| From the end of 1970s to the middle of 1980s, Bandura had attached overwhelming importance to the research on self-efficacy. Afterward, he pointed out in 1986 that the growing interdependence of human functioning was placing a premium on the exercise of collective agency through shared beliefs in the power to produce effects by collective action. Research on the functional effects of collective efficacy is being firmly carried out all over the world.At present, research on CE in China is limited to the basic theoretical level. In the currently presented several papers, people just talked about the theoretical bases on the extending process from SE to CE and the probability to apply CE in primary school. The paper explored the essence of CE by the methods of theoretical analyses, literature summary and experimental verification.As one part of group research, CE is associated with social psychology, individual psychology and group dynamics. Exploring those related research can do good to the understanding of the development clues of CE. CE is also derived from Bandura's social cognitive theory, which contains the inner logic of the extendedness of SE and CE.From the viewpoint of operationism, this paper was concerned with the definition and measurement of CE. In addition, this paper compared CE with other group psychological concepts in order to convince the similarities and difference among them. With literature summary, evidence from diverse lines of research attests to the impact of perceived collective efficacy on group functioning. Studies have examined the effects of naturally developed beliefs of collective efficacy on the functioning of diverse social systems, including educational systems, business organizations, athletic teams, combat teams, urban neighborhoods, and political action groups. Perceived efficacy plays a key role in causal structures because it affects behavior not only directly, but by its impact on other determinants such as goals and aspirations, outcome expectations, affective proclivities, and perception of sociostructural impediments and opportunity structures. Perceived collective efrjcacy is an emergent group-level property, not simply the sum of efficacy beliefs of individual members, while beliefs of collective efficacy serve functions similar tothose of personal efficacy beliefs and operate through similar processes.Experiments were performed to focus on formation of collective efficacy beliefs and the impact of the beliefs on effort in a group task. The results indicated that under the same initial efficacy condition, groups receiving success feedback increased their efficacy scores significantly, while groups receiving failure feedback significantly reduced their efficacy scores. All groups received failure feedback after trial 2, and groups high in collective efficacy maintained performance and HRmax, that is, maintained their effort and persistence.Finally, a brief evaluatation was presented, as to the significance of CE research, and the research foreground was also analyzed, including the research indigenization in China.In many aspects, CE research is different from traditional group research. Firstly, they are at different research level. Secondly, various methods are applied. Thirdly, they are ranging in different fields. As a new perspective, there are both contributions and limitations of CE research. CE research contributes to a larger range of human agency, enriches the contents of group research, and provides an mode of the transformation from individual research to group research. However, CE research pays excessive emphases upon the difference among related concepts. It also aggrandizes its explanatory ability. What's more, it can't be applied fully into practice. Nevertheless, research on CE has taken on a driving vitality in many fields, which implied that any psychological research should be a long period of practical explorations and theoretical innovations.This paper suggested that, it was optimistic to do CE research in China. First; the fast p... |
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