Managing anxiety and task through self-efficacy: an assessment of creative people How can creative people improve on task and anxiety management through self-efficacy?

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie
Published: 30th July 2019

Introduction

Self-efficacy, which is all about having trust on one’s powers and ability to learn and perform, is considered a pivotal trait when it comes to general success of people (Hill, 2002). Whether it is in the academic setting or in career field, when one can understand their weakness, and believe within themselves that they can conquer such, they become better positioned to change their lives positively. As described by Gardner (1983), students that are self-efficacious, are those that believe in their capabilities to organize and execute the necessary actions that would help them to attain a given goal. McCombs & Marzano (1990) and Martinez-Pons (2002) further moved on to classify self-efficacy into different categories and one of them is the academic category, where it was noted by these authors that it reflects on the perceived capabilities that students have when it comes to a task that they are expected to perform within the academic domain.

A definition of self-efficacy was offered by Ollendick, Dailey, & Shapiro (1983), where it was pointed out to be the process used to activate and sustain thoughts, emotions and behaviours in line with set goals. In the case that these goals entail learning, the self-regulation of these individuals are then converted into self-regulated learning. On that note, the self-regulated learners are then capable of combining their academic learning skills with that of their self-control in order to make their learning process  easier; and the implication becomes that these people are more motivated, leading to acquisition of more skills and the desire to learn more (Murphy & Alexander, 2000). This is also the case for creative people, where their cognitive abilities and self-efficacy has been recognized in literatures and sufficiently explored (Schunk, 2004). Delineating on the relationship between creativity and cognitive self-efficacy might necessitate the need to study the cognitive approaches, relevant intelligence theories, regulation of resources, and attainment of goals.

In essence, the creative people might be able to employ meta-cognition, which can be considered as “thinking about thinking “, or the “knowledge about knowing and learning”, a reference to a higher degree of cognition that is employed for monitoring and regulating the cognitive processes like comprehension, reasoning, learning, problem-solving and others (Metcalfe & Shimamura, 1994). The implication is that such people can effectively handle their resources, have a higher believe on their pliable intelligence, work towards mastery instead of just performance and as such capable of bringing about better performance (Dweck, 2006). Essentially, when such people are faced with anxiety or task related challenges, they are better capable of handling them through self-efficacy and this is what this research aims to assess. In any case, it has been noted that since people differ in their metacognitive skills and knowledge, they also differ in relation to how well as fast they learn (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983; Morris, 1990). This is in line with the postulations of the social cognitive theory, where it is maintained that while some learn through observation, others actually learn through cognitive skills (Bandura, 2001).

Research objectives

Based on the discussions above, the overall objective of this research is to discuss on how creative people can employ self-efficacy to manage anxiety and task. That is to say, how can task management and anxiety management be made easier by creative people?

Research outline

In order to meet this set objective, this research will explore the concepts of anxiety management and task management as the dependent variables, as well as the concept of self-efficacy as the independent variable, and then highlight how the independent variable can be effectively employed to bringing about positive influence on the dependent variables. This study is literature.

Understanding anxiety and its relationship with creative thinking

Across the world, anxiety is considered to be the most common mental disorder that affects millions of adolescents. In the course of adolescence, it is considered to be one of the most devastating consequences that comes with psychiatric disorder (Fiori et al., 2010). In line with the work of Khouzam (2009), anxiety disorders are among the most frequently experienced emotional, mental, and behavioural issues that people face in numerous countries.  The concept of anxiety is mostly featured in the form of unpleasant, diffused, complex form of apprehension, normally followed by autonomic symptoms like perspiration, headache, tightness, palpitation, restlessness, and mild stomach discomfort, showing on the side of the person suffering it, the inability to sit properly or stall still for a long period of time (Sadock and Sadock, 2007). In the course of the past years, the concept of anxiety can been classified by researchers into different categories with Freud proposing signal and traumatic anxiety while Sadeghi et al. (2010) looked at anxiety from the view of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

From a historical sphere, the 20^th century was referred as the “anxiety century” as a result of the incessant wars, increase in population, immigration, unemployment, and destruction of families (Passer et al., 2009).

