Incongruities between self-efficacy and action may stem from misperceptions of task demands, as well as from faulty self-knowledge

Forceful actions arising from erroneous beliefs often create social effects that confirm the misbeliefs

If you look at our theories of social pathology and then at the dismal conditions in which children grow up in our ghettos, you would predict that all of them would be on drugs or psychological basket cases. Yet if you use criteria like gainful employment, forming partnerships and life without crime, you will find that most of those kids make it.

The performances of others are often selected as standards for self-improvement of abilities

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

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.

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