"Different periods of life present certain prototypic competency demands for successful functioning. Changing aspirations, time perspectives, and social arrangements over the course of the life span alter how people structure, regulate, and evaluate their lives in the lifelong journey" (163).

• Changes with age do not represent lock-step stages through which everyone must pass
• Adolescence is not necessarily a period of adaptational turbulence
• The middle years are not necessarily the period of a midlife crisis
• There are many pathways through life
• Affected by age, social events, status, family, education
• Some things are predictable, some are not
• "Fate is the arbiter of half . . ."
• Backgammon - ½ luck ½ skill
• Thus, only a measure of control is often achievable
• Serendipity/Synchronicity
• "People are often brought together through a fortuitous constellation of events that can shape the course of their lives" (163).
• "The particular patterning of changes - interwoven with fortuitous occurrences - contribute to the uniqueness of individual life."xx
Operative environments take three different forms
• Imposed
• Physical
• Social - The key here is viewing it favorably, neutrally, or negatively
• Selected
• Potential
• Actual - The selection of an environment changes it from potential to actual
• Created
• People create social systems

ORIGINS OF A SENSE OF PERSONAL AGENCY (164)

"The newborn arrives without any sense of self. The self must be socially constructed through transactional experiences with the environment" (164).

• "As infants begin to gain behavioral capabilities, their understanding of agent causation is fostered by experiencing and observing the results of action" (164)
• To gain agency infants must learn that they can make things happen

Recognition That Actions Produce Outcomes (164)

• Realization of personal agency requires observation that outcomes flow from actions and that recognition that actions are part of one's self.
• "Infants who experience success in controlling their environment by their actions become more attentive to their behavior and more competent learners than infants for whom the same events occur regardless of how they behave" (164).
• Infantile experiences with agency can be long lasting and widely generalized
• During the initial months of life, the exercise of influence over the physical environment may contribute more to a sense of personal agency tan influence over social environments
• Factors that can impede infants perception of control
• Hazy functional relations between event sun everyday life (no consistency)
• Delays b/t action and outcome
• Imperfect linkage b/t action and outcome
• Multi-determination of outcome
• Ambiguous environmental signaling of events that are controllable, and
• Those that are not

Recognition and Differentiation of the Self (167)

• Understanding that one is that agent of action shifts the perception of agency from action causality to personal causality.
• "infants acquire a sense of personal agency when they recognize that they can make things happen and they regard themselves as the doers" (167).
• They get their own names
• Differentiate themselves from others in verbal labeling
• During pre-verbal period of development, a sense of persona agency is perhaps
• Better reflected in evidence that courses of action are intentionally selected, self-monitored, and self-corrected

FAMILIAL SOURCES OF SELF-EFFICACY (168)

• Since children cannot do much for themselves, much of their influence is through the exercise of proxy control
• Neonates depend on adults for food, clothing, comfort . . .
• Parents who are responsive to their infants, have infants who are advanced socially, linguistically, and cognitively

Impact of Early Mastery Experiences on Social and Cognitive Development (168)

• Enabling influences during infancy build a sense of agency conducive to cognitive development
• Intensive preschool programs that provide rich mastery experiences permanently raise the level and academic attainments of children from economically disadvantaged and undereducated families
• High risk children without such enablement programs end up functioning at retarded or borderline levels and tend to repeat grades.
• thus, efficacy enhancing programs can alter adverse inter-generational patterns of intellectual functioning
• Types of enabling experiences during early childhood contribute to direction of development irrespective of quality and stability of the early home environment

• The initial efficacy experiences are centered in the family
• First comparative age-mates are siblings
• As children's social world expands, peers assume an increasingly important role
• First-borns and only children have different bases for judging their capabilities that do children with older brothers and sisters
• Self-efficacy rooted in sibling rivalry is especially likely to create hypersensitivity to judging personal efficacy against the accomplishment of others

Development of Self-Appraisal Skills (170)