When it comes to assessing the influence of anxiety on creative thinking, the theory of anxiety and creative thinking can be traced back to the early days of humankind. From the work of Freud, the suggestion is that anxiety is a kind of stress that is brought about by birth separation and the experience that human have in relation to their biological fantasies. Rank (1993), Klein (1975) and Winnicott (1999) later supported this theory in relation to creativity in human. Based on this, it was suggested by Passer et al. (2009) that creative thinking can be employed as a tool for reducing the negative influence of anxiety on people as well as the overall level of anxiety experienced. The importance of this is based on the notion that creative thinking is a skill that is used to bring about the power of discovery and new ideas as well as help in changing the negative feeling that people have to positive feeling and in return bring about improvement on their mental health in the case that they experience unpleasant event. In any case, it was later revealed by Silvia and Kimbrel (2010) that anxiety and depression does predict little about the differences in creativity when the directions are inconsistent.  That is to say, the conjectures of creativity do vary on a number of issues, but consensus has been attained by scholars with goes to say that there is no way of stating how people become creative or the influence of anxiety on creativity (Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007).

Carlson (2002) furthered this study and came up with the conclusion that creativity does offer defence mechanism for anxiety with this work being later supported by that of Henderson, Rosen and Mascaro (2007) where it was demonstrated that drawing (a stage in creativity) does prove a calming effect on patients suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). From a related sphere, it was also demonstrated by Mitchell, MacDonald and Knussen (2008) that music is a therapeutic key that is used to bring about significant decline on the level of anxiety that people suffer. This is based on the notion that the creative power one obtains through education in life in the course of growing up could form a mental safeguard against disorders related to mental health. Potur and Barkul (2010) furthered this discussion with their suggestion that creativity is important when it comes to providing solutions to the everyday problems of planning and decision making. Pivotal life decisions like career planning, choosing employment spouses, and places of residence, and making crucial commitments does require thinking that are divergent in nature (creative thinking), one that is particularly relevant to creativity. On its own, life experience involves situations that are open-ended, having no clear visible external sources of correctness or truth and ambiguous. Therefore, the perception is that personalities that are highly anxious will face difficulties in these areas.  In other studies, fear and anxiety have been linked with decrease in the quality of life Potur and Barkul (2010), with similar literatures stating that the ability of individuals to show courage in the face of difficulties does bring about increase in their overall well-being (Joseph & Linley, 2005).

In essence, research outcomes in relation to the influence of anxiety on creativity have been mixed with some researchers finding positive correlation between anxiety trait and creativity (Carlsson, Wendt, & Risberg, 2000; Martindale, Anderson, Moore, & West, 1996) while others have noted that anxiety interferes with or is not related to creative performance (Byron & Khazanchi, 2011; De Dreu, Nijstad, & Baas, 2011; King, Walker, & Broyles, 1996). Thus, this present study will look at this relationship in relation to how self-efficacy can be used to control anxiety in order to enhance the performance of creative people.

Task management and its relationship with creativity

A topic that has been the frequent subject of scholarly research is the ability of people to manage their time wisely and also the extent to which they misappropriate time (Claessens et al. 2007; Steel2007). In line with general view, time management imply a strategic process that is used to promote the accomplishment of vital goals and success with an individual’s professional, personal, and academic setting (Claessens et al. 2007; Steel, 2007). On the other hand, procrastination entails unnecessary delay and dilatory behaviour that individuals exhibit which is normally considered to be the misuse of time, one that will eventually limit their performance as well as impede their ability to reach set goals (Chu and Choi 2005; Lay and Schouwenburg 1993; Steel, 2010). Based on this theoretical understanding, one might take the assumption that time management and procrastination are discordant in nature and would essential bring about clear negative relationship. However, there are limited number of empirical studies that test this assumption (e.g., Chu and Choi 2005; Lay and Schouwenburg 1993; Park and Sperling 2012). On the same note, it has been argued by some researchers that under some circumstances, deliberate delay in one’s work (take academic work for instance), can actually be measured as an adaptive expression of time management which would eventually lead to academic success for the person in question (Choi and Moran 2009; Kim and Seo, 2013; Schraw et al. 2007).

