Self-Efficacy Of An Athlete Essay

Introduction

In any given sports, an athlete’s aim is to win against the opposition. Athletes train for months if not years to achieve their optimum potential in which they could gain success. Every athlete seeks to improve his or her abilities, skills in sports through practicing thus resulting in a higher team performance. However, it does not always go as expected. Success does not just come from muscle memorization or the amount of time the athlete practices per week or day. It comes into view that success may come from self-efficacy of the athlete. Yet, self-efficacy could be influenced by the performance of the team as well.

When an athlete is given certain tasks they are not used to or does not know how to do, they may fail in doing such things. A college volleyball player playing as a outside hitter for years may be unsuccessful when moved to a libero, a sprinter in track and field may come to a naught when forced to do long distance. The level of fitness or how quickly an athlete could learn new skills may be a favorable characteristic in an athlete however; the college volleyball player or track and field athlete may have low self-efficacy. Consequentially resulting in a lower team performance as the athlete is not able to compete with his or her highest potential outcome.

Self-efficacy can affect the performance of the athlete positively and negatively. Nonetheless, the team performance could also affect an athlete’s self-efficacy in a positive and negative way. According to Bandura (1977), “self-efficacy beliefs are not judgments about one’s skills, but rather about one’s judgments of what one can accomplish with those skills.” In other words, it is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particul...

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...ask successfully in order to obtain a certain outcome (1977, 1986, 1997). After its first publication, there have been studies specifically on sports psychology in showing the affects of self-efficacy in team performance. Self-efficacy relies on the cognitive processing of source of self-appraisal and self-persuasion (Bandura 1990). Bandura has categorized these sources as past performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion and physiological states (1997, 1986). Performance accomplishments have proved to be the most influential source of efficacy because they are based on what an athlete can do (Bandura 1997). If an athlete has repeatedly succeed in a sports, self-efficacy will increase; if an athlete considered it as a failure, self-efficacy will decrease. Success should provide more encouragement and enhance self-efficacy more than failures.