• Accurate (even functional) self-appraisal is no easy matter
• While engaging in activities children must attend to
• Nature of the task
• Situational factors that aid/impede performance
• Characteristics of their actions
• Results they produce
• Children have limited experience and, thus, their self-appraisals are apt to be dependent on immediate, salient outcomes and, hence, be unstable
• As children age they
• Reliance on immediate performance attainments declines in importance of judging what they can do
• Understand that effort can compensate for lack of ability
• Judge their capabilities and their limitations more accurately
• Begin to use inference rules or heuristics in processing efficacy information

"Evaluating personal efficacy by social comparisons involves greater complexities than do self appraisals based on direct experience" (171).

Surmounting Childhood Adversities (172)

• Resilience (in the face of things like, poverty, divorce, physical abuse, parental alcoholism, mental disorders) is reflected in positive developmental outcomes in the face of severe adversity.
• The development of a stable, social bond to a caring adult is a crucial factor
• Emotional support/guidance
• Promotes values and standards
• Model coping mechanisms
• Create opportunities for mastery experiences
• Connectedness to a variety of other caring persons outside the family provide continuing guidance and support
• Resilient children play a proactive role in shaping their life courses
• Become highly resourceful in finding and creating environments conducive to personal development
• Often manage the house and care for younger siblings
• Cultivate interests that save them from the mental hardships

PEERS AND THE BROADENING AND VALIDATION OF SELF-EFFICACY (172)

• A vast amount of social learning occurs among peers
• Peers are neither homogenous nor selected randomly
• Children tend to choose close associates who share similar interests and values
• Children are especially sensitive to their standing among those peers with whom they interact in activities that determine prestige and popularity
• Two determinants of aggressive or prosocial behavior
• Efficacy beliefs for either of the two
• Outcome expectations for either of the two
• Aggressive disorders often arise in families with low positive interactions but a high degree of punitive reciprocity
• Under such conditions children become appositional and hostile
• They behave by coercive and punitive means
• Antisocial peers model, teach, and reward delinquent behavior.

SCHOOL AS AN AGENCY FOR CULTIVATING SELF-EFFICACY (174)

• Efficacy is determined by more than formal instruction
• Peer modeling of cognitive skills
• Social comparisons
• Instructors interpretations of children's successes and failures
• A fundamental goal of education is to equip students with self-regulatory capabilities that enable them to educate themselves
• Skills for planning, organizing, and managing instructional activities
• Enlisting resources
• Regulating one's own motivation
• Applying metacognitive skills
• Contributes to mastery of subject matter by building cognitive efficacy and raising academic aspirations
• "Inefficacy feeds on itself" (175).
• There are a number of school practices that tend to convert instructional experiences into educational inefficacy (175)
• Lock step instruction that loses children who can't keep up
• Ability grouping
• Socially competitive grading
• Recurring difficulties encountered with low achieving students erode teachers sense of instructional efficacy
• Self-appraisals of less able students suffer most when the whole group studies the same material and teachers make frequent comparative evaluations
• Cooperative structures tend to promote higher performance attainments than do competitive ones

• Lifelong health habits are formed during childhood and adolescence
• Eating patterns
• Recreational skills for fitness
• Self-management skills
• School can be a facilitator in this but "harried educators do not want the additional responsibilities . . . they have enough problems fulfilling their basic academic mission"
• "The traditional style of health education provides students with factual information without attempting to change social influences that shape and regulate habits"(176)
• School health education is long on didactic, and short on personal enablement
• Programs must equip youths with the means to exercise control over personal habits

GROWTH OF SELF-EFFICACY THROUGH TRANSITIONAL EXPERIENCES OF ADOLESCENCE (177)

