Given a sufficient level of perceived self-efficacy to take on threatening tasks, phobics perform them with varying amounts of fear arousal depending on the strength of their perceived self-efficacy

People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided.

In any given instance, behavior can be predicted best by considering both self-efficacy and outcome beliefs . . . different patterns of self-efficacy and outcome beliefs are likely to produce different psychological effects

Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences.

Perceived self-efficacy in coping with potential threats leads people to approach such situations anxiously, and experience of disruptive arousal may further lower their sense of efficacy that they will be able to perform skillfully

Self-percepts foster actions that generate information, as well as serve as a filtering mechanism for self-referent information in the self-maintaining process

Self-appraisals of efficacy are reasonably accurate, but they diverge from action because people do not know fully what they will have to do, lack information for regulating their effort, or are hindered by external factors from doing what they can