The influence of self-efficacy on motor performance

Abstract

Self-efficacy is thought to be causally related to motor performance (Bandura, 1997;Moritz, Feltz, Fahrback, & Mack, 2000) however, the only clear evidence for this comes from a small number of studies that have found effort-based motor performance (e. g. weightlifting, leg extension) varies as a function of manipulated self-efficacy. Five experiments were conducted for the present thesis to investigate the influence of selfefficacy on the performance of motor tasks with varying demands. In Experiments 1-4 participants performed repeated blocks of a motor task with false positive feedback given on some blocks to boost self-efficacy, and false negative feedback given on other blocks to lower self-efficacy. False feedback was successful for the manipulation of self-efficacy, with self-efficacy raised following positive feedback and lowered following negative feedback, however, task performance did not change as a function of the self-efficacy treatment for golf-putting, accuracy throwing, effort throwing, or handdynamometry tasks. These results suggest that self-efficacy had no direct influence on motor performance. As a consequence Experiment 5 examined whether self-efficacy indirectly influenced performance through persistence. Participants had their selfefficacy for performing a throwing task either raised or lowered and then had as many attempts at the task as they wanted within a 30 minute period with their best performance counting for a competition. Participants whose efficacy was raised persisted longer at the task than those whose was efficacy lowered, however greater persistence was not facilitative of greater performance. Collective findings suggest that self-efficacy has no direct influence on motor performance in the short term; however over the longer term high perceptions of self-efficacy may be conducive to persistence which is likely to be facilitative of performance development.