خوداثربخشی اعتماد بیش از حد و اثر منفی بر روی عملکرد بعد از آن: مطالعه ی میدانی

Self-efficacy has been used to predict the level of performance or usage of IT. The psychological literature has suggested, however, that rather than promoting behavior, it can lead to overconfidence and reduce performance over time. We investigated this claim by studying the relationship between self-efficacy and performance in a field study. Overconfidence was measured metacognitively as the difference between a person's expected performance and his or her actual performance. Using PLS and a sample of 108 students in an systems analysis and design course, we found that for the sample as a whole, self-efficacy was positively and significantly related to performance, and that performance was positively and significantly related to subsequent self-efficacy. When levels of over- and under-confidence were taken into account, however, the relationships changed. In particular, overconfidence leads to a significant negative relationship between self-efficacy and subsequent performance. Implications for user training included the need to use performance feedback in order to allow for a recalibration of self-efficacy towards a more accurate self-assessment of ability.

Self-efficacy is considered to be a triadic relationship between three factors: cognitive (personal goals, self-evaluation of performance, and quality of analytical thinking), environmental (level of challenge and circumstances under which the act takes place), and behavioral (choices that are executed) [1]. Actual behavior (accomplishment) provides a feedback loop, with future behavior affected by subsequent outcome expectations and self-efficacy. The stronger the perceived self-efficacy, the higher the challenge people set for themselves and the better a person's ability to cope with obstacles. By raising one's self-efficacy, the amount of effort and time one is willing to devote to the task also increases, leading to higher performance. Given that IT has no value unless it is used, self-efficacy has been adopted within the literature as a task-specific construct to predict its level of performance or usage [18], as a mediator in technology acceptance, and as the product of IS training [19]. It would appear that we need to enhance the self-efficacy during training. The problem, however, is that there is evidence to suggest that one can become overconfident when a person's belief about their expected level of performance exceeds their actual performance. In particular, it was suggested that self-efficacy is only satisfaction in one's level of performance, and complacency may result, leading to a negative relationship between self-efficacy and performance over time [25]. Overconfidence can affect a software engineer's ability to properly estimate the cost of a software development project [13]. Initial success can also lead financial analysts to become overly confident in their ability to predict the market, leading to lower subsequent performance [11]. Bandura observed a similar effect [2], where students playing a management simulation game retained a high level of self-efficacy in the face of declining performance. This effect was explained in terms of “complacent self-assurance.” But in spite of this, the problem of overconfidence was dismissed as being of no consequence. However, if self-efficacy is meant to be a good predictor of IT usage or competence, a negative relationship would have a significant impact on the utility of self-efficacy in IT training programs. Therefore, we decided to investigate whether there was any evidence that contradicted the expected relationship.

Conducting a field study, we found that one's first impression of self-efficacy was positively related to performance at time, and weakly and negatively related to later performance. When levels of over- and under-confidence was taken into account, however, there was a strong negative relationship between self-efficacy at the start and later performance by those who were overconfident. For the under-confident group, there was a positive relationship between self-efficacy and performance. We also found that high self-efficacy could have a debilitating effect on performance, depending on the extent to which subjects were initially over- or under-confident, and the extent to which they adjusted their self-efficacy based on explicit performance feedback. Our study also highlighted the importance of providing timely feedback on actual performance to recalibrate the predictability of the relationship between self-efficacy and performance.