The Science of Why: Decoding Human Motivation and Transforming Marketing Strategy by David Forbes

Author:David Forbes
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781137502056
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2015-07-13T14:00:00+00:00

The Power of Empowerment

Our confidence that we can successfully complete the tasks before us is the single most reliable predictor of success in health and wellness programs, including quitting smoking, working on a fitness or exercise regimen, dieting, dental hygiene, and seat belt use. We need to have faith in our ability to succeed in order to gain the determination necessary to hang in there for the long haul.

People with high self-efficacy generally believe that they are in control of their own lives and that their own actions and decisions shape their world. In contrast, people with low self-efficacy see their lives as outside of their control and themselves as victims of circumstance. People with high self-efficacy believe they make their own fate; in contrast, those of us with low self-efficacy believe that we are at the mercy of the unknown forces conspiring to become our destiny.

Bandura, who has done extensive research on the effects and characteristics of self-efficacy, recently published several studies that give us an idea of how our view of ourselves and our abilities colors everything we do. In general, Bandura suggests that people with high self-efficacy attribute their successes to internal factors such as ability and effort.3 On the other hand, people with low self-efficacy attribute their successes to outside influences, but they feel that their failures are the result of their own internal failings, lack of ability, or lack of effort. As we’d expect, these two approaches to life lead to different results. Because they generally believe in their own abilities, people with high self-efficacy tend to be more resilient in the face of failure, more willing to take risks and embrace change, and able to generate more effective task strategies for reaching their goals. On the other hand, people with low self-efficacy experience their world quite differently. They tend to avoid challenging tasks, give up more easily when they encounter obstacles, set lower goals for themselves, and often feel hopeless and helpless.

Two quite different pictures, as I’m sure you’d agree. So how do we—and how do our consumers—build up a sense of empowerment, a feeling of self-efficacy?

Bandura mentions several ways we can develop feelings of empowerment or self-efficacy. Chief among them are the following:

• Past Experience: The most common and effective route for establishing or increasing our feelings of self-efficacy is to have successfully met other, similar goals. When we have a fairly consistent track record of success, our faith in our abilities becomes stronger and we lay the groundwork for a heightened sense of self-efficacy:

“I made a great lasagna last time; I know I can make a good one now too.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.