Judgments of adequacy involve social comparison processes.
By sticking it out through tough times, people emerge from adversity with a stronger sense of efficacy.
The presence of many interacting influences, including the attainments of others, create further leeway in how one’s performances and outcomes are cognitively appraised.
Success and failure are largely self-defined in terms of personal standards. The higher the self-standards, the more likely will given attainments be viewed as failures, regardless of what others might think.
Because of such conjointedness, behavior that exerts no effect whatsoever on outcomes is developed and consistently performed.
People not only gain understanding through reflection, they evaluate and alter their own thinking.
If there is any characteristic that is distinctly human, it is the capability for reflective self-consciousness.
Self-percepts foster actions that generate information, as well as serve as a filtering mechanism for self-referent information in the self-maintaining process.
Except for events that carry great weight, it is not experience per se, but how they match expectations, that governs their emotional impact.
The satisfactions people derive from what they do are determined to a large degree by their self-evaluative standards.
People regulate their level and distribution of effort in accordance with the effects they expect their actions to have. As a result, their behavior is better predicted from their beliefs than from the actual consequences of their actions.
In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy results from diverse sources of information conveyed vicariously and through social evaluation, as well as through direct experience.
It is no more informative to speak of self-efficacy in global terms than to speak of nonspecific social behavior.
Misbeliefs in one’s inefficacy may retard development of the very subskills upon which more complex performances depend.
Such self-referent misgivings creates stress and undermine effective use of the competencies people possess by diverting attention from how best to proceed to concern over personal failings and possible mishaps.
The effects of outcome expectancies on performance motivation are partly governed by self-beliefs of efficacy.
It is widely assumed that beliefs in personal determination of outcomes create a sense of efficacy and power, whereas beliefs that outcomes occur regardless of what one does result in apathy.
Regression analyses show that self-efficacy contributes to achievement behavior beyond the effects of cognitive skills.
Ironically, it is the talented who have high aspirations, which are possible but exceedingly difficult to realize, who are especially vulnerable to self-dissatisfaction despite notable achievements.
Persons who have a strong sense of efficacy deploy their attention and effort to the demands of the situation and are spurred by obstacles to greater effort.