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Journal
of
Personality
and
Social
Psychology
1981,
Vol.
41, No. 3,
586-598
Copyright
1981
by
the
American Psychological Association,
Inc.
0022-3514/81
/4103-0586S00.75
Cultivating Competence, Self-Efficacy,
and
Intrinsic
Interest
Through
Proximal
Self-Motivation
Albert
Bandura
and
Dale
H.
Schunk
Stanford
University
The
present experiment tested
the
hypothesis that
self-motivation
through
prox-
imal
goal
setting serves
as an
effective mechanism
for
cultivating competencies,
self-percepts
of
efficacy,
and
intrinsic
interest. Children
who
exhibited gross
deficits
and
disinterest
in
mathematical tasks pursued
a
program
of
self-directed
learning
under conditions
involving
either proximal subgoals, distal goals,
or no
goals. Results
of the
multifaceted assessment provide support
for the
superiority
of
proximal
self-influence.
Under proximal subgoals, children progressed
rapidly
in
self-directed learning, achieved substantial mastery
of
mathematical opera-
tions,
and
developed
a
sense
of
personal
efficacy
and
intrinsic interest
in
arith-
metic
activities that
initially
held little attraction
for
them. Distal goals
had no
demonstrable
effects.
In
addition
to its
other
benefits,
goal
proximity
fostered
veridical
self-knowledge
of
capabilities
as
reflected
in
high congruence between
judgments
of
mathematical
self-efficacy
and
subsequent mathematical
perfor-
mance. Perceived
self-efficacy
was
positively related
to
accuracy
of
mathematical
performance
and to
intrinsic interest
in
arithmetic activities.
Much human behavior
is
directed
and
sus-
tained over long periods, even though
the
external inducements
for it may be few and
far
between. Under conditions
in
which
ex-
ternal
imperatives
are
minimal
and
discon-
tinuous, people must partly serve
as
agents
of
their
own
motivation
and
action.
In
social
learning
theory (Bandura, 1977b,
in
press),
self-directedness
operates
through
a
self sys-
tem
that
comprises cognitive structures
and
subfunctions
for
perceiving, evaluating,
mo-
tivating,
and
regulating behavior.
An
important,
cognitively
based source
of
This
research
was
supported
by
Public Health
Re-
search Grant
M-5162
from
the
National Institute
of
Mental
Health.
We are
deeply indebted
to the
many
people
who
assisted
us in
this project: Ruthe Lundy
and
Jack Gibbany
of the
Palo Alto
Unified
School District
arranged
the
necessary research facilities. School prin-
cipals
Jerry Schmidt, Gene Tankersley, John Tuomy,
Roger
Wilder,
and
their
staffs
offered
whatever help
was
needed
to
facilitate
the
research. Jamey Friend
and
Barbara
Searle
of the
Stanford Institute
for
Mathe-
matical
Studies
in the
Social Sciences
furnished
us
with
invaluable
information
on
mathematical subfunctions,
which
served
as the
basis
for the
self-instructional
ma-
terial.
Finally,
we owe a
debt
of
appreciation
to
Debby
Dyar
and
Linda Curyea
for
their generous
and
able
assistance
in the
conduct
of the
experiment.
Requests
for
reprints should
be
sent
to
Albert Ban-
dura,
Department
of
Psychology, Building 420, Jordan
Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, California
94305.
self-motivation
relies
on the
intervening pro-
cesses
of
goal setting
and
self-evaluative
re-
actions
to
one's
own
behavior. This
form
of
self-motivation, which
operates
largely
through internal comparison
processes,
re-
quires personal standards against which
to
evaluate ongoing performance.
By
making
self-satisfaction conditional
on a
certain
level
of
performance, individuals
create
self-
inducements
to
persist
in
their efforts until
their performances match internal stan-
dards. Both
the
anticipated satisfactions
for
matching attainments
and the
dissatisfac-
tions with
insufficient
ones provide incen-
tives
for
self-directed actions.
Personal goals
or
standards
do not
auto-
matically activate
the
evaluative processes
that
affect
the
level
and
course
of
one's
be-
havior. Certain properties
of
goals, such
as
their specificity
and
level, help
to
provide
clear standards
of
adequacy (Latham
&
Yukl,
1975; Locke, 1968;
Steers
&
Porter,
1974). Hence, explicit goals
are
more likely
than
vague
intentions
to
engage
self-reactive
influences
in any
given activity. Goal prox-
imity,
a
third property,
is
especially critical
because
the
more closely referential stan-
dards
are
related
to
ongoing behavior,
the
greater
the
likelihood that self-influences
will
be
activated
during
the
process.
Some
586
