The goal of this study was to analyze how priming individuals would affect general self-efficacy levels. The sample consisted of 209 undergraduate students from Appalachian State University who completed the New General Self-Efficacy scale. The subjects received one of four prompts that either implicitly or explicitly primed them to think of themselves as leaders or experience stereotype threat with respect to gender and self-efficacy. Overall, our participants all reported very high self-efficacy levels with little variance in the scores. Results indicated that females did not experience stereotype threat when explicitly primed to think of self-efficacy as masculine. Males who were explicitly primed to think of self-efficacy as masculine did not report higher self-efficacy than those who were implicitly primed. Males did not report higher self-efficacy than females. Females who were explicitly primed to think of themselves as leaders did not report higher self-efficacy than those explicitly primed to think of self-efficacy as masculine. Participants who had held a leadership position did report higher self-efficacy than those who had not. Further research should be conducted in this area to determine if other types of priming may influence self-efficacy levels
