Ideal for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses, or for professional use, the book is based on Bandura's theory that those with high self-efficacy expectancies - the belief that one can achieve what one sets out to do - are healthier, more effective, and generally more successful than those with low self-efficacy expectancies. He begins with a discussion of theory and method: what self-efficacy is and how it can be developed. Bandura then demonstrates how belief in one's capabilities affects development and psychosocial functioning during the course of life, underscoring provocative applications of this work to issues in education, health, psychopathology, athletics, business, and international affairs.

The nature of human agency -- Human agency in triadic reciprocal causation -- Determinism and the exercise of self-influence -- Related views of personal efficacy -- Perceived self-efficacy as a generative capability -- Active producers versus passive foretellers of performances -- The self-efficacy approach to personal causation -- Multidimensionality of self-efficacy belief systems -- Self-efficacy causality -- Sources of discordance between efficacy judgment and action -- Enactive mastery experience -- Vicarious experience -- Verbal persuasion -- Physiological and affective states -- Integration of efficacy information -- Cognitive processes -- Motivational processes -- Affective processes -- Selection processes -- Origins of a sense of personal agency -- Familial sources of self-efficacy -- Peers and the broadening and validation of self-efficacy -- School as an agency for cultivating self-efficacy -- Growth of self-efficacy through transitional experiences of adolescence -- Self-efficacy concerns of adulthood -- Reappraisals of self-efficacy with advancing age.