Does Tony "Stop Believing"

Self-efficacy is one’s beliefs in themselves and that they are confident in their abilities to achieve their goals - creating the motivation to do so. When a person has high self-efficacy, they will have a higher chance in completing the goals that they created. However, just because a person has high self-efficacy in one area, does not mean that they will in every area. 

For Tony Soprano, his self-efficacy decreases over time. Throughout the whole series, we see Tony face situations that challenge his perception of control. While he has to make life-or-death decisions on the daily, his extreme paranoia and depression increasingly affects his rational. Tony knows that he has to be the one to make all of the decisions because he is a mob boss. He also knows that if he is not timely, or careful, other people could try to make the decisions for him and question his authority; which could lead to an uprising and upheaval in the crime world. 

At the beginning of the series, Tony starts seeing a psychiatrist because he has his first panic attack that caused him to faint. The beginning of the series is also when we see Tony come into a new position - “de facto” boss. While he technically will not be officially named “don” until season 6, he is the street boss. With his new power, great responsibilities follow, responsibilities that make him question everything he knows. As the series prolongs, Tony faces decisions that make him regret the life he is in.

The viewers can tell over time that Tony starts to lose faith in himself. It is clear that Tony questions the stability of the mafia and his nuclear family. These factors can be attributed to his fixed mindset. In a fixed mindset, a person believes that there is no point in trying to change his/her personality traits because they are stagnant; often people with this mindset believe “this is how I was born and there is nothing that I can do to change it.” While Tony goes to therapy and takes Prozac throughout the entirety of the series, he believes that showing up is good enough and that is what is supposed to fix him. Dr. Melfi (his psychiatrist) tells Tony that showing up is half the work and she convinces him to continue therapy. After a few sessions and being on Prozac for less than a week, he deems that he is fixed, until he has his next panic attack. Tony consistently cycles in the series, saying he doesn’t need therapy because he is “fixed” and then has a panic attack or becomes immensely depressed that he cannot get out of bed.

At the beginning, Tony’s self-efficacy comes from his pride. His father was the head of this mob family at one point, and after years of admiring his father and holding him on a pedestal, Tony was convinced he would be able to live up to the image of his father. However, through years of decisions and events that tore him down (for example, making the decision to kill one of his best friends and closest confidants, because he was colluding with the Feds), Tony loses all sense of self and morality. Towards the last two/three seasons, Tony makes decisions that show that he does not have the family in control. Due to his fixed-mindset, Tony gets caught up in the mentality that he cannot prevent horrible things from happening, so let them. The walls are closing in on Tony Soprano and he accepts his fate.