When people are not aiming for anything in particular or when they cannot monitor their performance, there is little basis for translating perceived efficacy into appropriate magnitudes of effort

Persons who have a strong sense of efficacy deploy their attention and effort to the demands of the situation and are spurred by obstacles to greater effort.

Humans are producers of their life circumstance not just products of them.

Social cognitive theory rejects the dichotomous conception of self as agent and self as object. Acting on the environment and acting on oneself entail shifting the perspective of the same agent rather than reifying different selves regulating each other or transforming the self from agent to object

A theory that denies that thoughts can regulate actions does not lend itself readily to the explanation of complex human behavior.

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

The adequacy of performance attainments depends upon the personal standards against which they are judged