According to Bandura, human motivation, well‒being, and personal accomplishment are based more on what an individual believes than on what is objectively true.
Unless people believe that their actions can produce the outcomes they desire, they have little incentive to act or to persevere in the face of obstacles.
For this reason, how people behave can often be better predicted by the beliefs they hold about their capabilities than by what they are actually capable of accomplishing, for these self‒efficacy perceptions help determine what individuals do with the knowledge and skills they have.
This helps explain why people’s behaviors are sometimes disjoined from their actual capabilities, and why their behaviors may differ widely even when they have similar knowledge and skills.
Many individuals suffer frequent and sometimes debilitating self‒doubts about capabilities they clearly possess, just as many others are sometimes confident about what they can accomplish despite possessing modest skills.