CHAPTER 10
James E. Maddux and Evan M. Kleiman
Abstract
Engaging with the arts and humanities (in all their myriad forms) can add a richness to life that can enhance the quality of life and subjective well-being. Too many people, however, often avoid such engagement because they do not believe that they have sufficient knowledge and experience to enjoy and appreciate some of the finer things in life, such as classical music art, literature, theatre, and dance. Self-efficacy theory and research can offer some practical suggestions for how to encourage people to experiment with the arts and humanities, not only as observers and consumers, but also as students and producers of their own work.
Key Words: self-efficacy, self-regulation, well-being, vicarious experience, imaginal experience, verbal persuasion, arts, humanities, deliberate practice
Research shows that wonder, awe, curiosity, and gratitude all contribute to subjective well-being. Because they inspire wonder, awe, curiosity, and even gratitude (to the artist or author, for example), great works of art or literature can enhance well-being, if for only a few brief moments or a few hours. Therefore, whether or not they know it, and whether or not they care, professionals and scholars in the arts and humanities (visual arts, music, dance, theatre, literature) are in the well-being business. In fact, enhancing well-being is good for their business because people are more likely to repeat an experience that leaves them feeling intellectually and spiritually enhanced than one that leaves them feeling intellectually and spiritually diminished.
This volume is an exploration of the idea that engagement with and appreciation of the arts and humanities can contribute to subjective well-being. In our personal experience, however, many people are intimidated by the arts and the humanities because they either lack experience with the arts (as everyone does at first) or have had unpleasant experiences with them (such as in high school and college classes) and therefore may lack confidence in their ability to understand, appreciate, and discuss, for example, a great work of art or literature and thus they continue to avoid exposure to them.
The first author is an art history buff and has read quite a bit of art history and has visited most of the major art museums of the Western world. He is also a fan of nineteenth-century English and Russian literature. However, most of lectures he has attended on art, art history, and literature have left him cold because too many of the speakers seemed more concerned with exhibiting their erudition than with connecting with a lay audience in a way that would lead to an increase in their understanding of great works of art or literature and an increase in their confidence in their ability to understand and appreciate great works of art and literature. In fact, we imagine that a lot of people leave such lectures (including, say, high school and college art history classes) with less confidence in their ability to understand great works of art or literature, which can lead to continued avoidance of museums and galleries and great books.
One way to enhance the well-being of (lay) audiences is to increase their self-efficacy for engagement with the arts and humanities, which would likely increase the accessibility of the arts and humanities. If professionals and scholars in arts and humanities fields are truly interested in enhancing the well-being of their audiences (lay audiences) by increasing their self-efficacy for engagement with the arts and humanities, they need to intentionally shift their focus in that direction. Research on self-efficacy may suggest some ways of doing this. Research on self-efficacy shows that the best way to increase one’s confidence in any domain of life is through exposure—specifically, exposure that includes successful experiences that often require constructive feedback from a more experienced person.
The basic premise of self-efficacy theory is that “people’s beliefs in their capabilities to produce desired effects by their own actions” (Bandura, 1997, p. vii) are the most important determinants of the behaviors people choose to engage in and how much they persevere in their efforts in the face of obstacles and challenges. Self-efficacy theory also maintains that these efficacy beliefs play a crucial role in psychological adjustment, psychological problems, physical health, as well as professionally guided and self-guided behavioral change strategies.
Since the publication of Albert Bandura’s 1977 Psychological Review article titled “Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavior Change,” the term “self-efficacy” has become ubiquitous in psychology and related fields. In this chapter, we attempt to summarize what we have learned from over four decades of research on self-efficacy and what that research might tell us about the effect of exposure to the arts and humanities on well-being, and how experiences with the arts and humanities might be constructed to enhance self-efficacy for engaging with the arts and humanities. We will address four basic questions: (1) What is self-efficacy? (2) Where does it come from? (3) Why is it important for well-being? (4) What does self-efficacy theory and research suggest for how to increase peoples’ self-efficacy for understanding and appreciating the arts and humanities? We conclude by offering concrete suggestions, many of which use mobile technology or other advanced technology, to help improve self-efficacy for understanding and appreciating the arts and humanities.
What Is Self-Efficacy?