The modern Gregorian calendar and mechanical clock is predated by time management. In line with the views presented above, both scholars are laypeople have shared their own views on how best to manage time for centuries above  (e.g., Alberti, 1971; Seneca, 2014; St. Benedict, 1975) a fact that confirms the perennial pervasiveness of time management. However, there is no widely accepted definition of time management (Claessens et al., 2007). In the past, some have considered it to be a combination of goal setting, time assessment, and monitoring activities (while it has been viewed by others to be a self-controlled attempt geared towards using time in a way that is subjectively effective with the aim of attaining a desired outcome (Koch & Kleinmann, 2002, p. 201), and others have actually disregarded the need to define time management in its entirety (e.g., Barling, Cheung, & Kelloway, 1996).

The issues with defining time management are based on the fact that there are slightly different takes on time management from different disciplines. Taking the field of sociology for instance, when it comes to time management, emphasis might be placed on personal time while in the field of psychology, the emphasis might be more on the ability of an individual to stick to plans and make precise estimation of how long such task will be undertaken. As such, it is required that any definition of time management should be one that subsumes, integrates, and is applicable to different disciplines. This will require the adoption of a person-centred view in which individuals should be conceptualized as proactive and intentional agents (Aguinis & Glavas, inpress; Rupp, 2011). Based on this view, the contention is that people make the decision about how they allocate time. As such, time management can be defined to be a form of decision that is made by an individual, one that is used for structuring, protecting, and adapting to time with the overall aim of changing the person’s conditions. This definition is in line with the agent perspective of time (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016).

Time management is an integral part of the task management process because it is only when the time allocated for each task has been properly managed, that the actual process of executing and finalizing the tasks can be effectively managed (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016). In essence, creativity is integral here because it would help the individual to effectively and efficiently manage their time, yielding an effective and efficient task outcomes in the end.

From the managerial standpoint, creativity is considered to be a subjective assessment (Amabile, 1982), the creation of original and vital ideas (Amabile, 1983; Amabile, 1996; Arndt et al., 1999), a complex activity that features creative thinking, expertise and motivation (Amabile, 1998), a complex interaction that an individual creates with one’s environment (Anderson et al., 2014; Pruskus, 2015), a societal activity in a given context (Ford and Gioia, 2000), a critical process (Drazin et al., 1999), a form of divergent thinking that include flexibility, fluency, elaboration, and originality (Paulus, 2000) and the list goes on. Aside from this, the history of human thinking does portray an evolution of creative of creativity understanding (Barevičiūtė, 2014; Černevičiūtė, 2014), together with different forms of understanding in different regions or even within the same region that is culturally diverse (Klimczuk, 2014).

On this accord, it has been regarded by researchers that the modern society is highly creative (Pečiulis, 2015; Reimeris, 2016), which points out the need for task management to be effectively studied and analyzed.  There seem to be a consensus among scholars, how that places more emphasis on creativity management as being contradictable and paradoxical, but they still agree that creative people are better positioned to manage their tasks.

This is based on the notion that when creative people have different tasks, or different targets and levels of achievement for the same task, they have the necessary instinct to yield their course of action towards meeting the settings that have been defined in these tasks (McLeod et al., 1997; Amabile, 1998; Sutton, 2001; Bilton and Cummings, 2014; Lane and Lup, 2015; Johnsen, 2015; Chen et al., 2015). They can potentially combine different activities at the same time or looking for more effective ways of doing things, leading to better fulfilment of the task targets. In essence, creativity is essential when it comes to task management because it helps people to do things more effectively and efficiently.

Usually, the work time of a creative person is not normally standardized. On the same note, it is virtually impossible to lock such person up in one place in the course of a defined time because of the creative nature of their work. On another hand, their work time normally violates the work hours that have been defined by either their employer or law; because such people are found of creating even when they are eating, sleeping or during vacation.

