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[Attributional] factors serve as conveyors of efficacy information that influence performance largely through their intervening effects on self-percepts of efficacy.
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Misbeliefs in one's inefficacy may retard development of the very subskills upon which more complex performances depend.
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Measures of self-precept must be tailored to the domain of psychological functioning being explored.
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Incongruities between self-efficacy and action may stem from misperceptions of task demands, as well as from faulty self-knowledge.
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One cannot afford to be a realist.
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Agemates provide the most informative points of reference for comparative efficacy appraisal and verification. Children are, therefore, especially sensitive to their relative standing among the peers with whom they affiliate in activities that determine prestige and popularity.
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People are much more likely to act on their self-percepts of efficacy inferred from many sources of information rather than rely primarily on visceral cues. This is not surprising because self knowledge based on information about one's coping skills, past accomplishments, and social comparison is considerably more indicative of capability than the indefinite stirrings of the viscera.
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Psychology cannot tell people how they ought to live their lives. It can however, provide them with the means for effecting personal and social change.
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Through their capacity to manipulate symbols and to engage in reflective thought, people can generate novel ideas and innovative actions that transcend their past experiences.
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People behave agentically, but they produce theories that afford people very little agency.
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Regression analyses show that self-efficacy contributes to achievement behavior beyond the effects of cognitive skills.
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What people think, believe, and feel affects how they behave. The natural and extrinsic effects of their actions, in turn, partly determine their thought patterns and affective reactions.
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It is no more informative to speak of self-efficacy in global terms than to speak of nonspecific social behavior.
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Forceful actions arising from erroneous beliefs often create social effects that confirm the misbeliefs.
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In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.
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The adequacy of performance attainments depends upon the personal standards against which they are judged.
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Success and failure are largely self-defined in terms of personal standards. The higher the self-standards, the more likely will given attainments be viewed as failures, regardless of what others might think.
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We find that people's beliefs about their efficacy affect the sorts of choices they make in very significant ways. In particular, it affects their levels of motivation and perseverance in the face of obstacles. Most success requires persistent effort, so low self-efficacy becomes a self-limiting process. In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, strung together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.
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Discrepancies between self-efficacy judgment and performance will arise when either the tasks or the circumstances under which they are performed are ambiguous.
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In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy results from diverse sources of information conveyed vicariously and through social evaluation, as well as through direct experience.
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For many activities, people cannot rely solely on themselves in evaluating their ability level because such judgments require inferences from probabilistic indicants of talent about which they may have limited knowledge. Self-appraisals are, therefore, partly based on the opinions of others who presumably possess evaluative competence.
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Once established, reputations do not easily change.
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Self-appraisals of efficacy are reasonably accurate, but they diverge from action because people do not know fully what they will have to do, lack information for regulating their effort, or are hindered by external factors from doing what they can.
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Perceived self-efficacy influences the types of causal attributions people make for their performances.