Interest in beliefs about personal control has a long history in philosophy and psychology. Bandura’s 1977 article, however, formalized the notion of perceived competence as self-efficacy, defined it clearly, and embedded it in a theory of how it develops and influences human behavior.
One of the best ways to get a clear sense of how self-efficacy is defined and measured is to distinguish it from related concepts. Self-efficacy is not perceived skill; it is what you believe you can do with your skills under certain conditions. It is concerned not with your beliefs about your ability to perform specific and trivial motor acts, but with your beliefs about your ability to coordinate and orchestrate skills and abilities in changing and challenging situations.
Self-efficacy beliefs are not simply predictions about behavior. Self-efficacy is concerned not with what you believe you will do, but with what you believe you can do under certain circumstances.
Self-efficacy beliefs are not intentions to behave or intentions to attain a particular goal. An intention is what you say you will probably do; and research has shown that intentions are influenced by a number of factors, including, but not limited to, self-efficacy beliefs.
Self-efficacy is not self-esteem. Self-esteem is what you believe about yourself, and how you feel about what you believe about yourself. Efficacy beliefs in a given domain will contribute to your self-esteem only in direct proportion to the importance you place on that domain.
Self-efficacy beliefs are not outcome expectancies (Bandura, 1997) or behavior–outcome expectancies (Maddux, 1999). A behavior–outcome expectancy is your belief that a specific behavior may lead to a specific outcome in a specific situation. A self-efficacy belief is the belief that you can perform the behavior or behaviors that produce the outcome.
Self-efficacy is not a motive, drive, or need for competence or control. You can have a strong need for competence and control in a particular domain and still hold weak beliefs about your efficacy for that domain.
Finally, self-efficacy is not a personality trait. Several measures of “general” self-efficacy have been developed and have been used frequently in research, but they have not been as useful as more specific self-efficacy measures in predicting what people will do under more specific circumstances (Maddux, 2018).
Where Do Self-Efficacy Beliefs Come From?
The development of beliefs about self-efficacy is best understood in the context of social cognitive theory—an approach to understanding human cognition, action, motivation, and emotion that assumes that we are active shapers of, rather than simply passive reactors to, our environments (Bandura, 2001). Social cognitive theory’s five basic premises, shortened and simplified, are as follows:
1.People have powerful cognitive capabilities that allow for the creation of internal models of experience, the development of innovative courses of action, the hypothetical testing of such courses of action through the prediction of outcomes, and the communication of complex ideas and experiences to others.
2.People also can engage in self-observation and can analyze and evaluate their own behavior, thoughts, and emotions. These self-reflective activities set the stage for self-regulation.
3.Environmental events, inner personal factors (cognition, emotion, and biological events), and behaviors are interactive influences. People respond cognitively, effectively, and behaviorally to environmental events. Also, through cognition, people exercise control over their own behavior, which then influences not only the environment, but also their cognitive, affective, and biological states.
4.“Self” and “personality” are socially embedded. They are perceptions (accurate or not) of patterns of social cognition, emotion, and action as they occur in patterns of situations. Thus, self and personality are not simply what people bring to our interactions with others; they are created in these interactions, and they change through these interactions.
5.People are capable of self-regulation. We choose goals and regulate our behavior in the pursuit of these goals. At the heart of self-regulation is the ability to anticipate or develop expectancies—to use past knowledge and experience to form beliefs about future events and states and beliefs about our abilities and behavior.
These assumptions suggest that the early development of self-efficacy beliefs is influenced primarily by two interacting factors. First, it is influenced by the development of the capacity for symbolic thought, particularly the capacity for understanding cause–effect relationships, and the capacity for self-observation and self-reflection. The development of a sense of personal agency begins in infancy and moves from the perception of the causal relationship between events, to an understanding that actions produce results, to the recognition that they can be the origin of actions that affect their environments. As children’s understanding of language increases, so does their capacity for symbolic thought and, therefore, their capacity for self-awareness and a sense of personal agency (Bandura, 1997).