Creativity management and control

The tools employed in production are different, ranging from papers and pencils to the more sophisticated and expensive ones – such as antique kiln, computers and so on. However, all these tools are entirely based on the fact that the major creation process is contained within the heads of the creative workers, with these tools only serving as aid to the creative worker to realize their ideas. This is contrary with what is obtainable in the factor setting where thinking is left excluded from the worker. Companies normally employ a contrary notion to this by excluding “thinking” from the workers, one that forgets or at least neglects the fact that it is actually the individual that is doing the thinking. This is because the contemporary tools do the thinking instead of the workers. However, it needs to be pointed out that no creative workers starts from nowhere, instead, they are products of combination of ideas and pictures from the menu of ideas available with the overall aim of attaining new harmony in their mix. In the end, they produce creative products that are capable of doing unique and exclusive things. Such products can have both positive and negative features as one product that might be attractive to one consumer might be unsalable to another.  

In accordance with the work of Florida (2002), it was pointed out that all the administrative rules of the work class, country class, and even the service class are not in line with the views of the creative class and the implication is that the creative class requires different forms of rules and control. In essence, the overall aim of such rule is to force efficiency into a worker irrespective of how such is delivered, which is, to ensure that the worker is able to produce as much products as possible within the shortest time by economizing as many resources as possible and saving these resources for production. The overall aim of control in this case does become to check a worker, and understand the extent to which such worker is adhering to the conditions of the work contract, i.e., if the worker is gives all of his or her time and potential towards delivering the desired objective from their designated work and ensuring that the company or employer is getting the best of return from their contacted salary. The presupposition of control in this case is that of the employer’s belief, holding that a worker in a workplace doesn’t have one’s body, which is only part of the mechanism that is employed in a company. All the employees that are making use of the social resources are controlled by the state. The presupposition in this case then becomes that every taxpayer in a given system does serve the social purpose of producing social welfare and happiness, and also the purpose of accumulating social capital. The impact of such is that the control over working hours is the biggest trouble that both politicians and employers can face. The major precondition for control in this case does become to have the working and leisure hours separated, and also to separate working days from the holidays.

Self-efficacy and performance

An individual’s theory of intelligence is considered to be the belief that the person has about nature and their working intellect. The researches related to these theories have grown out of the study of individual achievement goals. It was discovered in this research; the ones related to studies, that the some students were highly oriented about validating their ability (one that makes them to pursue performance goals), while others were found to be oriented towards learning in the same situation (they purse mastery and learning goals). The impact of such is that it raised the question of: what are the factors that determine the goals favoured by students? It is affirmed in social-cognitive theory that self-efficacy belief are born out of a broader framework of “self-theories” as conceptualized by Dweck (1999), which cover motivation and performance. In these theories, investigation were conducted in relation to how people develop themselves and their believes (which is their self-esteem) and how they make use of these beliefs to create psychological world, feelings, behaviours, and thoughts that shape them into whom they become. In this approach, revelations are made about why some people are motivated to work harder, while others turnout to become helpless in some situation and as such, self-defeating. The conclusion of this study is an exploration of the implication of the concept of self-esteem, one that suggest rethinking it in relation to its role in motivation, as well as the factors that foster them. In one of the two implicit theories, “entity theory of intelligence”, it was discovered that when individuals subscribe to this theory are less likely to engage themselves in challenging tasks and the impact is that they are at risk of underperforming based on the fact that they conceive intelligence to be stable and fixed. Such people seem to have a higher desire at proving themselves to others, one that would help them to be seen as smart and avert being seen as unintelligent but at the end of the day, they seem to prefer not putting in the expected effort. In contrast, there is the second implicit theory, which is the “incremental theory” and it postulates that intelligence is fluid, malleable and changeable. In the case that people subscribe to this theory, they are content with the satisfaction that comes from the learning process and they might highlight opportunities for improvement as well as put in necessary efforts to work hard and provider enhanced performance outcomes. In any case, it is important to point out that they don’t focus on the outcome attainable from participating in the learning process. Self-efficacy is elucidated by the implicit theories of intelligence, and other elucidations include their level of self-regulation, pursued goals, and achievements. In such circumstances, both achievement (Woolfolk Hoy & Burke-Spero, 2005) and motivation of the person (Valentine, DuBois, & Cooper, 2004) could potentially become influenced. A good example is in the case where the person employ the entity intelligence that does favour mastery goals (Fives, Hamman, & Olivarez, 2005), it shouldn’t be expected that they can mobilize cognitive and meta-cognitive measures such as planning, elaborating and monitoring (Ommundsen, Haugen, & Thorleif, 2005), and as such, it is difficult for them to thrive when faced with difficult situations (Busato, Prins, Elshout, & Hamaker, 2000) as well as feel threatened by the demand for them to do more (Ames, 1992). On the same note, when the person is oriented more towards the incremental morality, they would probably be more positive, seek mastery as against performance, put in more efforts in their work process and be more self-regulated (Zhang, 2003). It has been discovered that those who believe in incremental intelligence do show higher level of self-efficacy, and they are better motivated as well as focused on the real of meta-cognition as well as more likely to put in more efforts in their job and take challenging tasks (Komarraju, Karau, & Schmeck, 2009).

