of control that we have over our environment and how strongly we try to control our environment will usually depend on our expectancies.
Essentially there are two kinds of expectancies which motivate us to exercise personal control. These are efficacy & outcome expectations. As James explained in his lecture (Neill, 2010):
· Efficacy expectations, reflect a ‘can it be done?’ expectation. Can you perform the behaviour you need in order to cope with your required tasks. i.e Can I run 20km a day every third day in order to build myself up to run in a marathon?
· Outcome expectations, will this behaviour result in a positive outcome and minimise a negative outcome? As a result of this much running will I become healthier (prevent bad health) and gain recognition if I came in the top 10? (Positive outcome).
Essentially, self-efficacy will then allow one to feel a sense of empowerment. Empowerment involves the combined action of knowledge, self-efficacy & skills that will allow people to have control over their lives (Reeve, 2009, p. 241). I have included a diagram from the lecture slides (Neill, 2010) which shows this combined relationship nicely.
Something that has always interested me is mastery. I personally strive for mastery of all (hmm…most?) tasks I undertake in my life. Preferring to have a sense of deep knowledge AND competence rather than simply to be competent. Here again I have found that mastery beliefs will influence ones perceived sense of self control. Interesting it leads us back to the original statement at the beginning of this topic, our perceived sense of control over attaining desirable outcomes and preventing negative ones. How can this be better explain in regards to a sense of mastery? Well… when someone’s personal control beliefs are strong the individual perceives a strong causal connection between their actions and outcomes, when ones belies are fragile one is likely to feel that nothing they do will have any effect on what happens in their life (Reeve, 2009, p. 242). So mastery is strongly tied to having positive beliefs of self-efficacy which will lead to a higher sense of empowerment. Additionally, it feels to me as though the reason why one seeks a mentor is to help achieve mastery in their lives. For example, one choses (or one would hope..) a mentor because they perceive that person to be an expert in a meaningful field for them. They confide in this individual and in turn this mentor becomes a model for that person to grow thru empowerment and hopefully thru to mastery.
Another area of great interest for me to have learnt about during this topic was mastery vs helplessness. So… in thinking of it in the versus form, how does mastery differ from helplessness (apart from the obvious…) in a more detailed explanation.
Most importantly, people will always react to failure in different ways. One with a mastery motivation will remain hardy in the face of failure, instead of giving up, they will assess when and how they went wrong and how they can improve. One with a helpless motivation one will respond to failure by withdrawing and simply giving up and instead of taking feedback constructively they will simply view it as an inadequacy and continue to slip lower… (Reeve, 2009, p. 243).
An interesting example of learnt helplessness was given in our lecture. In one experimental condition a dog was restrained, unable to escape while being given electric shocks to its paws which interestingly led to the development of a helpless sense of self. Why? Because in the next phase the dog was not restrained, it was able to move away from the shock, but it would not. Most predictably, those dogs who were able to escape the shock from the very beginning would always do so in the later phases of the experiment. Personally, I tie this back to ones sense of autonomy. If ones sense of autonomy was denied then it could lead to developing learnt helplessness.
There are three clear components of learnt helplessness, contingency, cognition and behaviour.
· Contingency, is the relationship between ones behaviour and the outcomes in the environment. It doesn’t matter what I do, even if I do go no one will appreciate it.
· Cognition, is ones personal control beliefs, their biases and expectancies (I am not in control of my life, I am not able to control the outcomes in my life); and
· Behaviour, which is most likely, in the case of helplessness going to passive and demoralised. Giving up, failing to raise from bed and look for work, nothing matters anymore.
It is very clear that leant helplessness is also linked to depression and as we can see in the above definition, they do indeed share many of the same traits.
References
Neill, J. (2010). [Personal Control Beliefs & The Self & Its Strivings Lecture]. Lecture presented at the University of Canberra, ACT. [Lecture notes]. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/
Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion. USA: Wiley.
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