Abstract
Self-efficacy is an individual's confidence that he or she possesses the ability to or will be able to accomplish a task. Previous literature has indicated that self-efficacy is linked to persistence on a difficult and challenging task. Herein, we showed that the manipulation of perceptual fluency increased the self-efficacy beliefs, and even changed the behavioral persistence to a challenging task. In Study 1, we manipulated perceptual fluency by changing the figure-ground contrast of an intelligence task. The results indicated that the high contrast task increased self-efficacy relative to the low contrast task. In Study 2, we examined the effect of perceptual fluency on behavioral persistence using an unsolvable intelligence task. The results showed that participants worked on the unsolvable task significantly longer in the high contrast condition than in the low contrast condition.
