Autoeficácia, autoexpansão e o valor de mercado percebido: uma avaliação evolucionista sobre autopercepções e relacionamentos

Abstract

Self-perceptions have a major role in humans’ lives, being influenced by previous experiences and the context in which the person is inserted in, as well as influencing future outcomes in several areas of one’s life. Among the self-perceptions, there are two specific ones that have a considerable relevance when it comes to human motivations, both in our evolutionary history and our modern lives, Self-efficacy and Perceived Mate Value. Self-efficacy is related to the abilities someone has to achieve success, which can be related to survival skills, resources acquisition, forming the sense of competence an individual has about himself/herself on a diverse set of contexts. Whereas Perceived Mate Value is a self-evaluation that allows people’s adjustment to the options available on the mating market, increasing their chances of reproductive success. On this perspective, although several studies have demonstrated the potential use of Self-efficacy on the investigation of several different behaviors and contexts of human life, its participation on the Perceived Mate Value development, as well as its implications on the demand levels towards romantic partners, are still non-existent on the literature. Due to this reality, our main goal is to investigate the relationship between Selfefficacy levels and Self-perceived Mate Value, besides bringing an approach on how Selfefficacy presents itself on a population in which there is a constant demand for competence and adjustment: college students but not restricting to them, once we propose an even wider investigation while assessing this relation on a non-college population, also an analyses of self-efficacy in groups of people on regular global health conditions and during a pandemic moment; we also bring the assessment of self-efficacy on people previous and then after particular stimuli exposure, an effect known as Priming. The present work also innovates by producing a validation study on the Self-expansion Scale for Brazilians, we consider such scale speaks directly to our approach by connecting the notion of personal skills acquisition through intimate relationships. Therefore, the present work offers information on the motivation for competence (represented by Self-efficacy), its evolutionary basis and how it is presented on the context of college demands (Chapter 1); empirical research on the relation between Self-efficacy levels, Perceived Mate Value and the characteristics desired on an romantic partner (Chapter 2); study developed with the aim to expand our analysis proposal to a more diverse population, assessing the potential relation between Self-efficacy and Perceived Mate Value in a non-college- population (Chapter 3); investigation on the Priming Effect on people’s Self-efficacy perception (Chapter 4); an empirical study which proposes the assessment of people’s Self-efficacy levels before and during COVID-19 pandemic (Chapter 5) and lastly, Evidences of validity study on the Self-expansion Scale for Brazilians (Chapter 6).