While there are indications that self-regulation is related to the believe of self-efficacy (Wolfe & Johnson, 1995; Tuckman, 2003), the relationship of self-efficacy seem to be inconsistent when measured with goals, motivation and achievement. Thus, there are suggestions that when motivation, thoughts, affect, and achievement are put into consideration, a strong pursuit of performance goals and mastery might become futile, where it has also been shown that the mastery goals would have upper hand (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2010). In the case that the person does feel that it is important to coordinate their motivation and persistence in line with their tasks at hand; it does seem that they will tailor the strategies they prefer in line with the created conditions. For instance, when they are handling a task that considers it necessary to implemented performance strategies, they might resort to performance goals. When people encounter difficult materials, it might justify their utilization of information processing policies. The extrinsic measures might be sought in the event that they desire to stay focused on unrelated materials (Komarraju & Karau, 2005). The relationship between achievement and self-efficacy is linked to factors such as implicit theories of intelligence, self-regulation and achievement goals in their complex nature.

Bandura ( 2001) while delineating self-efficacy within the social-cognitive theory framework did describe self-efficacy to be a motivation orientation that does stimulate the grit when people are faced with difficult situation, bringing about enhancement on their deliberate actions, encouraging long-term views, fostering self-regulation and making it possible for people to self-correct whenever such is considered necessary. In a number of researches, self-efficacy has been presented as a reliable predictor of performance and motivation, with it being considered as a factor that doesn’t alter in line with time, different communities and environment (De Raad & Shouwenburg, 1996; Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007; Farsides & Woodfield, 2003). Abouserie (1995) conducted another study where it was marinated that involvement with success or failure could be related to a strong or weak level of self-efficacy and such relationship could be used to determine the performance of people. There is also another claim in literatures that the motivational module of self-efficacy could lead to an apparent inducement of the academic performance of students (Ashwin, 2006; Pritchard & Wilson, 2003; Ridgell & Lounsbury, 2004; Chamorro-Premusic & Furnham, 2003). In another report, it was made known by Miller & Brickman (2004) that strong performance might be associated with increase in one’s confidence and power and such would stimulate the individuals into taking higher level of responsibility for successful completion of tasks and projects. Based on this view, it was also noted by Frey & Determan (2004) that people who have the superior ability needed for work do show higher level of performance and attain superior evaluation. It is apparent that such individuals have higher level of self-efficacy and less anxiety. Furthering on this, similar fluctuations were underlined by Livengood (1992) within a single semester in the course of which the students were offered continuous feedback on their performance. While it is reported that the high performing students that they are highly self-confident and attributed their high performance to greater value for their learning, the low achieving students were found to be less in confidence. Therefore, it was concluded that when vigorously predicting academic performance, one need to combine self-efficacy and motivation, and as a result of its complexity, such relationship is said to demand higher exploration.

