Exploring emotional self-efficacy in College Students: A Study of Age, Gender, Academic Specialization and Socio-Economic Status

The belief in one's own ability to complete tasks is known as self-efficacy. Self-efficacy acts as a link between knowledge and action, according to the author. Perceptions of self-efficacy have been demonstrated to impact a person's emotional responses, behavioral preferences, and mental landscape. One way to gauge one's ability to apply specific performance kinds is through perceived self-efficacy. Self-efficacy beliefs impact people's choices in life, their degree of achievement, their level of stress and despair, the results they expect from their efforts, and their pursuit of actions. Self-efficacy plays a more important role in explaining individual differences than actual skills and talents. In this context, the concept of emotional skill self-efficacy is emphasized. Arslan, Nihan (2017)¹ Pandora described self-efficacy "as the judgment of individuals on their abilities to organize and implement the trails of required actions, to achieve specific forms of performance." Bong and Skaalvik (2003) ² state that self-efficacy of general abilities and self-skills are evaluations of what an individual may achieve given his skills and abilities; hence, self-efficacy demonstrates expectations and self-perception of adequacy (E. Skaalvik & S. Skaalvik, 2014) ³. One of the most important approaches to exercising control over oneself is through self-efficacy (Bandura et al., 2001)⁴. The emotional In order to manage negative emotions during adolescence, emotional self-efficacy is considered to be a vital aspect of resilience and mental health. A person with a high emotional self-efficacy is likely to be sensitive to the emotions of others, to tolerate the negative experiences of others, and to be able to regulate their emotions to a state of flexibility and adaptability. According to Goroshit and Hen (2014) ⁵, great emotional self-efficacy is linked to positive outlooks, the ability to control emotions, and a general sense of life satisfaction. There are no statistically significant differences at the 0.05 level, and faculty members have a high degree of emotional self-efficacy (Abdel-Hadi, 2017) ⁶. According to Beri (2018) ⁷, students' emotional self-efficacy was below average. Emotional self-efficacy as an active functioning inside the emotional intelligence stability framework. The idea of emotional self-efficacy, which denotes a person's capacity to manage or change his emotional life, is illustrated by them. In the affective sector, the structuring of negative emotions and the expression of positive ones are perceived as the regulatory variables of emotional self-efficacy. Maternal control was a marginally significant predictor of anxiety, while emotional self-efficacy and maternal rejection predicted anxiety. Paternal rejection and control did not predict anxiety. Maternal rejection, but not paternal rejection or control by parents, predicted emotional self-efficacy and emotional self-efficacy mediated the relation between maternal rejection and anxiety which concluded the result offer support for a commonly cited theoretical pathway from maternal rejection to youth anxiety by teaching that positive emotional outcomes are rare and outside of the child’s control. There is a negative and significant relation between emotional self-efficacy and statistical anxiety and meta cognitive correlation between regulatory emotional self-efficacy and network misconduct of college students. (Niditch 2012) ⁸ Emotional self-efficacy refer to people’ judgment regarding their own capacity’s to process emotional information accurately and effectively, as a means of self-regulation and managing emotions intelligently (Kirk Hine, 2008). ⁹ In interpersonal interactions involving emotions, emotional self-efficacy manifests as a sense of personal efficiency. The ability to use one's own emotional reactions and those of others as coping mechanisms is a measure of emotional self-efficacy. Individuals who possess strong emotional self-efficacy tend to be highly perceptive and sensitive to the feelings of others. They are able to adjust their emotions in a flexible and adaptive way and are receptive to undesirable emotional experiences. A high degree of emotional self-efficacy is linked to positive perceptions about one's social competence, academic performance, sense of fulfillment with life in general, and emotional regulation (Schunk, 2005) ¹⁰ Emotional self-efficacy is a component of self-perceptions of emotional functionality, but emotional functionality also encompasses other sentiments and dispositions. Consequently, they argue that emotional self-efficacy is a characteristic of emotional intelligence and that emotional self-efficacy and emotional functionality are not interchangeable, 2011's Schutte and Hine. The concept of emotional self-efficacy signifies the degree to which a person is able to manage or change his emotional life. The ability to organize unpleasant emotions and express positive ones is seen as one of the regulatory variables of emotional self-efficacy (Caprara et al., 2008) ¹¹. The fact that the youth category is not well defined and that it sometimes depends more on a person's social circumstances than on their age or cultural standing is a recurrent finding in a lot of study on youth cultures and identities. Young people in their 30s or 40s may also be considered youth in a particular culture, as may preadolescents. Furthermore, whether or not its practitioners remain in the young category, youth as a cultural stage frequently signals the start of a long-term, even lifetime, participation in specific cultural activities. Although related categories like adolescent, teenager, or young adult offer more detail in terms of age, their use varies depending on the situation. Additionally, possibly opposing classifications like child, adult. This article does not attempt to provide a thorough overview of the extensive body of multidisciplinary literature on youth and adolescence due to space constraints. Generally speaking, I have concentrated more on recent research, anthropological work, and research from other disciplines that is closely related to important anthropological concerns about youth. Even some studies that fit these criteria have inevitably been left out for space considerations; those that are included are helpful examples of particular points but may not be the best representations of recent youth research. In order to include members of the youth category in my discussion of a given issue or elder may shift, I have occasionally resorted to no ethnographic work because ethnographic research on many elements of youth cultural practice is frequently shockingly lacking. As a result, in Soviet Russia, the dependent position of teenagers was symbolically enforced in a number of ways, and the category of teenager was merged into that of child in official language (Markowitz 2000)¹². While this is changing in many nations, not all cultures view youth or adolescence as a particularly significant life stage. Rapid cultural and economic change caused adolescence to emerge as a social category and the adolescent peer group to evolve as a social structure among Canadian Inuit, according to Condon (1990) ¹³. Teenagers are a self-aware age group that is targeted as potential consumers in many nations due to a new category of adolescence that is a relatively recent and ongoing media construct (Liechty, 1995, White, 1995) ^{14, 15}.