Second, the development of efficacy beliefs is influenced by the responsiveness of environments to a child’s attempts at manipulation and control. Environments that are responsive to a child’s actions facilitate the development of efficacy beliefs, whereas nonresponsive environments retard this development. The development of efficacy beliefs encourages exploration, which in turn enhances the child’s sense of agency. The child’s social environment (especially parents) is usually the most important part of his or her environment. Thus, children usually develop a sense of efficacy from engaging in actions that influence the behavior of other people, which then generalizes to the nonsocial environment (Bandura, 1997). Parents can facilitate this by encouraging and enabling the child to explore and master his or her environment and rewarding the child’s efforts rather than the child’s accomplishments (Dweck & Leggett, 1988).
Efficacy beliefs and a sense of agency continue to develop throughout the life span as we continually integrate information from five primary sources: performance experiences, vicarious experiences, imagined experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological/emotional states.
Performance Experiences
Our own attempts to acquire and enhance new skills and abilities and to control our environments are the most powerful source of self-efficacy information (Bandura, 1997). Successful attempts that you attribute to your own efforts will strengthen self-efficacy for that behavior or domain. Likewise, perceptions of failure that you attribute to lack of ability usually weaken self-efficacy beliefs in that domain.
Vicarious Experiences
Self-efficacy beliefs are influenced by our observations of the behavior of others and the consequences of those behaviors. We use this information to form expectancies about our own behavior and its consequences, depending on the extent to which we believe that we are similar to the person we are observing. Vicarious experiences generally have weaker effects on self-efficacy expectancy than do performance experiences (Bandura, 1997).
Imagined Experiences
We can influence our self-efficacy beliefs by imagining ourselves or others behaving effectively or ineffectively in hypothetical situations. Such images may be derived from actual or vicarious experiences with situations similar to the one anticipated, or they may be induced by verbal persuasion, as when a psychotherapist guides a client through interventions such as systematic desensitization and covert modeling. Simply imagining yourself doing something well, however, is not likely to have as strong an influence on your self-efficacy as will an actual experience (Williams, 1995).
Verbal Persuasion
Self-efficacy beliefs are influenced by what others say to us about what they believe we can or cannot do. The potency of verbal persuasion as a source of self-efficacy expectancies will be influenced by such factors as the expertness, trustworthiness, and attractiveness of the source, as suggested by decades of research on verbal persuasion and attitude change. Verbal persuasion is a less potent source of enduring change in self-efficacy expectancy than performance experiences and vicarious experiences.
Physiological and Emotional States
Physiological and emotional states influence self-efficacy when we learn to associate poor performance or perceived failure with aversive physiological arousal and success with pleasant feeling states. When you become aware of unpleasant physiological arousal, you are more likely to doubt your competence than if your physiological state were pleasant or neutral. Likewise, comfortable physiological sensations are likely to lead someone to feel confident in their ability in the situation at hand.
Self-Efficacy and Psychological Well-Being
Considerable research indicates that a sense of control over our behavior, our environment, and our own thoughts and feelings is essential for happiness and a sense of psychological well-being. Feelings of loss of control are common among people who seek the help of psychotherapists and counselors. In fact, most of the impact of self-efficacy beliefs results from their crucial role in self-regulation—how people guide their own behavior in the pursuit of desired goals.
Self-efficacy beliefs play a major role in a number of common psychological problems. Low self-efficacy expectancies are an important feature of depression. Dysfunctional anxiety and avoidant behavior are the direct result of low-self-efficacy beliefs for managing threatening situations. Self-efficacy beliefs also play a powerful role in substance use problems, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal behaviors.
For each of these problems, enhancing self-efficacy for overcoming the problem and for implementing self-control strategies in specific challenging situations is essential to the success of therapeutic interventions. Increases in self-efficacy are key mechanisms of change in treatments for issues such as depression, anxiety, drug addiction, and tobacco use.
Self-Efficacy and Self-Regulation
Self-regulation (simplified) depends on three interacting components: goals or standards of performance; self-evaluative reactions to performance; and self-efficacy beliefs.
Goals are essential to self-regulation because the ability to envision desired future events and states allows us to create incentives that motivate and guide our actions and standards against which to monitor our progress and evaluate both our progress and our abilities. Self-evaluative reactions are important in self-regulation because our beliefs about the progress we are making (or not making) toward our goals are major determinants of our emotional reactions during goal-directed activity. These emotional reactions, in turn, can enhance or disrupt self-regulation.
