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

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

This has increased with the tremendous technological advances in communications. We have a vast new world of images brought into our sitting rooms electronically. Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience. This has increased with the tremendous technological advances in communications. We have a vast new world of images brought into our sitting-rooms electronically.

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

In any given instance, behavior can be predicted best by considering both self-efficacy and outcome beliefs . . . different patterns of self-efficacy and outcome beliefs are likely to produce different psychological effects

People who are insecure about themselves will avoid social comparisons that are potentially threatening to their self-esteem

The difficulty in judging what type of behavior works well arises not only because a given course of action does not always produce the outcomes. Similar outcomes can occur for reasons other than the person's actions, which further complicates inferential judgment. Effects that arise independently of one's actions distort the influence of similar effects produced by the actions, but only on some occasions. Given a strong cognitive set to perceive regularities, even chance joint occurrences of events can be easily misjudged as genuine relationships of low contingent probability