Stringent standards of self-evaluation [can] make otherwise objective successes seem to be personal failures

People behave agentically, but they produce theories that afford people very little agency.

Comparative appraisals of efficacy require not only evaluation of one;s own performances but also knowledge of how others do, cognizance of nonability determinants of their performances, and some understanding that it is others, like oneself, who provide the most informative social criterion for comparison

Perceived self-efficacy in coping with potential threats leads people to approach such situations anxiously, and experience of disruptive arousal may further lower their sense of efficacy that they will be able to perform skillfully

Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience.

Psychology cannot tell people how they ought to live their lives. It can however, provide them with the means for effecting personal and social change.

Accurate processing of information about outcomes is no simple task under the variable conditions of everyday life . . . usually, many factors enter into determining what effects, if any, given actions will have, Actions, therefore, produce outcomes probabilistically rather than certainly. Depending on the particular conjunction of factors, the same course of action may produce given outcomes regularly, occasionally, or only infrequently