Self-efficacy beliefs influence self-regulation in several ways. First, they influence the goals we set. The higher my self-efficacy in a specific achievement domain, the loftier will be the goals that I set for myself in that domain. Second, they influence our choices of goal-directed activities, expenditure of effort, persistence in the face of challenge and obstacles, and reactions to perceived discrepancies between goals and current performance (Bandura, 1997). If I have strong efficacy beliefs, I will be relatively resistant to the disruptions in self-regulation that can result from difficulties and setbacks, and I will probably persevere. Perseverance usually produces desired results, and this success then increases my sense of efficacy
Third, self-efficacy beliefs influence the efficiency and effectiveness of problem-solving and decision-making (Hoffman & Schraw, 2009). When faced with complex decisions, people who have confidence in their ability to solve problems use their cognitive resources more effectively than do those people who doubt their cognitive skills (Akama, 2006), which usually leads to better solutions and greater achievement. In the face of difficulty, if you have high self-efficacy, you are likely to remain “task-diagnostic” and continue to search for solutions to problems. If your self-efficacy is low, however, you are more likely to become “self-diagnostic” and reflect on your inadequacies, which detracts from your efforts to assess and solve the problem (Bandura, 1997).
Self-Efficacy for Engaging with the Arts and Humanities
Engagement with the arts and humanities is not limited to simply appreciating, for example, works of art, music, and literature and performances—being a consumer of the arts and humanities—but also involves acquiring the ability to create one’s own works of art or literature, including performances in the arts and humanities, such as learning to draw or play a musical instrument—that is, to be a producer of work in the arts and humanities. For example, an old friend of one of the authors decided at age sixty-six to take acting lessons—mainly because he thought it would be fun, but also because he thought it would help him become a more discerning consumer of movies and theatre.
What does self-efficacy theory suggest about how to encourage people to engage in the arts and humanities (in whatever form) in a way that enhances their self-efficacy, thereby encouraging further and deeper engagement?
Self-efficacy theory emphasizes the importance of arranging experiences designed to increase the person’s sense of efficacy for specific behaviors in specific problematic and challenging situations. Self-efficacy theory suggests that formal interventions should not simply resolve specific problems, but should provide people with the skills and sense of efficacy for solving problems themselves.
Performance Experiences
As noted previously, research indicates that the best way to enhance one’s self-efficacy for a given domain is to arrange for successful experiences—small ones at first, but more challenging ones as times goes on. For example, someone interested in increasing his or her knowledge of and appreciation for art and art history might begin with any number of art history books written for the express purpose of exposing the novice to information about art theory and history in a nonthreatening and even humorous manner, such as Art for Dummies (Hoving, 1999) or Art History for Dummies (Wilder, 2007); both books assume that the reader is a novice who is probably intimidated by the subject matter but wants to overcome that intimidation (Other topics covered in the series include music theory, classical music, philosophy, world history, and Shakespeare.). Someone who is trying to learn to draw or play a musical instrument should set small, challenging, but achievable goals that provide the person with the small successes that enhance self-efficacy and encourage persistence. Many smartphone and tablet apps now exist that can help train people how to play musical instruments (e.g., JoyTunes; https://www.joytunes.com/) or how to draw (e.g., ShadowDraw; https://www.shadowdrawapp.com/). These apps are particularly notable because they provide feedback in real time, which will help set the stage for someone to view an experience as successful.
Vicarious Experiences
Another way to enhance one’s self-efficacy beliefs for a particular domain is to be exposed to other people who either began as novices and eventually acquired skills through experience, or other people who are also struggling with the challenges presented by acquiring new knowledge or skills. Someone who is trying to learn an instrument could, for example, watch videos on YouTube that feature novice players discussing the process through which they learned guitar and how they coped with obstacles and challenges.
Verbal Persuasion
Guided assistance from an expert is also helpful. The first author, for example, has taken several abstract painting classes from an artist who is not only highly skilled as an artist but also highly skilled as a teacher. She instinctively teaches in a manner consistent with the work of Carol Dweck and others on the distinction between a fixed or entity theory of skill acquisition (and mastery) and an incremental theory. For example, a fixed theory of artistic skill, the one probably held by most people, is that artistic skill is the result mainly of inborn “talent.” We might call this the “genius” theory of artistic ability. Great artists (or writers, dancers, singers) have a natural “gift” (literally something given to them) that explains their excellence at what they do. An incremental theory, however, maintains that acquiring and mastering a new set of skills (drawing, painting, dancing, playing a musical instrument) is the result of deliberate practice—practical experience over long periods of time that is devoted to developing specific skills. She employs this theory in her teaching by talking about the decades she spent trying various media and techniques in her own work until she found something that works for her—and how she now continues to challenge herself and learn. She also encourages trial and error in the class and teaches her students to relabel “mistakes” as “surprises” and “opportunities.”
