People Who Hold A Low View Of

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.

One Cannot Afford To Be A Realist.

People's Conceptions About Themselves And The Nature Of Things Are Developed And Verified Through Four Different Processes: Direct Experience Of The Effects Produced By Their Actions, Vicarious Experience Of The Effects Produced By Somebody Else's Actions, Judgments Voiced By Others, And Derivation Of Further Knowledge From What They Already Know By Using Rules Of Inference

Judgments Of Adequacy Involve Social Comparison Processes

Self-appraisals Are Influenced By Evaluative Reactions Of Others.