People's conceptions about themselves and the nature of things are developed and verified through four different processes: direct experience of the effects produced by their actions, vicarious experience of the effects produced by somebody else's actions, judgments voiced by others, and derivation of further knowledge from what they already know by using rules of inference

[Children] receive direct instruction from time to time about the appropriateness of various social comparisons

It is no more informative to speak of self-efficacy in global terms than to speak of nonspecific social behavior

We are more heavily invested in the theories of failure than we are in the theories of success.

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

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

Indeed there are many competent people who are plagued by a sense of inefficacy, and many less competent ones who remain unperturbed by impending threats because they are self-assured of their coping capabilities