People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities.

Self-efficacy is the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the sources of action required to manage prospective situations.

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

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

Expected outcomes contribute to motivation independently of self-efficacy beliefs when outcomes are not completely controlled by quality of performance. This occurs when extraneous factors also affect outcomes, or outcomes are socially tied to a minimum level of performance so that some variations in quality of performance above and below the standard do not produce differential outcomes

Discrepancies between self-efficacy judgment and performance will arise when either the tasks or the circumstances under which they are performed are ambiguous

Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing.