Under most circumstances, high self-efficacy results in high effort; however, Bandura has predicted that when efficacy is measured during preparation for a competition, lower efficacy beliefs may actually be beneficial to preparatory effort because the accompanying self-doubt induces motivation to put forth greater effort in preparation for the competition (Bandura, 1997). Despite Bandura's predictions regarding preparatory efficacy, no evidence existed to test his suppositions (Feltz & Wood, 2009). This dissertation comprises two studies designed to test Bandura's (1997) predictions and examine the concept of preparatory efficacy. In each of the studies in this dissertation, participants competed individually in golf putting competitions that included both a preparation and competition phase. Participants used a golf putter to putt balls at three targets of varying difficulty: high, medium, and low efficacy targets. The number of practice putts taken out of 30 total was used as the effort measure. It was hypothesized that participants would spend the most practice effort putting at the low efficacy (i.e., high difficulty) target, moderate effort at the medium efficacy (i.e., medium difficulty) target, and the least effort at the high efficacy target (i.e., low difficult) target. Results of both studies indicated the high efficacy target resulted in the lowest preparatory effort in comparison to preparatory effort at the medium and low efficacy targets (p < .001). Additionally in both studies, preparatory effort was highest at the low efficacy target but did not differ significantly from effort at the medium efficacy target. Thus, across both studies, lower preparatory efficacy was associated with higher preparatory effort, supporting Bandura's prediction. Self-efficacy and performance were significantly related at the medium efficacy targets in both studies. The obtained efficacy-performance correlations were similar to those obtained in meta-analyses on this topic (Moritz, Feltz, Fahrbach, & Mack, 2000). In Study 2, which provided more opportunities for exploratory analyses, efficacy changes from preparation to performance were significantly related to practice quality at all three targets and practice satisfaction at the low and medium efficacy targets.
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