Monday, February 18, 2019

Naive dualism: self-efficacy with individualism vs. collectivism

Bandura's efficacy theory can explain a lot of scenarios taking account both psychological and environmental effect. Collective efficacy to me is an "upgraded" efficacy that appears in a an "upgraded" social environment: collaborative settings. On the society level, Bandura (2000) mentioned about naive dualism that inappropriately equates self-efficacy with individualism and pits it against collectivism at a cultural level. Self-efficacy functions based on the assumption of human agency. I believe it is important for both individualist and collectivist culture.

My original culture can be categorized as collectivism. However, I only understand it as prioritizing everyone over each one. It depends on a lot of other things if one is active and efficacious in contributing to the societal development. For China, during the Great Leap Forward campaign (about 1958-1962), common people like my parents' families actively participated in the political move (e.g., donating iron pans to the government for steel industry). Look at China now, I don't think I can see that level of "collective efficacy" any more. It will be interesting to collect collective efficacy data from the citizens across eras. I think the culture is still more collectivist, that is in my words, prioritizing everyone over each one. However, collective efficacy of making societal changes would be very dynamic nowadays.

I strongly agree with Bandura's comments on this issue,
Cultures are not monolithic, static entities as stereotypic portrayals indicate. Both individualistic and collectivistic sociocultural systems come in a variety of forms. Moreover, there is substantial heterogeneity in communality among individuals in different cultural systems, and even greater intraindividual variation across different types of social relationships. (p. 77)
My further question would be:
1. Is it necessary to have self-efficacy of successfully performing one's role in the group in order to have collective efficacy (success as a group)?
2. Are leaders' self- and collective efficacy more important than followers' in affecting group's behaviors?
3. Which level of specificity makes a valid construct of efficacy? For example, are each of the construct valid: self-efficacy of playing the role in a team, self-efficacy of leading the team to success, collective efficacy of group success... (If I keep listing, I tend to mix up goals and definitions of success)  For research purposes, how do I adapt efficacy to different context?

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