Need and significance of the study

Emotional self-efficacy, conceptualized by Muris (2002)¹⁶ as the perceived capability to effectively regulate negative emotional states, represents a critical psychological construct in collegiate development that is shaped through environmental interactions and cognitive meditational processes (Macakova & Wood, 2022)¹⁷. Empirical evidence from Galla and Wood (2011) ¹⁸ demonstrates that emotional self-efficacy serves as a protective buffer against anxiety's detrimental effects on academic performance, as anxiety negatively predicted mathematical assessment outcomes only among students exhibiting low emotional self-efficacy. Given these significant implications for psychosocial and academic functioning during this formative developmental period, this investigation was undertaken to examine how emotional self-efficacy manifests across demographic variables within an Indian higher education context. The findings hold considerable significance for educational stakeholders-including parents, faculty, and administrators by providing foundational knowledge for developing evidence-based interventions designed to foster optimal emotional development across diverse student populations, irrespective of age, gender, academic specialization, or socioeconomic background, thereby enhancing holistic student development and psychological well-being within higher education institutions.

Aims and objective: To comprehensively investigating the relationship between emotional self-efficacy and demographic variables (Age, Gender, Specialization, Socio-economic status)

METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

For the present study to identify the level of emotional self-efficacy among college students from different disciplines of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Sample size 150 youths from 03 different streams (Arts, Science and Commerce) of BBAU shall be included in the study. Sampling procedure - Purposive randomly sampling technique shall be used for selecting the sample. A Self-Structured Socio Demographic Profile Sheet including information like name, age, gender, Specialization, type of family, place of residence, etc. shall be administered.

Tools used: Emotional Self-efficacy tool developed by Nimisha Beri and Manisha Jain (2015) ¹⁹ was used in the study. The tool consists of 31 items which are favorable in nature. It has three dimensions like understanding self and others, using emotions to facilitate thoughts and regulation to emotion in self and others. Each item is marked on a 5point Likert scale viz. strongly agree, agree, undecided, Disagree, strongly disagree. Reliability coefficient of the scale is 0.96. To assess the socio-economic status of the respondent Kuppuswamy socio-economic status was administered.

RESULTS

Table- 1: Frequencies and percentages according to study variables (N=150).

It is noted from table-1 that majority (52%) of the youth was male and 48% were females. The respondent were equally distributed (33.3%) over stream i.e. science, art and commerce. Looking forward as per age majority (60.7%) the respondents were from 20-25 years followed 39.3% were from age group 25-30 years. According to the socio-economic status of the respondents it was found that major proportion (57.3%) of the youth belonged to upper middle class, followed by lower middle class (19.3%), (16.7%) from upper class, 6 percent of the respondents were from upper lower, and remaining (0.7%) respondents were from the lower class respectively.

Table- 2: Emotional Self-efficacy of the respondents