Self-efficacy expectancies, response-outcome expectancies, emotionally based expectancies, and their relationship to...

Investigated the relationship of four types of expectancy to snake avoidant behavior and its reduction through modeling. Response-outcome expectancies are beliefs about the consequences of a behavior; self-efficacy expectancies are beliefs about one's ability to perform the behavior. Intellectually based expectancies are views of oneself or the world that are perceived to be accurate representations of reality; emotionally based expectancies are views of oneself or the world that may be perceived as inaccurate or irrational by the person who holds them. Experiments I and II investigated the relationship of intellectually and emotionally based versions of both response-outcome expectancies and self-efficacy expectancies to snake avoidant behavior. It was found that all four expectancy variables correlate significantly with behavior on a snake avoidance task. Self-efficacy expectancies are not clearly better predictors of behavior than are response-outcome expectancies. Experiment III found that all four variables are changed as a consequence of modeling. It was concluded that a four-variable expectancy model is necessary to explain avoidant behavior.