Confidence, Mindset, and Self-Efficacy in Goal Pursuit

This paper explores how to mitigate the adverse effect of low confidence in reaching a goal, given that low confidence might have a detrimental effect on taking the necessary actions to accomplish the goal. Specifically, perceived self-efficacy is proposed to be an important benchmark dependent variable to focus on as prior research has shown a positive relationship between self-efficacy and persistency in pursing a goal. A study was conducted to investigate the effect of priming a deliberative or an implementational mindset on perceived self-efficacy across the high and low confidence conditions. The results are discussed and future research directions are proposed.