• Contrary to the stereotype of "storm and stress" most adolescents negotiate the important transitions of this period without undue disturbance or discord
• Sociocognitive Theory construes the positive contributors to adaptation within an agentic perspective
• Protectiveness shields individuals from harsh realities
• Enablement equips them with personal resources to select and structure their environments
• Adolescents have to manage Biological, Educational and Social Role Changes simultaneously
• Biological
• Accelerated rate of physical development
• Pubertal changes contribute to self-efficacy interacting with psychsocial factors
• Biological matters affect physical prowess and social status
• Developmental lag is a personal handicap for boys but an advantage for girls
• Early blooming girls get into dating, sexual and drinking situations sooner
• Educational
• Change inti more impersonal schooling environment
• Reestablish efficacy, social status, and social connectedness
• Social
• Close personal ties render everyday stressors more bearable
• Isolations carries high risk of despondency/depression in adolescence
• Supportive family and peer relationships serve as safeguards against depression

Management of Sexuality (179)

• "Adolescents must learn to manage their sexuality long before they are ready to take on the functions of parenthood" (179).
• Social practices largely foster sexual ignorance and unpreparedness
• Teens are initiating sexual activity at younger ages
• Most teens pick up sexual information from peers and the media
• Information alone does not exert much influence on sexual behavior
• Sexual risk reduction calls for enhancing interpersonal efficacy rather than targeting a specific behavior for change
• In managing sexuality, people have to exercise influence over themselves as well as over others
• Requires self-regulative skills over self and others
• Self-regulative efficacy form an integral part of sexual self-management
• Low self-regulatory efficacy in risky sexual situations spells trouble
• Educational aspirations delay initiation into sexual activity

Management of High-Risk Activities (182)

• Experimentation with risky activities is not uncommon
• Alcohol use
• Marijuana use and smoking
• Sexual activity
• Adolescents expand their sense of efficacy by learning to deal with situations. This is best achieved through guided mastery experiences
• Development of resilient self-efficacy requires some experience in matering difficulties through perseverant effort
• Success in managing difficulties develops a strong belief in ones capabilities
• The prototypical self-regulatory program developed by Gilchrist and Schunke has been extended to the prevention and reduction of adolescent drug abuse
• Informs adolescents about drugs
• Provides them with interpersonal skills for managing pressures
• Lowers drug use
• Fosters self-conception as a non-user

SELF-EFFICACY CONCERNS OF ADULTHOOD (184)

"Young adulthood is a period when people have to learn to manage many new social demands arising from lasting partnerships, marital relationships, parenthood, entry into vocational career, and managing financial resources" (184).

Fulfillment of Occupational Roles (184)

• The transition from school to a vocational career is more difficult than for kids going to college
• Employers prefer older applicants to recent graduates
• Non college bound kids often end up on a circle of mediocre jobs with little/no advancement
• Other societies create more formal social mechanisms for getting young adults started on valued vocational careers
• Japan: schools and employers form close partnerships
• Germany: industry and schools share responsibility for occupational development education programs for non-college bound youth are linked to occupational career lines by combing academic instruction with intensive apprenticeships at work sites
• Transition systems with positive incentives for learning enable students to exercise some control over their vocational futures (186).
• There are a number of ways in which efficacy beliefs contribute to career development and success in vocational pursuit.
• In preparatory phases, students beliefs in their efficacy partly determine how well they develop basic sociocognitive skills on which vocational careers are founded
• Opportunities alone do not ensure that people will take advantage of them
• Beliefs about one's capabilities are influential determinants of vocational life paths
• Young adults forego vocations they see as providing valued benefits if they believe they lack the efficacy to fulfill the entry requirements and occupational demands
• Gender and social class barriers exist
• Low SES breeds a low sense of occupational efficacy regardless of prestige level of the vocations(188)
• A high sense of efficacy -whether preexisting or raised by guided mastery of job search skills-intensify job search activities, which, in turn, greatly increase the likelihood of reemployment

Fulfillment of Family Roles (190)

