People who hold a low view of themselves [will credit] their achievements to external factors, rather than to their own capabilities.

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

Except for events that carry great weight, it is not experience per se, but how they match expectations, that governs their emotional impact

Perceived self-inefficacy predicts avoidance of academic activities whereas anxiety does not

In the self-appraisal of efficacy, there are many sources of information that must be processed and weighed through self-referent thought

Among the types of thoughts that affect action, none is more central or pervasive than people's judgments of their capabilities to deal effectively with different realities

To grant thought causal efficacy is not to invoke a disembodied mental state