The effects of outcome expectancies on performance motivation are partly governed by self-beliefs of efficacy

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.

If self-efficacy is lacking, people tend to behave ineffectually, even though they know what to do.

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

Reasonably accurate appraisal of one's own capabilities is, therefore, of considerable value in successful functioning. Large misjudgments of personal efficacy in either direction have consequences. People who grossly overestimate their capabilities undertake activities that are clearly beyond their reach. As a result, they get themselves into considerable difficulties, undermine their credibility, and suffer needless failures. Some of the missteps, of course, can produce serious, irreparable harm

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.

Students judge how well they might do in a chemistry course from knowing how peers, who performed comparably to them in physics, fared in chemistry