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

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.

A problem of future research is to clarify how young children learn what type of social comparative information is most useful for efficacy evaluation

People regulate their level and distribution of effort in accordance with the effects they expect their actions to have. As a result, their behavior is better predicted from their beliefs than from the actual consequences of their actions

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

People who underestimate their capabilities also bear costs, although, as already noted, these are more likely to take self-limiting rather than aversive forms. By failing to cultivate personal potentialities and constricting their activities, such persons cut themselves off from many rewarding experiences. Should they attempt tasks having evaluative significance, they create internal obstacles to effective performance by approaching them with unnerving self-doubts

The effects of outcome expectancies on performance motivation are partly governed by self-beliefs of efficacy