Several websites provide access to experts teaching their skills through videos and occasionally interactive sessions (which is particularly useful for increasing self-efficacy through verbal persuasion). Master Class (https://www.masterclass.com/) offers classes taught by famous experts in many arts and humanities fields. For example, they offer classes in magic taught by Penn and Teller, acting taught by Natalie Portman, screenwriting taught by Aaron Sorkin, and violin taught by Itzhak Pearlman. LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda; https://www.lynda.com/) offers classes in more technology-focused arts and humanities fields, such as video production and digital photography.
Imaginal Experiences
People can think of themselves as art connoisseurs and imagine that going to a museum or the theatre is going to be an enhancing experience even if one is at times confused by what one is watching, listening to, or reading. Recent advances in virtual reality (VR) technology are now making it even easier to imagine oneself experiencing art. For example, technology by VR-all-art (https://vrallart.com/) promises to give a life-like VR experience to people who wish to see the art in a museum without going in person. Beyond being useful in improving the accessibility of the arts and humanities to those who may not be able to access museums otherwise, VR is particularly useful because it will allow people to “dip their toe in the water” and experience a museum environment without needing to first travel to one.
Emotional Reactions
There is a fine line between wonder or awe and confusion. Wonder and awe are pleasant experiences; confusion is not. For this reason, lectures and writings about the arts and humanities should be designed not just to impart knowledge, but to enhance self-efficacy for understanding and discussing works from the arts and humanities. Research on self-efficacy suggests gradually increasing peoples’ confidence in their ability to understand, for example, a work of art or literature by actively encouraging discussions in classes and lectures that focus not on what the instructor or “experts” think about the work, but what members of the audience think, with the understanding that there are no right and wrong ways to interpret a great work of art or literature.
Captions for works of art in museums should not only include basic information about the historical and personal context of the work, but also encourage the viewer to think about the work by posing provocative questions about the possible meaning of the work and what the artist was trying to say. Many museums now offer smartphone apps or other guided technology that provides a layer of information that makes the art more accessible to a novice.
Can Engagement with the Arts and Humanities Increase Self-Efficacy?
Thus far we have been concerned with ways to increase self-efficacy for engagement in the arts and humanities. But can engagement with the arts and humanities enhance self-efficacy? The answer to this question depends on how one defines and measures self-efficacy. If one takes the stance that self-efficacy can be defined and measured as a personality trait (e.g., general self-efficacy), then the answer is “maybe” because frequent engagement with the arts and humanities may increase one’s general sense of well-being, which could lead to an increase in one’s general sense of competence (self-efficacy). More likely, however, is the notion, as described in detail earlier, that engagement with specific domains of the arts and humanities (especially guided engagement) will enhance one’s self-efficacy for those specific domains. In addition, vicarious learning can be a powerful source of self-efficacy. For this reason, people have always drawn inspiration and hope from great works of music, art, and literature, as well as learning “life lessons” that could increase one’s sense of competence in specific domains of life such as relationships. These possible avenues for enhancing self-efficacy await further study.
Summary
Engaging with the arts and humanities (in all their myriad forms) can add a richness to life that can enhance the quality of life and subjective well-being. Too many people, however, often avoid such engagement because they do not believe that they have sufficient knowledge and experience to enjoy and appreciate some of the finer things in life, such as classical music art, literature, theatre, and dance. Self-efficacy theory and research can offer some practical suggestions for how to encourage people to experiment with the arts and humanities not only as observers and consumers, but also as students and producers, such as the many people who take lessons in music, art, or drama for their own pleasure and satisfaction. The suggestions made here provide fertile ground for future research on new ways to enhance well-being and the quality of life. In addition, the advances in teaching technology noted previously provide many exciting opportunities for conducting research on the effectiveness of these technologies for enhancing self-efficacy for engaging in a wide variety of domains within the arts and humanities.
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