Today I came up with an interesting hypothesis: that the term known as self-efficacy (one’s perceived ability to accomplish tasks) determines the scale of what an individual will attempt to change. The reasoning is simple: when one perceives a clash between his own values and those of others, he invariably spends a certain amount of time, however brief, wondering “is this a problem with me or is this a problem with them?” Those with low self-efficacy (or low self-esteem in general) will conclude that the problem is with themselves, since their belief in their own ability is very weak. Those with higher self-efficacy will blame the practitioners within the system, believing that they are inaccurately expressing a concept that is fundamentally correct (the “if I did this, it would be better” effect). Those with the highest self-efficacy have such confidence in their own ability that they frame the clash as a problem with the system itself and, being very confident in their ability, set out to change it.

Therefore, lest you condemn those with high self-efficacy as being arrogant or pretentious, realize that this is the only way that society can ever advance. Were the world left only to those with low self-efficacy, humanity would no longer exist. What you deem arrogance is therefore virtuous behavior.

There is, however, a danger in having too much self-efficacy: this danger emerges when one begins to believe that the laws of reality, of logic, of causality, no longer apply to oneself. This results in attempting tasks that are inherently impossible, not because of the way society functions, but because their completion would cause a logical contradiction. Of course, we all undertake tasks such as these unknowingly; it becomes pathological when one begins to ignore the logical evidence against what one is attempting to do.

Certain levels of self-efficacy prompt introspection and/or criticism, which must be somehow resolved before one feels capable of taking on larger challenges. Successful resolution of these challenges (success being defined as resolution in a way that does not threaten the integrity of one’s self) causes self-efficacy to increase, as it provides evidence that one is doing “the right thing”.

Essentially, I believe that we can summarize this effect with the following figure:

(Also available in SVG).