Social Motivation

The social aspects of motivation work on as many levels as the individual motivation discussed in previous sections. According to the social cognitive view, the individual level of operation cannot be studied separately from the social level of operation and, thus, one should pay attention also to the social aspects of motivational processes, such as collective goal orientation, collective attributions, collective efficacy beliefs, collective control beliefs and collective awareness. Of these, the efficacy beliefs are the most important, because they affect learning and change both directly and indirectly, through their impact on other determinants (Bandura 2001: 9). Bandura (ibid.) notes that self-efficacy beliefs influence whether we think about something positively or negatively, or in ways that are self-enhancing or self-hindering. They affect self-regulation of motivation by influencing our goal challenges and outcome expectations. The following paragraph gives a brief explanation of the collective characteristics of some important concepts in social motivation, but the rest of this section is dedicated to the most central concept of social motivation from the social cognitive point of view: collective efficacy beliefs.

Just as people’s individual goal-orientation determines how they approach a task or an assignment, a group’s shared goal-orientation, be it besting other groups or aiming for improved understanding, affects how the group, as a whole, choose their learning strategies. Just as individual learners may use surface learning strategies when they have a performance goal, a group of learners may rely on rote learning when they have no interest in mastering the topic that they are studying or when they feel unattached to the subject field in question. Both individuals and groups can give tasks or goals different attributions;

that is, they can interpret differently how important it is for the group to learn or perform a particular task or what they think the accomplishment of the task will tell about the group

(and its members). Furthermore groups may have control beliefs and collective awareness just as individuals may.

As has been discussed previously, individual self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in being able to perform a specific task. Thus, unlike general beliefs about the self—such as self-esteem, self-worth and self-concept—self-efficacy beliefs always refer to a specific situation or a specific task (Goddard, Hoy & Woolfolk Hoy, 2004: 4). Collective efficacy beliefs refer to a group’s belief in its ability to perform a specific task, or, as Bandura (1997) describe, “the performance capability of a social system as a whole” (p. 469). It must be noted that a group may have poor collective efficacy beliefs even if the individual members all have high individual self-efficacy beliefs about a specific task. Other factors, such as poor social skills or emotions can result in the group members failing to see or acknowledge the abilities of the other group members, which, in turn, will affect their willingness to work efficiently with each other.

Bandura (2001) notes that several studies “attest to the impact of perceived collective efficacy on group functioning” and that

...the stronger the perceived collective efficacy the higher the groups’ aspirations and motivational investment in their undertakings, the stronger their staying power in the face of impediments and setbacks, the higher their morale and resilience for stressors, and the greater their performance accomplishments (p. 12).

Goddard et al. (2004) also claim that their studies have documented a strong link between perceived collective efficacy of teachers and differences in student achievement between schools. Furthermore, Goddard et al. (ibid.) have found that “even after controlling for students’ prior achievement, race/ethnicity, SES, and gender, collective efficacy beliefs have stronger effects on student achievement than student race or SES” (p. 7).

As with individual self-efficacy beliefs, collective efficacy beliefs are expected to affect the group’s goal setting, collective effort and persistence when faced with difficulties.

Additionally, because group work takes place mostly through interaction between the members, low collective efficacy beliefs may influence the quality of that interaction and thus lower the performance. Collective efficacy beliefs may result from the perceived efficacy of a group working together (individual beliefs about how well the members can

work together) or the skills and abilities that the group members are perceived to possess (individual beliefs about the skills and knowledge of other group members).

It is implied by the above description, but also worth noting specifically, that individual self-efficacy and collective self-efficacy do not work separately. Individual self-efficacy beliefs affect collective self-efficacy beliefs in several ways, as collective self-efficacy beliefs affect individual self-efficacy beliefs, and one cannot entirely separate them.

Individuals function in a social system and their individual characteristics are as rooted in that system as are their collective characteristics. A group of individuals with very low self-efficacy beliefs when facing a specific task will not necessarily possess high collective self-efficacy when facing the same problem as a part of a group, but neither can the groups’ collective self-efficacy beliefs be directly derived from the self-efficacy beliefs of its members. Bandura (2001) notes that group achievements are the product of not only the individual skills and knowledge of its members but also “the interactive, coordinative, and synergistic dynamics of their transactions” (p. 12). Thus, the perceived collective self- efficacy of a group is a group-level property, which emerges only in group work situations, and is not simply the sum of individual self-efficacy beliefs of the group’s members.

However, Bandura (ibid.) also points out that collective self-efficacy is not an emergent entity on its own, but is based on the individual characteristics of the people who comprise the group.

As was discussed above, a strong sense of efficacy is important to performance, be it for an individual person or for a group working together. Personal and collective efficacy beliefs are both strengthened through mastery experiences, as Goddard et al. (2004: 9) note in their discussion of the individual and collective efficacy beliefs of teachers at a school that has achieved a high score on a state-mandated test. Furthermore, Bandura (2001) notes that personal efficacy beliefs are as important in collectivistic cultures as they are in individualistic cultures, but that the culture in which people are raised affects the way efficacy beliefs are developed and in what kind of situations they are at their best. “People from individualistic cultures feel most efficacious and perform best under an individually oriented system, whereas those from collectivistic cultures judge themselves most efficacious and work most productively under a group-oriented system” (p. 14). However, whether efficacy beliefs are personal or collective, high belief in one’s efficacy is likely to foster high group effort and performance attainments.