Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing.

People behave agentically, but they produce theories that afford people very little agency.

Perceived self-inefficacy predicts avoidance of academic activities whereas anxiety does not

For many activities, people cannot rely solely on themselves in evaluating their ability level because such judgments require inferences from probabilistic indicants of talent about which they may have limited knowledge. Self-appraisals are, therefore, partly based on the opinions of others who presumably possess evaluative competence

Such knowledge is probably gained in several ways. One process undoubtedly operates through social comparison of success and failure experiences. Children repeatedly observe their own behavior and the attainments of others

When actions are followed by events that are not causally related to the prior acts, people often erroneously perceive contingencies that do not, in fact, exist

Even noteworthy performance attainments do not necessarily boost perceived self-efficacy