Self-efficacy and Ove

1. Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is our perception of ourselves and how well we cope with a given situation with our own competence and skills. Self-efficacy becomes an important factor to decide one’s performance especially when performance situations are unpredictable, stressful, and ambiguous. When we doubt ourselves in these situations, it can cause anxiety, confusion, and negative thinking, which will lead to poor performance. However, when we believe in our ability and skills to obtain the desired outcomes, we are more likely to produce excellent performance even in unfavorable conditions. 

Self-efficacy comes from four sources: personal behavior history, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological state. Personal behavior history is the most potent source of self-efficacy. People learn their self-efficacy based on their interpretations and memories of past attempts and their outcomes. If someone has successful past experiences with mathematics, he or she complete mathematics tasks with more confidence. When we are inexperienced in a certain field, the vicarious experience can be an influential source of our self-efficacy. For a novice, observing the performance of the same tasks by others with similar skills can encourage or lower their self-efficacy. When the model performs well in the given task, this will lead to positive self-efficacy of the observer, whereas the model’s clumsy performance will lower the sense of efficacy. Additionally, our self-efficacy is influenced by messages from anybody around us, this is an impact of verbal persuasion on self-efficacy. For example, we gain confidence to attain a goal by the message from someone who supports and believes in our ability. However, the effectiveness of this source is limited depending on the credibility, expertise, and trustworthiness of the persuader. Lastly, the physiological state can affect our self-efficacy as well. When we feel pain, tension, and confusion on the demands of the task, this lowers efficacy and curbs one to cope adequately with the given task.

2. Parvaneh’s family and Ove’s self-efficacy 

Ove was annoyed by Parvaneh’s family who moved into Ove’s neighborhood. This is because whenever Ove tried to commit suicide, Parvaneh knocked on his door and asked for help. She asked Ove to help her husband drive his moving truck in reverse, to borrow a ladder, to drive her and her daughters to the emergency room, to take care of the strayed cat in the cold winter, to look after her two daughters while she is out, and to teach her how to drive. Of course, Parvaneh never knew Ove had been trying to commit suicide. At first, Parvaneh thought Ove is a stubborn and antisocial person in some sense, but as she got to know him, she found Ove’s genuine values. Ove was a man who has a strong sense of justice and a genuine love for his few close people around him. Parvaneh often praised Ove about his authentic values and waited for Ove to open up about his personal experiences. Also, Parvaneh’s daughters really liked Ove, because they thought Ove is a very fun person to spend time with. Of course, Ove was not always nice to them, but he read a book to them in a funny voice and remembered what they wanted for a birthday gift and bought those gifts for them. Parvaneh's daughters even drew Ove with their family in their sketchbooks and only colored Ove because they liked their fun neighbor. For Ove, who was dominated by the sense of loss and lethargy, verbal persuasion from Parvaneh’s family had a positive impact on re-building his self-efficacy. Thanks to this lovely neighbor's support, Ove found courage to help other neighbors in their difficulties again and tried to enjoy the rest of his life without Sonja.

3. Helplessness

Toward failure, our coping can be divided into two: mastery versus helplessness. People with mastery motivations orientation respond to failure by enduring with task-oriented attitude and focusing on achieving mastery. Despite setbacks, they tend to focus more on putting effort to overcome failures and improve their strategies. On the other hand, people with helpless motivational orientation respond to an unsuccessful situation by giving up and perceiving the situation as out of control. Thus, they begin to decrease their efforts with despair and lose hope for future success. 

When failure occurs repetitively, some people expect that outcomes in life are uncontrollable regardless of their efforts and behavior. Such a psychological state is called learned helplessness. People with learned helplessness have behaviors that are characterized by lethargy, passivity, and demoralized effort. They may decrease their willingness to try, experience learning deficits, and have energy-depleting emotions such as listlessness and depression. 

4. Officials and Ove’s helplessness

Officials took away Ove’s parents’ house and they refused to take responsibility for the serious car accident in which Ove and Sonja were involved. When Sonja searched for a teaching job, many schools refused to employ her because of her wheelchair, but officials kept ignoring Ove's ceaseless ask to build a ramp for disabled people in school. Such repetitive experiences of failure toward officials caused Ove to feel helpless. Therefore, Ove initially hesitated to face the officials who tried to send his friend Rune to a nursing facility. Unlike before, Ove was very passive in making a stand against the officials to help Rune. Recalling his past experiences, Ove realized that there is no way to stop the tyranny of public officials by his own effort, and he shed tears in despair. Fortunately, Ove was able to overcome the sense of helplessness with the encouragement and cooperation of his neighbors. However, if this was not the case, the learned helplessness may have made Ove more depressed and demoralized.