Patterns of motivation among adolescents with biased and accurate self-efficacy beliefs

Abstract

The motivational pattern of adolescents with biased and accurate self-efficacy beliefs in language and/or in math was examined in the current study. A sample of 6119 adolescents completed self-report questionnaires measuring self-efficacy beliefs for language and math, their interest in each subject, persistence, achievement goal orientations, and social goals. Data analyses indicated that (a) underestimation of one's performance, even in regard to a single school subject, was associated to costs and no benefits, (b) accurate or realistic self-appraisals were associated to benefits and no costs, and (c) overestimation of one's performance was more likely to be associated with more costs but not necessarily fewer benefits than realistic self-beliefs. Gender differences were also found.

Introduction

The role of self-efficacy beliefs in regulating human functioning has been widely acknowledged within the social cognitive perspective (Bandura, 1986, Bandura, 1997, Bandura and Locke, 2003, Pajares, 1996, Pajares and Miller, 1994). The motivational strength of perceived self-efficacy and its predictive value across different domains of functioning, including the academic, has been confirmed by a large body of empirical evidence as well as by several meta-analytic studies (see, for example, Bandura and Locke, 2003, Multon et al., 1991, Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998). Perceived self-efficacy has been defined by Bandura, 1986, Bandura, 1997 as one's perceived capabilities to learn or perform behaviors at designated levels (see also Schunk & Pajares, 2005). Self-efficacy beliefs influence the choices people make and the courses of action they pursue (Bandura, 1997), determine effort expenditure on an activity, persistence and resilience in the face of obstacles (Bandura, 1997, Pajares, 1996, Schunk, 1995), and influence thought patterns and emotional reactions (Bandura, 1997). They also affect the way people think about themselves since they act as an active precursor of self-concept development (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003).

Self-efficacy judgments can be either accurate or inaccurate in relation to an individual's competence (Bandura, 1986, Pajares, 1996). In cases of particularly interesting inaccurate beliefs, the person thinks either in self-enhancing or self-debilitating ways. In the educational context, students may overestimate or underestimate their efficacy beliefs compared to their academic competence. In other words, students’ appraisal of their academic competence may be marked by a positive or negative bias manifesting illusions of competence or incompetence, respectively (Bouffard et al., 2003, Bouffard et al., 2006, Philips, 1984, Philips, 1987).

Although the learning patterns associated with both underestimation and overestimation of self-evaluation beliefs or perceptions of competence have been discussed and empirically examined by researchers, interest continues regarding this issue, primarily due to the controversial findings regarding the costs and benefits of inflated beliefs. Some researchers claim that positive self-efficacy biases are, largely, related to beneficial outcomes such as the motivation to learn, autonomy, self-confidence, effort, persistence, grade point average, effective coping strategies, and psychological well-being (Bandura, 1997, Bouffard et al., 2006, Taylor and Armor, 1996, Taylor and Brown, 1988, Taylor and Brown, 1994); others cite the disadvantages of positive illusions, such as poor social skills, more behavior problems, lower academic competence, and psychological maladjustment (Colvin et al., 1995, Gresham et al., 2000, John and Robins, 1994, Schunk, 1991), especially among academically at-risk students who report unrealistically high self-beliefs (Klassen, 2002, Stone and May, 2002). Still others argue that self-enhancement should be seen as ‘a mixed blessing’ (Paulhus, 1998) and that the adaptive or maladaptive outcomes of positive illusions should be approached in regard to a number of variables (i.e., short-term vs long-term outcomes, task vs interpersonal ratings) (Gramzow et al., 2003, Robins and Beer, 2001). Specifically, Robins and Beer (2001) claim that positive illusions about the self may have short-term benefits such as successful short-term affect regulation, but long-term costs such as a decline in self-esteem and well-being. In the same line, Paulhus (1998) argued that self-enhancement is associated positively with successful task performance, self-reported ego-resilience and self-esteem, but, at the same time, is maladaptive for interpersonal relationships and the evaluations of others. Finally, Gramzow et al. (2003) argue that the positive or negative consequences of self-evaluation bias are mainly associated with the specific motivation underlying this bias (i.e., self-enhancement/approach vs self-protection/avoidance motivation), not the level of self-evaluation per se.

