Self-Efficacy and Coping Skills


By now, you will have noticed that stress is very individualized. Some things that make you feel eustress may not make your friends feel the same way and vice versa.

One thing that has been shown to play a role in how stress is perceived is something called self-efficacy. The concept of self-efficacy was established by psychologist Albert Bandura, and it describes how much effect people believe they have on what happens to them.

For example, imagine two people are going to write a final exam in 30 minutes. Person A has not had many positive experiences with writing exams and is expecting to do poorly on the exam. They are not very confident in their ability to pass the exam. Person B has had many positive experiences with exams and feels fairly confident about the upcoming exam. This person is confident they will pass the exam. Person A has low self-efficacy because the demand of them (writing the exam) is perceived to be beyond their abilities. Person B has high self-efficacy because the demand is perceived to be within their abilities.

Coping skills are different types of techniques or tools that people use in order to solve issues that arise in their lives. They can also be referred to as coping mechanisms and are internal, meaning that it is something that a person does instead of just a reaction to a situation. People with a higher number of coping skills are more likely to handle more demands placed upon them. A person can also learn coping skills if they feel they might need to learn more techniques.
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