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

People not only gain understanding through reflection, they evaluate and alter their own thinking.

In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy results from diverse sources of information conveyed vicariously and through social evaluation, as well as through direct experience

As a general rule, moderate levels of arousal facilitate deployment of skills, whereas high arousal disrupts it. This is especially true of complex activities requiring intricate organization of behavior

There are countless studies on the negative spillover of job pressures on family life, but few on how job satisfaction enhances the quality of family life.

Misbeliefs in one's inefficacy may retard development of the very subskills upon which more complex performances depend