Having faith in your ability to complete an important task is the first step in being able to succeed at that task. This belief in yourself is known as "self-efficacy." Perhaps you're in a tough situation such as being expected to give a presentation when you're a bit unsure of how well you know your stuff. Or, you're playing your favorite sport. It's crunch time, and you've just got to score. Maybe it's not even a clutch situation-it just might be that you're tired, a bit anxious, or feeling like you're in over your head with work tasks. Psychologists now know that self-efficacy is the critical factor in ensuring that you'll come out of the turbulence with flying colors. If it's the Internet that has you baffled, you can boost your self-efficacy and become a more effective learner and communicator.
The concept of self-efficacy was proposed by Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura who studied children and adults in a variety of challenging situations. Bandura noticed that the people who were most likely to succeed were convinced that they could succeed. In his laboratory, Bandura showed that people with phobias of anything from public speaking to handling snakes could learn to overcome their extreme fears by watching other people handle these situations without falling apart. Bandura's original studies on vicarious reinforcement (learning by watching others) led him to develop important insights into the treatment of phobias. By seeing others survive these fear-provoking situations, Bandura theorized that phobics gain inner confidence when they see other individuals survive fear-provoking situations.
Behavioral treatments of phobias often proceed in stages, and the same is true with social media phobias. You don't just jump into a snake cage and start twirling a king cobra like a scarf. Instead, you go step by step, and as you pass each step successfully, you become better able to get closer to the goal of handling the feared situation. When done in a safe environment (don't try this at home!), the results can be striking.
The idea of self-efficacy took hold in Bandura's mind as he contemplated the inner changes that people went through while experiencing vicarious reinforcement. Step by step, as you get closer to your desired goal, a little voice in your head starts to provide you with reassurance in your own abilities. Like "the little engine that could," you begin to say to yourself "I think I can, I think I can," and lo and behold- you do.
We now understand that self-efficacy isn't the same as self-confidence. Self-efficacy is very specific and is attached to very particular areas of your life. You may have self-efficacy about your ability to learn new information or self-efficacy about your ability to walk on an icy pavement without falling. Your self-efficacy could also include your ability to overcome an addiction. What's important here is that self-efficacy is task specific. In fact, when investigators tried to develop an overall self-efficacy measure, they invariably were unable to do so because there is no such thing as general self-efficacy. It's all about the situation.
I've done research on the topic of memory self-efficacy, which I discussed in an earlier blog posting about the danger of labeling memory lapses as "senior moments." When older adults are led to believe that they can't remember things, then they don't use the strategies that could actually help them preserve their memories. This is one of the harmful by-products of society's depiction of older adults as infirm and demented. Memory self-efficacy can take a downward spiral in a very short time.
Internet self-efficacy is a new area of research that seems like a natural topic of investigation in understanding how it is that our thoughts and self-confidence affect our willingness to use social media. Though the majority of young people tend to feel pretty good about their ability to navigate the Internet, middle-aged and older adults may have significant challenges in this area. If you've ever tried, without much success, to teach an older relative how to use Facebook or to benefit from the finer points of Google advanced search options (or if you're that older adult), you've probably witnessed low Internet self-efficacy in action.
Here is a perfectly intelligent, competent, and motivated individual sitting at the keyboard, seeming to be clueless about tasks that may seem so simple to the Internet savvy. The advice and help don't seem to be leading to any sort of progress at all. If this is the case, low Internet self-efficacy may be the culprit.
Researchers in Taiwan first measured Internet self-efficacy by asking adolescents to rate their confidence with regard to various Internet tasks such as using Web browsers and talking in chat rooms (Tsai & Lin, 2004). Then they took the measure to samples of middle-aged and older adults (who they called "higher aged") to test whether the degree of perceived family support for Internet use would help boost Internet self-efficacy in these older generations, usually considered somewhat techno-phobic. In this second study (Chu, 2009), encouragement by family members was found to help boost self-efficacy among the members of the older generation which in turn led to more favorable attitudes toward learning in online situations. This was a fascinating study, which I highly recommend. Parenthetically, I liked the reference to the older adults not as "seniors" or "the elderly," but as "higher aged." Imagine the change in self-efficacy that simply calling older people "higher aged" might accomplish!
The moral of the story is that for people with low Internet self-efficacy, take heart- there is hope for you! By breaking down what may seem like an insurmountable challenge into small steps, enlisting the helpful support of friends and family, and by imagining yourself as successful, before long you'll be showing other people how to soar in cyberspace.
Boost your Internet self-efficacy with these relatively simple steps:
1. Recognize which tasks or situations pose the greatest challenge for you. Do you do alright in online searches but can't figure out Twitter hashtags?
2. Identify steps in those tasks or situations from easiest to hardest. You can probably turn the computer on, but perhaps you're stumped about trouble shooting a lost Internet connection.
3. Practice at the easy tasks until you feel comfortable, then move up the hierarchy. Do some simple searches, download an e-book, or start a basic Facebook page,whichever seems least threatening. Move up from there.
4. Ask for support when you feel that you're not making progress. Find a friendly, helpful, and non-sarcastic person (friend, family member, library employee) to take you through the ropes.
5. Evaluate your success at each step until you've reached your goal. Stop and admire your prowess at sending a group email message or making your first ‘Tweet' on your newly created Twitter account.
Self-efficacy is a trainable, achievable state of mind, one that will lead you to fulfillment on the Internet, in newly formed social media friendships, and beyond.
Think that social media is a waste of time? Read my previous posting on the benefits of Facebook.
Follow me on Twitter @swhitbo for daily news on psychology, health, and aging. Visit my website at www.searchforfulfillment.com for more resources. Check out the Weekly Focus for more background on today's blog topic.
