Psychology 6.1 self esteem and self efficacy

Self esteem is ones overall assesment of ones worth as a person. Self efficacy refers to people conviction that they can achieve specific goals. Self esteem is developed in early life from involvement, acceptance and support from parents laying the foundation where as self efficacy is developed from 4 sources (mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, persuasion and encouragement and interpretation of emotional arousal).
Self esteem is a global self evaluation that blends specific evaluations about ones adequacy to whatever is personally relevant like:

• self image
• social self image
• emotional self image
• acedemic self image
• physical self image

The importance of emotional self esteem is that it is strongly and consistantly related to happiness and low self esteem is more likely to lead to depression. The interpersonal realm is that people with high self esteem claim to be more attractive, likeable, have better relationships and make better impressions than those with low self esteem. But these facts only exist in their minds because objective data doesnt support their views. High self esteem can become Narcissistic, this is where one has the tendency to regard oneself as grandiosely self-important causing them to be sensitive to criticism.

Self efficacy is not concerned with the skills one has but with the beliefs about what one can do with the skills they have. Self efficacy beliefs vary according to the persons skills, for example one may have high efficacy to speak in front of people but low self efficacy when it comes to asking someone on a date. Self efficacy effects :

• commitment to goals
• performance on tasks
• persistance towards goals in the face of obstacles

Self efficacy is learned where as self esteem is a behavior layed out early on in life. Self esteem is the foundation that your parents layed down for you by thier actions self efficacy is a learned behavior that you can change by using the 4 sources mentioned previously.

There is one common fact between self esteem and self efficacy and that is that they both effect the present and the future.