Investigating the possible negative effects of self-efficacy upon golf putting performance

Objectives: Research has challenged the nature of the reciprocal relationship between self-efficacy and performance. For example, at a within-person level of analysis, Vancouver, Thompson, and Williams (2001) found that performance accomplishments had a strong and positive influence upon subsequent efficacy beliefs; however, self-efficacy had a negative relationship with subsequent performance. The present set of experiments extends this research. Design: Two experiments examine the reciprocal relationship between self-efficacy and learning/performance over time. Method: Novice golfers putted across two conditions that varied in task difficulty. Results: Across both experiments, performance had a significant, strong and positive relationship with subsequent self-efficacy and predicted (at best) 49% of efficacy variance. However, self-efficacy had a weak non-significant negative relationship with subsequent performance in Experiment 1 and in Experiment 2 and only explained (at best) 2.7% of performance variance. Conclusion: The findings reveal that the reciprocal relationship between self-efficacy and performance may not be as strong as previously thought. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.