In regard to illusions of incompetence or negative illusions of competence, the outcomes which have been studied by the researchers include intrinsic motivation in mathematics, pride and effort (Bouffard et al., 2003), preference for challenging tasks (Harter, 1985), expectancy of success, locus of control and achievement attributions, classroom achievement behaviors, and difficulty of school (Philips, 1984, Philips, 1987). All of these studies have provided consistent results concerning the deteriorated pattern of motivation displayed by the children with an illusion of incompetence. Moreover, this holds true both for normative samples (Bouffard et al., 2003, Harter, 1985) and highly competent children (Philips, 1984, Philips, 1987). Specifically, compared to their classmates (including children with accurate or positive illusory biases), the children with negative illusory biases tend to report lower intrinsic motivation in math, feel less proud of their academic results, and think less positively about expending the required effort. They also feel that doing well in school takes a lot of effort, find schoolwork more difficult, adopt lower expectancies for success and set less demanding achievement standards for themselves.

Other researchers advocate that the most beneficial outcomes stem from strong but accurate efficacy beliefs accompanied, however, by task-specific knowledge and skills (Chen, 2003). Schunk, 1991, Schunk, 1995 has also claimed that high self-efficacy beliefs will not produce competent performance if students do not have the required knowledge and skills. Still others argue that what matters most is the consistency or discrepancy between self and external appraisals, such as appraisals by peers and teachers, and not the inflated or the suppressed self-evaluations (Gresham et al., 2000).

The literature just cited clearly shows that the results of the studies concerning biased self-beliefs are conflicting. Although most researchers agree on the negative consequences or correlates of negative illusions, the costs and/or benefits of positive illusions – as compared to accurate self-beliefs – remain a controversial issue. Despite the number of studies conducted to explore this issue, the relationship between efficacy judgments and performance attainment or academic achievement, calibration and the hypothesized effects of biased vs accurate self-efficacy beliefs continue to be an interesting direction of inquiry (Pajares, 1996). In the present study adolescents with biased, both positive and negative, and accurate self-efficacy beliefs were examined in relation to a number of motivational variables associated with school learning in an attempt to further investigate the aforementioned controversial issue.

It should be noticed that researchers have used different methodological approaches to calculate self-evaluation bias (see Gramzow et al., 2003). Besides that, there have been conceptual differences regarding the degree of specificity of self-beliefs used in the studies, that is, whether they were task-, domain- or subject-specific such as self-efficacy beliefs or global and generalized attitudes about capabilities such as self-esteem (for this discussion, see Bong and Clark, 1999, Bong and Skaalvik, 2003, Pajares, 1996). In the present study subject-specific (math and language) self-efficacy beliefs were preferred over the task-specific judgments corresponding to particular criterial tasks such as concrete mathematical or verbal tasks. As Bong (2001) has notably commented “The task-specific self-efficacy appraisal methods sometimes leave researchers with the false impression that beliefs of self-efficacy are only related in the context of carrying out a single minute task” (p. 24). In one of her earlier studies on the generality vs specificity of academic self-efficacy, Bong (1997) provided evidence that students’ self-efficacy judgments contain strong subject-specific components since students hold more or less comparable judgments of their academic capability within the boundary of the each school subject. Thus, adolescents were asked to report their self-efficacy beliefs in language (Greek language and literature) and in math for the class of that year and were classified as overestimators (positive illusors), accurates, and underestimators (negative illusors) compared to their school performance within each of the subjects. Further, we aimed to identify those students who had positive, negative or accurate efficacy beliefs in both subjects, in an attempt to find out those who are likely to generalize their tendency to over- or underestimate efficacy beliefs in more than one particular subject. As previous studies show, self-efficacy beliefs in these two school subjects have been often highly or moderately correlated (Bong, 1997, Bong, 2001).

