Freedom [should not be] conceived negatively as exemption from social influences or situational constraints. Rather...positively as the exercise of self-influence to bring about desired results.

People infer high self-efficacy from successes achieved through minimal effort on difficult tasks, but they infer low self-efficacy if they had to work hard under favorable conditions to master relatively easy tasks

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

Measures of self-precept must be tailored to the domain of psychological functioning being explored.

Regression analyses show that self-efficacy contributes to achievement behavior beyond the effects of cognitive skills

Dysfunctions can occur in each of the self-regulatory subfunctions-in how personal experiences are self-monitored and cognitively processed, in the evaluative self-standards that are adopted, and in the evaluative self-reactions to one's own behavior.. Problems at any one of these points can create self-dissatisfactions and dejection. dysfunctions in all aspects of the self system are most apt to produce the most chronic self-disparagement and despondency

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.