• The transformation from a marital dyad to a family triad greatly increases the scope and diversity of coping demands
• Parenting efficacy plays a key role in adaptation to parenthood
• Mothers with a strong belief in their caregiving abilities
• Experienced more positive emotional well being
• Closer attachment to their babies
• Better adjustment to parenting
• Less conflict
• Better marital relationship during the toddlership
• Parental efficacy is taxed when
• Children suffer health problems
• Children are especially temperamental
• There is no social support
• building parenting efficacy can help eliminate child behavioral problems
• Nontraditional lifestyles are becoming more common
• Women elect to remain single
• Marry but remain childless
• Live with a partner without marrying
• "Family income, heaviness of occupational workload, and division of childcare responsibility has no direct effect on women's well being or emotional strain over the dual roles. These factors operated through their effects on perceived self-efficacy" (192).
• Psychosocial processes through which economic hardships alter parents' perceived efficacy that, in turn, alters how they raise their children. Three areas for child management skills

• Exercise parental efficacy to promote children's competencies
• Parental efficacy to exercise control over children's high-risk behaviors
• Active parental involvement in beneficial community organizations

"Efficacious parents link to subcommunities which provide models for their children, social networks, and compensate for meager neighborhood resources and dangerous aspects (193).

• Grandparents can be important parts of grandchildren's lives
• Efficacious grandparents take a more active role in children's lives
• Spend more time
• Especially important in divorced families
• Families that have an efficacious outlook experience greater community satisfaction
• Economic adversities exact a lower toll
• Parents who feel that they can exercise control have less desire to move
• but, "when both adversity and prospects for change are dismal, families with a high sense of efficacy are apt to move elsewhere in search of a better life"(195).

Midlife Changes (196)

• "By the middle years, people settle into established lifestyles that stabilize their sense of efficacy in major areas of functioning"(196).
• However, life is not arrested at this stage
• Conditions of life never remain static 
• Changes require adaptations that call for reappraisal of efficacy
• Occupational-middle agers are pushed by younger challengers
• Young athletes supplant older teammates
• Competition for status, promotions, and work
• Occupational advancements rewuire perceived efficacy to master new roles and skills
• Occupational pursuits are often less secure
• People must develop the efficacy beliefs to mange periodic changes in jobs, companies, and occupations
• During the middle years, people often confront declining opportunities for career growth
• Time and opportunities begin slipping away
• Visions of a future lacking variety and challenging new prospects give rise to new strains
• Upward mobility decreases with age
• Employees who are assured of their learning efficacy are more receptive to opportunities to expand their knowledge
• Some pursuits call for heavy training for short-term careers (sports)
• Unemployment can come quickly
• Transition from sports to new career paths is difficult for athletes who have invested their sense of efficacy and identity mostly in the sport
• Even true for competitive amateur athletes
• Those who cultivate other interests during those years fare much better
• The midlife crisis resides more in the rhetoric of popular media than in the actual experiences of people in middle life
• Midlifers do not hold a monopoly on stock-taking
• Reactions to taking stock take many forms
• Some people choose to expand competencies in areas around which their lives are structured
• Many scale down their ambitions and restructure their goals
• People who remain in the same job increase their level of skill

"Most people navigate through the middle years efficaciously. Some do not . . . adaptation in midlife is best predicted by the interplay of personal attributes and life circumstances rather than by one's age" (198).

REAPPRAISALS OF SELF-EFFICACY WITH ADVANCING AGE (198)

• The self-efficacy issues for older adults canter on reappraisals of their capabilities
• Loss of physical stamina
• Sensory functions
• Intellectual facility
• Memory
• Gains in knowledge, skills, and expertise compensate for some loss in reserve capacity . . . older adults have many adaptive capacities

Heterogeneity of Cognitive Changes (199)

• Intellectual development is multifaceted
• Attention
• Memory
• Time sharing
• Information integration
• Level of knowledge and expertise
• Intellectual growth and decline exist together
• The contributions that the elderly can make to society receive little attention
• Wisdom
• Advanced understanding
• Keen discernment
• Sound judgement
• A theory of wisdom must be concerned not only with the forms that wisdom takes but also with how to evaluate its usefulness.

