A problem of future research is to clarify how young children learn what type of social comparative information is most useful for efficacy evaluation

How children learn to use diverse sources of efficacy information in developing a stable and accurate sense of personal efficacy is a matter of considerable interest

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.

In the self-appraisal of efficacy, there are many sources of information that must be processed and weighed through self-referent thought

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

Perceived self-efficacy also shapes causal thinking. In seeking solutions to difficult problems, those who perceived themselves as highly efficacious are inclined to attribute their failures to insufficient effort, whereas those of comparable skills but lower perceived self-efficacy ascribe their failures to deficient ability

Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience.