Introduction
The article discusses individual capabilities in relation to their perceptions as well as other variables such as beliefs, incremental and entity quantities, age, education and gender. The article seeks to prove or disapprove the belief that an individual’s perceptions about his or her abilities have a great influence on the performance. It uses a computer training experiment to gauge individual’s performances and abilities to master the training. Ability refers to the behavioral potential of an individual whereas performance is the practical level of behavior.
Psychologists and researchers disagree on the concept of measuring ability. Some of the tests and views that researchers proposed for measuring ability include the entity and incremental views. The entity view proposes that an individual’s ability is a fixed quality that does not change because an individual can only poses a certain amount of ability that he/she cannot reduce or increase. This ability remains constant despite any circumstance. Conversely, incremental view proposes that an individual may increase his/her ability through hard work. The incremental view makes more sense because one’s ability depends on a variety of factors. It is imprecise to argue that one’s ability is constant and cannot change no matter the circumstance.
Discussion
An individual’s ability to perform a task may also depends on the prevailing circumstances such as supervision, the person’s attitude towards the task, the amount of knowledge the individual has on the task and the environment of performance. Therefore, it is possible to increase or decrease the ability through external factors such as education and the willingness to work hard at the task. Nevertheless, it is possible to measure an individual’s ability to perform a task using past and present behavior. Observing an individual’s past performance in similar tasks and his/her acquired skills and potential helps in measuring their abilities or inability to perform tasks. Managers can use these measurements to assign tasks and gauge the expected performance on the tasks. Another relevant concept is self-efficacy, which closely relates to the two views of ability. Self-efficacy refers to the individual’s judgments of their capabilities to assemble the cognitive resources, motivation and courses if action necessary for ensuring future performance of certain tasks. Therefore, to have self-efficacy means believing in one’s ability to perform a specific task.
Organizations frequently undergo changes that require employee’s behavioral changes in order to maximize performance and productivity. These changes may force some employees out of organizations, while some may force the organizations to invest in employee training. There are several reasons for changing jobs. These factors include downsizing in organizations, organizational financial pressures and change of positions. It is imperative that companies will need new skills whenever there are changes in jobs. The federal government, as well as companies spends large amounts of money on employee training programs, in their attempt to equip new employees. The federal government distributes the money as grants to several states for their use in vocational training.
Past job training research centered on learning specific skills. However, this trend changed in the 1940s, when Job Instruction Training (JIT) program emerged. This program recognizes that organizations need to put employees “at ease” during job training. Other approaches merely provided instructions and influenced rewards. The JIT program recognizes that employee’s attitudes towards training and jobs were a fundamental part of learning. Despite the obvious knowledge that positive attitudes have positive effects on learning, many training programs still neglect the cognitive states. Putting someone at ease involves a variety of factors that includes physical arrangements, comfortable work environments, and positive attitudes such as realistic expectations and self-efficacy.
An individual’s belief about his/her self-efficacy greatly influences their performance on a task. The article illustrates this through a study on adult computer training. This study acknowledges that regular computer users greatly differ with those who have never used computers. Regular users take for granted simple tasks and elements of computers such as cursor and mouse locations. On the other hand, non-users find great difficulties mastering these simple elements. The ability and speed of learning computers also depends on the person’s beliefs about their self-efficacy. At the start of the study, the researcher’s belief was that people with incremental views about their abilities had positive attitudes towards computer training, seeing it as an opportunity. The researcher provided hypothesis to the study (Partners & Spade 227).
The first hypothesis stated that individuals with incremental views about computer skills would experience lower anxiety levels about computer training following training than they did before the training. Contrastingly, those with an entity belief would be more anxious after the training. The second hypothesis stated that when companies provide incremental conditions, employees showed greater beliefs on computer efficacy after training than before the training. Employees in the entity condition would exhibit less computer efficacy after the training. The last hypothesis proposed that efficacy and computer anxiety would influence the trainees’ ability to acquire computer declarative knowledge, as assessed by measures before training. The participants were employees a public university, with an average age of 42.2 years. Eighty percent of the participants had never used computers before the study, while the rest had no knowledge but had few instructions on computer use.
The training program included a three-hour course on computer use, after which, the trainers assigned the participants two one of two manipulations or conditions: computer ability information is a fixed entity and computer information ability is incremental. In addition to these, the trainers used several measures as dependent products. The scores on the anxiety rating scales supported part of the first hypothesis, that people in the incremental conditions would experience lesser anxiety. Additionally, reminding trainees that ability is a quantity that does not change has no impact on an individual’s anxiety. The outcomes also supported the second hypothesis, which sated that when employees received incremental instructions, they would have an increase in their beliefs on computer efficacy after the training, and the reverse would be true when they received entity instructions. Lastly, it is surprising that the outcomes failed to support the last hypothesis that variations in declarative knowledge comes from the difference in conceptions about ability. Despite this, computer ability and efficacy had slight effects on the declarative knowledge when participants’ data were combined with no regards to the experimental manipulations.
Conclusion
An individual’s mindset, especially their beliefs and perceptions about their abilities greatly determines the individual’s performance on a task. A poor or defeating attitude sets a poor stage for performance as it limits the individual’s willingness or measurement of performance. While there are some situations when an individual’s abilities may seem as an entity, in most cases abilities are incremental. It is possible to manipulate a person’s abilities using the right cognitive states and factors. As the study indicates, providing incremental conditions have a major impact on performance and so does entity conditions. In any performance having a positive attitude towards tasks helps in maximizing a person’s abilities. Other factors such as age, gender and education also have major impact on a person’s performance, as prior education on a concept makes it easier for one to perform better. However, the person’s attitude matters most, despite these other factors. An inner motivation and adequate self-efficacy influences one’s ability and performance.
Works Cited
Partners & Spade. I Think I Can, I Think I Can. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. Print.