It's not just about possessing certain abilities, but it's more to do with how to effectively use that ability in order to effectively solve certain problems. And that involves in believing that one is able to successfully utilize their own skills. Saying that you can't innately do certain things due to PoLR or "low dimensionality" would cause self-doubts and therefore low self-efficacy beliefs, which would cause them to give up on things earlier than warranted. Both F types and T types would keep whining about how they're no good at their "weak functions", but they don't care to improve upon their skills.


PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY AS A GENERATIVE CAPACITY

Efficacy in dealing with one's environment is not simply a matter of knowing what to do. Nor is it a fixed act that one does or does not have in one's behavioral repertoire, any more than one would construe linguistic efficacy in terms of a collection of words or a colony of fixed sentences in a verbal repertoire. Rather, efficacy involves a generative capability in which cognitive, social, and behavioral subskills must be organized into integrated courses of action to serve innumerable purposes. Success is often attained only after generating and testing alternative forms of behavior and strategies, which requires perseverant effort. Self-doubters are quick to abort this generative process if their initial efforts prove deficient.

There is a marked difference between possessing subskills and being able to use them well under diverse circumstances. For this reason, different people with similar skills, or the same person on different occasions, may perform poorly, adequately, or extraordinarily. Collins (1982) selected children who perceived themselves to be of high or low mathematical self-efficacy at each of two levels of mathematical ability. They were then given difficult problems to solve. While mathematical ability contributed to performance, at each ability level, children who regarded themselves as efficacious were quicker to discard faulty strategies, solved more problems, chose to rework more of those they failed, did so more accurately, and displayed more positive attitudes toward mathematics. As this and other studies show, perceived self-efficacy is a significant determinant of performance that operates partially independently of underlying skills (Locke, Frederick, Lee, Bobko, 1984; Schunk, 1984).

Competent functioning requires both skills and self-beliefs of efficacy to use them effectively. Operative efficacy calls for continuously improvising multiple subskills to manage ever changing circumstances, most of which contain ambiguous, unpredictable, and often stressful elements. Even routinized activities are rarely performed in exactly the same way. Initiation and regulation of transactions with the environment are, therefore, partly governed by judgments of operative capabilities—what people think they can do under given circumstances. Perceived self-efficacy is defined as people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances. It is concerned not with the skills one has but with judgments of what one can do with whatever skills one possesses.

Judgments of personal efficacy are distinguished from response-outcome expectations. Perceived self-efficacy is a judgment of one's capability to accomplish a certain level of performance, whereas an outcome expectation is a judgment of the likely consequence such behavior will produce. For example, the belief that one can high jump six feet is an efficacy judgment; the anticipated social recognition, applause, trophies, and self-satisfactions for such a performance constitute the outcome expectations.

An outcome is the consequence of an act, not the act itself. Serious confusions arise when an act is misconstrued as an outcome of itself, as when jumping six feet is viewed as a consequent. An act must be defined by the criteria that state what it is, for example, a leap upward of a designated height. To regard a six-foot high jump as an outcome would be to misinterpret the specification criteria of an act as the consequences that flow from it. If an act is defined as a six-foot leap, then a six-foot leap is the realization of the act, not a consequent of it. Failure to complete a designated act (e.g., knocking off a crossbar by failing to jump six feet) cannot be the outcome of that act because it was never fully executed. The failed jump is an incomplete act that produces its own divergent collection of outcomes, be they social, physical, or self-evaluative.

Outcome expectations are also sometimes misconstrued as the effectiveness of a technique (Maddux, Sherer, & Rogers, 1982; Manning & Wright, 1983). Means are not results. An efficacious technique is a means for producing outcomes, but it is not itself an outcome expectation. For example, an effective cognitive skill for solving problems can be put to diverse uses to gain all kinds of outcomes. Useful means serve as the vehicles for exercising personal efficacy.

Efficacy and outcome judgments are differentiated because individuals can believe that a particular course of action will produce certain outcomes, but they do not act on that outcome belief because they question whether they can actually execute the necessary activities. Thus, expectations that high grades gain students entry to medical school and that medical practice yields high incomes will not steer undergraduates into premedical programs who have serious selfdoubts that they can master the science requirements.

Social Foundations of Thought & Action: A Social Cognitive Theory