The motivational constructs included in the present study were students’ interest for math or language (see, for example, Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000), persistence while doing academic work (e.g., Bandura, 1997), achievement goal orientations (mastery, performance-approach and performance-avoidance) (e.g., Elliot, 2005, Kaplan et al., 2002) and social goals such as pleasing significant others (i.e., parents and teachers) (e.g., Miller, Greene, Montalvo, Ravindran, & Nichols, 1996). Although persistence has been consistently shown to be a significant outcome of positive illusions, the evidence concerning achievement goal orientations and biased efficacy beliefs is still very limited and, for interest and social goals, non-existent. Bandura, 1986, Bandura, 1997 has emphasized the effects of positive illusions on persistence indicating that positive illusors are more persistent towards learning (see also Pajares, 1996, Taylor and Brown, 1988), whereas Robins and Beer (2001) showed that positive illusors or self-enhancers, are more likely to be ego-involved in the task, that is to be oriented towards performance and the demonstration of competence. Furthermore, whereas interest was examined as a subject-specific variable (that is, interest for math or for language), persistence while doing academic work, achievement goal orientations and the social goal of pleasing significant others were examined as subject-free variables in order to test whether biased efficacy beliefs are influential beyond the specific subject referred to. As far as achievement goal orientations are concerned, they were examined as subject-free variables that reflect “the type of quality of one's personal criteria of success” (Duda & Nicholls, 1992, p. 291) and are highly influenced by students’ view of ability (Dweck and Leggett, 1988, Nicholls, 1984). In addition, in this study we attempted to identify the students with a tendency to over- or underestimate their efficacy in more than one particular subject. Therefore, it was considered necessary to include subject-free variables as possible outcomes of biased self-beliefs.

Gender was also examined in the present study. Although gender differences in self-efficacy beliefs have been examined by numerous studies in the past (for a review, see Meece, Glienke, & Burt, 2006), they have not been sufficiently investigated in relation to biased efficacy beliefs. Most of the gender-related self-efficacy studies have been conducted in regard to school subjects such as mathematics, language, science, music, and computers, and have documented that boys, compared to girls, tend to report higher self-efficacy beliefs in relation to their performance in math, science, and computers (Anderman and Young, 1994, Chouinard and Roy, 2008, Chouinard et al., 2001, Eccles et al., 1993, Whitley, 1997), whereas girls tend to report higher self-efficacy beliefs in relation to their performance in language and music (Eccles et al., 1993, Pajares and Valiante, 2001). Such differences are usually explained in terms of gender stereotypes mostly shaped by the home and school environment. Girls and boys observe, imitate and internalize traditional gender roles, tend to perceive different academic subjects as more ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’, adopt gender-typed views of their interests and competencies and are encouraged to pursue different academic and career choices (Meece et al., 2006). The evidence regarding biased and accurate self-beliefs is conflicting. No gender differences were found among negative illusors (Bouffard et al., 2003), nor among over- and underconfident students regarding their efficacy to solve math problems (Pajares and Kranzler, 1995, Pajares and Miller, 1994). Nor did gender emerge as a significant cause of self-efficacy calibration, although boys evaluated their math performance more favorably than girls (Chen, 2003). On the contrary, Ewers and Wood (1993) found that boys were inclined to make more overestimations for math tasks than girls and this tendency was confirmed for both gifted and average students. Along the same line, Beyer, 1990, Beyer, 1998, Beyer, 1999 has consistently documented females’ negative self-perception biases pertaining to stereotypically masculine tasks such as politics and sports. Explanations which have been given range from societal factors and learning histories at home and school to different attribution patterns adopted by girls and boys and to negative recall bias with girls to be more vulnerable than boys to failure experiences and negative performance feedback (see, Beyer, 1990, Beyer, 1998, Beyer, 1999).

To summarize, the goals of the present study were the following: first, to investigate the differences in terms of a number of subject-specific and subject-free motivational variables (interest, persistence, achievement goal orientations, and social goals) among students who are accurate and who over- or underestimate their efficacy within each of the two school subjects under examination (math, language). Secondly, we aimed at exploring whether biased and accurate self-efficacy beliefs in both subjects (math and language) are associated differently to motivational variables as compared to biased and accurate self-efficacy beliefs related only to one subject (math or language). Moreover, since as indicated in the literature, there were gender differences regarding efficacy beliefs in mathematics and language, accompanied by non-significant differences in performance, we undertook to examine gender differences in an attempt to investigate biased and accurate self-efficacy beliefs as a function of gender.

On the basis of the relevant theoretical assumptions and research evidence, underestimators were expected to be associated with a deteriorated motivational pattern, whereas accurates and overestimators with a more positive motivational pattern. Moreover, when self-efficacy bias and accuracy were examined in relation to only math or language, the effects were expected to be clearer in the case of the subject-specific variable (interest) than in the case of the subject-free variables (persistence, achievement goal orientations, social goal); the opposite was expected when both subjects were taken into account. Regarding the biased and accurate self-evaluators in relation to both subjects as compared to a single subject, a specific hypothesis could not be stated due to the lack of relevant literature. As far as gender differences were concerned, irrespective of their true performance, girls were expected to underestimate their performance in mathematics, whereas boys to overestimate it; the reverse was expected in language.