What is self-efficacy and why is it important to understanding well-being? Support your answer with relevant examples.

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Self-efficacy is the personal belief that one can successfully enact behaviours that will lead to desirable outcomes. People have many different efficacy beliefs; they are separate for the particular domain or task at hand.

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Self-efficacy is key to understanding well-being because it directs people towards active engagement with meaningful pursuits.

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High self-efficacy connotes a sense of being able to overcome challenges, but beliefs are also updated based on circumstances.

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Across many studies, people's engagement and success is substantially higher when they have a sense of self-efficacy (Bandura, 2011). That is, we tend to avoid activities with low self-efficacy and take up pursuits where self-efficacy is high, where we believe we can enact the important behaviours.

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For example, workplaces are contexts where motivated engagement with tasks has important payoffs, and self-efficacy is a good predictor of job performance (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). Similarly, academic achievement is strongly predicted by self-efficacy (Schneider & Preckel, 2016). People with low self-efficacy for an activity (e.g. work or school) are unlikely to give as much effort, and then, predictably, less likely to succeed. In this way, a belief about the self ('I think I can do it') spurs desirable action.

What Is Self-Efficacy and Why Is It Important to Understanding