Mastery: research
has identified the top ways
to achieve mastery. Surprizingly to some, changing
expectations and enhancing belief in your own mastery are almost as
important as regular or frequent practice of the skill or ability.
In descending order, the top ways are:
Performance accomplishments: by participant
modelling, performance desensitization (doing it over and over
again), performance exposure, and self-instructed performance
Vicarious experience: live modelling,
symbolic modelling
Verbal persuasion: suggestion, exhortation,
self-instruction, interpretative treatment
Emotional arousal: attribution, relaxation,
biofeedback, symbolic desensitization, symbolic exposure
The most effective
way to learn mastery is to create an environment where you can
receive the most authentic information that mastery is
being achieved. Thus 'performance' - actually carrying out a
task successfully - is most effective and 'emotional arousal' is
least.
However, even carrying out the task successfully
does not guarantee the sense of mastery for people with low
self-esteem: because of faulty appraisals of the circumstances under
which they improve, they may credit their achievements to external
factors rather than to their own capabilities. The more varied the
circumstances in which they succeed at the task, though, the harder
it is for them to doubt their ability to do it.
Thus the best way to gain self-confidence in your
ability to carry out a task is to start by doing it under close
guidance, then do it without help, then do other related tasks using
your own adaptation of the taught method. Once you have developed
some sense of mastery, you need plenty of practice - otherwise one
or two "disconfirmings" will weaken your confidence.
If actually performing the task is not feasible,
watching others perform is next best, although a poor second.
However, seeing others perform threatening activities without
adverse consequences is more effective than you might think in
making observers expect that they too will improve if they intensify
and persist in their efforts. The effect is greater the more effort
is shown by role models and the clearer their result. Also, the
more the persons modelling resemble the person trying to gain
confidence in ways relevant to the task - but also the more
diversified the tasks using the same skill and situations in which
they are demonstrated.
(Whilst it has sometimes been thought that getting
people excited and keyed up enables them to do things they normally
find threatening, research does not support this. The probably
explanation is that high arousal debilitates performance and
therefore leads people to expect failure.)
