If you look at our theories of social pathology and then at the dismal conditions in which children grow up in our ghettos, you would predict that all of them would be on drugs or psychological basket cases. Yet if you use criteria like gainful employment, forming partnerships and life without crime, you will find that most of those kids make it.

Even noteworthy performance attainments do not necessarily boost perceived self-efficacy

Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences.

We are more heavily invested in the theories of failure than we are in the theories of success.

If self-efficacy is lacking, people tend to behave ineffectually, even though they know what to do.

People who are insecure about themselves will avoid social comparisons that are potentially threatening to their self-esteem

To the extent that children with similar characteristics achieve comparable performance levels, using the performances of similar peers is likely to yield more accurate self-appraisal than using the accomplishments of dissimilar peers