Bandura's theory of self‐efficacy: A set of common sense theorems

Abstract

Bandura's (1977) theory of self‐efficacy is translated into non‐technical language and is shown to consist of logically necessary rather than empirically testable statements. As an alternative to the dominant empiricist view, it is argued that valid theories in psychology are explications of conceptual relationship imbedded in ordinary language (common sense). This conceptual network is anterior to both observation and theorizing. The analogy between the tasks of pre‐Euclidean geometry and contemporary psychology is explored. The tasks are seen as involving explication of our implicit concepts of respectively space and people. One consequence of the stated view is that much psychological research is pointless since it attempts to verify logically necessary statements by empirical methods.