How creative people can utilize self-efficacy to enhance performance when faced with anxiety and task management issues: it is all about self-regulation

When faced with anxiety and task management issues, the creative individuals are said to be able to enhance their performance with the aid of self-efficacy through self-regulation. In self-regulated learning, the emphasis is on autonomy and control by the individual that directs, monitors, and regulates their actions towards the aim of acquiring information, expanding their expertise, and self-improvement. In particular, the self-regulated learners are said to be cognizant of their strength and weaknesses, and they have different kinds of strategies which they apply in their right manner to handle their daily challenging tasks. These sets of people are of the belief that intelligence is malleable (one that is opposed to the fixed and entity view of intelligence) and as such, they have their success or failure attributed to the factors that are under their control. It is also believed by these people that opportunities to partake in challenging tasks, practice their learning, gain higher level understanding of the task, and put in the right effort that would ensure that they create desired academic success. To some extent, these features might help when it comes to explaining why the self-regulated learner will normally show a high sense of self-efficacy. For the students that show such, the features of such success will likely go beyond their academic life into real world setting (Grzegorek, Slaney, Franze, & Rice, 2004). Insight was offered by Ozer & Benet-Martinez (2005) on the relationship between self-efficacy and performance. The claim that this is based on entails motivational components, cognitive and meta-cognitive features as well as resource management. In other words, it is believed that people who have high self-efficacy seem to be more tenacious, hard working, have preference for dealing with challenging tasks, and they are better positioned to cope with their anxiety. In accordance with Snyder (2000), it is marinated that such people are more likely to resort to self-regulating measures like goal setting, self-evaluation, and self-monitoring. On the same note, it was pointed out by Entwistle & Entwistle (1970) that those with self-efficacy have higher tendency to show greater self-control, uphold mastery goals, and put in more efforts when faced with difficult situations with then eventual outcome being enhanced performance. The work of Zhang (2002) also offered insight in this, were it was contended that people who have higher self-efficacy can perform at higher level  due to their ability to cope with difficulty more effectively, and in clarification, the elements of master goal orientation might be added based on the work of Anderson, Boyles, & Rainie (2012). It is also possible that such people considered their task to be interesting, valuated, and related to their objectives, which employ them to put in more pertinent efforts (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005). Thus, the summary is that self-efficacy can be used to bring about enhanced performance be it in the form of goal-setting or effort regulation, and both of these are intrinsic motivation (Payne, Youngcourt, & Beaubien, 2007; Pajares, 1996; Doyle & Moen, 1978).

Therefore, creative people can enhance their performance with self-efficacy when faced with anxiety and task management issues as pointed out by Laurillard (2002), that they can do so by enhancing their self-regulation and coordinating the circumstances (internal and external) that surrounds them. In the hallmark of this measure is that under such circumstances, the self-efficacious individuals are aware of whom to ask for help, capable of making decisions in relation to their required efforts, and have their intent designed attain goals as well as schedule their time righteously. That is to say, the self-efficacious individuals are better positioned in cases of anxiety and time management issues to counter their challenges and produce performance as normal or even higher in line with the view of Green, Nelson & Marsh (2006). These sets of people are courageous and even under such extreme conditions, they still rely strongly on their will-power and input necessary remedies to ensure that these issues doesn’t come against their desire to succeed, effectively leading to better performance in the end. Therefore, when faced with anxiety and time management issues, creative people can utilize self-efficacy to enhance their performance by remaining focused and courageous.

Conclusion

Self-efficacy, as defined in this work, is the strong belief that people have about their ability and potentials. This pushes them to do more and produce more, strongly believing that they are capable of doing anything irrespective of how challenging it might be. As such, when these people are faced with anxiety and time management issues, they are able to sustain or even enhance their performance by remaining focused and being strategic in the way they go about such task.

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