The influence of self-efficacy and of gender on the performance of social and nonsocial tasks

This research addresses how self-efficacy, a foundational construct in social cognitive theory, influences people's judgments about the outcome of two distinct types of tasks, one that is social in nature and the other nonsocial. The social task consisted of giving a public speech in a basic communication class and the nonsocial task was the completion of an exam which contained math in a research methodology class. Using a path model, it was predicted that parental modeling and psychological gender would influence academic performance, contributing to a generalized sense of self-efficacy in both the social and nonsocial task domains. The study revealed that masculinity or instrumentality contributed to the general self-efficacy in both task domains, and to the specific self-efficacy for the social task of giving a public speech. Implications for self-efficacy, for gender research, and for application are discussed.