• Every human pursuit presents dilemmas and problems of how to conduct one's life to gain a sense of purpose and fulfillment (199)
• Wise judgment has to do with pursuits around which people structure their lives
• Wisdom exists, in varying degrees, in all walks of life
• Although it is founded on expert knowledge, it encompasses much more
• Wisdom requires superior judgment and broad social and temporal perspective

Memory Functioning (201)

• Memory lapses can be construed differently; how one views them can have varied effects on the quality of functioning
• Controllable skill - confidence in ability to improve it
• Efficacious outlook accompanies low depression
• Actually facilitates memory performance
• Does a better job of remembering things
• Predicts degree of improvement in memory functioning
• Shrinking biological capacity
• Harbor doubts suffer depression
• Believe they have limited memory capacity
• Can do little to affect memory capacity
• The more that individuals believe this, the poorer use they make of their cognitive capabilities
• Efficacy beliefs can enhance memory performance by motivating deeper levels of cognitive processing of experiences. These cognitive memory aids may include:
• Organizational strategies
• Mental rehearsal
• Elaborative and associative coding

Physical and Health Functioning (204)

• Declines in stamina and functioning health status are attributed all too often to biological aging when in fact some of the decline in physical stamina reflects decrements in beliefs of physical efficacy.
• Lowering perceived efficacy lowers endurance (204)
• Arbitrary social comparison diminishes physical stamina
• "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was?" - Satchel Paige
• Weakens functioning of biological systems
• Negative changes in cellular and metabolic processes
• Loss in lean body mass
• Cardiovascular decline
• Diminished immunocompetence
• "The major share of the decline in cardiovascular functioning with age can be offset by regular exercise" (204).
• The mass media play an influential role in shaping images of reality
• Elderly are often seen as insignificant contributors
• Negative stereotypes as idle simpletons or leading impoverished, debilitating lives
• Thus, people with similar biological status but with varying belifs will vary in how well they use the capabilities they possess

Aging and the Exercise of Control (205)

• The issue of interest is not only what cognitive capacities the elderly have, but how they use them to construct and manage their social realities.
• How they maintain agency (during a clearly transitional period)
• Maintain social connectedness
• Retirement
• Relocation
• Loss of friends
• Enabling function of social support supports enhanced coping efficacy
• Institutional constraints on the exercise of personal control can take a toll on psychological well being
• Residents of nursing homes who are given opportunities to exercise some control over events in their daily lives are
• more active socially
• more engaged in activities
• happier
• remain in better health
• live longer
• the loss of skills often brings on the need to exercise proxy control

Sociostructural Constraints (207)

• It is easier to age successfully for those who experience little discontinuity in their major life pursuits
• Writers continue to write
• Artists paint
• Professors profess
• Environments affect how people age
• Monotonous environments that require little thought or judgement diminish cognitive functioning
• More limiting the environment is, the more they decline in their socio-cognitive functioning
• People are both products and producers of their environments
• Today's elderly are aging more effectually than in the past
• Greater control of self-development
• More intellectually agile
• Healthier and more proactive
• Thus, there is a mismatch
• Society is slow in accommodating these expanded potentials
• Role expectations
• Social norms that curtail opportunity
• affect work opportunities
• retirement practices
• educational pursuits
• filling of unstructured leisure time

Maintenance of Self-Efficacy with Decline in Capacity (208)

• An efficacious outlook is no less futile in old age than in earlier periods of life
• There are several ways older adults can sustain high efficacy in spite of reserves in capacity
• Social comparisons
• they should use self-comparisons rather than comparing against younger people
• selective social comparisons with age-mates
• shifting standards of self-appraisal
• when skills stabilize or begin to diminish, self-satisfactions and perceived efficacy are better served by selective social comparisons
• Exploiting age-norms (like John Glenn).
• Selective integration of multifaceted efficacy information
• multiple experiences using different skills
• weighing heavily the domains of functioning at which they excel, and minimize those at which they consider of lesser importance
• Selective Optimization and compensation
• simplifying activities
• pacing activities
• restructuring the physical environment to make it more manageable
• adopt new roles