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

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

Judgments of adequacy involve social comparison processes

People who are burdened by acute misgivings about their coping capabilities suffer much distress and expend much effort in defensive action... they cannot get themselves to do things they find subjectively threatening even though they are objectively safe. They may even shun easily manageable activities because they see them as leading to more threatening events over which they will be unable to exercise adequate control.

Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing.

Behavior must also be adequately assessed under appropriate circumstances. Ill-defined global measures of perceived self-efficacy or defective assessments of performance will yield discordances. Disparities will also arise when efficacy is judged for performances in actual situations but performance is measured in simulated situations that are easier to deal with than the actualities

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