Albert Bandura Quotes

Through their capacity to manipulate symbols and to engage in reflective thought, people can generate novel ideas and innovative actions that transcend their past experiences

People are much more likely to act on their self-percepts of efficacy inferred from many sources of information rather than rely primarily on visceral cues. This is not surprising because self knowledge based on information about one's coping skills, past accomplishments, and social comparison is considerably more indicative of capability than the indefinite stirrings of the viscera

To the extent that children with similar characteristics achieve comparable performance levels, using the performances of similar peers is likely to yield more accurate self-appraisal than using the accomplishments of dissimilar peers

Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.

Ironically, it is the talented who have high aspirations, which are possible but exceedingly difficult to realize, who are especially vulnerable to self-dissatisfaction despite notable achievements

The presence of many interacting influences, including the attainments of others, create further leeway in how one's performances and outcomes are cognitively appraised

Social cognitive theory rejects the dichotomous conception of self as agent and self as object. Acting on the environment and acting on oneself entail shifting the perspective of the same agent rather than reifying different selves regulating each other or transforming the self from agent to object

Many people who gain recognition and fame shape their lives by overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, only to be catapulted into new social realities over which they have less control and manage badly. Indeed, the annals of the famous and infamous are strewn with individuals who were both architects and victims of their life courses.

The human condition is better improved by altering detrimental circumstances and personal perspectives than by trying to alter personal outlooks, while ignoring the very circumstances that serve to nourish them

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

What is immoral to do is immoral to threaten.

People who believe they have the power to exercise some measure of control over their lives are healthier, more effective and more successful than those who lack faith in their ability to effect changes in their lives.

The evaluative habits developed in sibling interactions undoubtedly affect the salience and choice of comparative referents in self-ability evaluations in later life

Stringent standards of self-evaluation [can] make otherwise objective successes seem to be personal failures

[Children] receive direct instruction from time to time about the appropriateness of various social comparisons

Expected outcomes contribute to motivation independently of self-efficacy beliefs when outcomes are not completely controlled by quality of performance. This occurs when extraneous factors also affect outcomes, or outcomes are socially tied to a minimum level of performance so that some variations in quality of performance above and below the standard do not produce differential outcomes

The human mind is generative, creative, proactive, and reflective -- not just reactive.

Perceived self-efficacy and beliefs about the locus of outcome causality must be distinguished

Gaining insight into one's underlying motives, it seems, is more like a belief conversion than a self-discovery process

Such knowledge is probably gained in several ways. One process undoubtedly operates through social comparison of success and failure experiences. Children repeatedly observe their own behavior and the attainments of others

To grant thought causal efficacy is not to invoke a disembodied mental state

People's beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities.

In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy results from diverse sources of information conveyed vicariously and through social evaluation, as well as through direct experience

Self-doubt creates the impetus for learning but hinders adept use of previously established skills

Dualistic doctrines that regard mind and body as separate entities do not provide much enlightenment on the nature of the disembodied mental state or on how an immaterial mind and bodily events act on each other

Freedom [should not be] conceived negatively as exemption from social influences or situational constraints. Rather ... positively as the exercise of self-influence to bring about desired results.

Incongruities between self-efficacy and action may stem from misperceptions of task demands, as well as from faulty self-knowledge

People infer high self-efficacy from successes achieved through minimal effort on difficult tasks, but they infer low self-efficacy if they had to work hard under favorable conditions to master relatively easy tasks

In the self-appraisal of efficacy, there are many sources of information that must be processed and weighed through self-referent thought

People behave agentically, but they produce theories that afford people very little agency

People who are insecure about themselves will avoid social comparisons that are potentially threatening to their self-esteem

It requires a strong sense of responsibility to be a good functionary. In situations involving obedience to authority, people carry out orders partly to honor the obligations they have undertaken. One must, therefore, distinguish between two levels of responsibility - duty to one's superiors, and accountability for the effects of one's actions.

Accurate processing of information about outcomes is no simple task under the variable conditions of everyday life ... usually, many factors enter into determining what effects, if any, given actions will have, Actions, therefore, produce outcomes probabilistically rather than certainly. Depending on the particular conjunction of factors, the same course of action may produce given outcomes regularly, occasionally, or only infrequently

From the social cognitive perspective, it is mainly perceived inefficacy to cope with potentially aversive events that makes them fearsome. To the extent that people believe they can prevent, terminate, or lessen the severity of aversive events, they have little reason to be perturbed by them. But if they believe they are unable to manage threats safely, they have much cause for apprehension

Judgments of adequacy involve social comparison processes

The effects of outcome expectancies on performance motivation are partly governed by self-beliefs of efficacy

Psychology cannot tell people how they ought to live their lives. It can however, provide them with the means for effecting personal and social change.

People judge their capabilities partly by comparing their performances with those of others

Moreover, joint occurrences tend to be better recalled than instances when the effect does not occur. The proneness to remember confirming instances, but to overlook disconfirming ones, further serves to convert, in thought, coincidences into causalities.

Regression analyses show that self-efficacy contributes to achievement behavior beyond the effects of cognitive skills

[Attributional] factors serve as conveyors of efficacy information that influence performance largely through their intervening effects on self-percepts of efficacy

For many activities, people cannot rely solely on themselves in evaluating their ability level because such judgments require inferences from probabilistic indicants of talent about which they may have limited knowledge. Self-appraisals are, therefore, partly based on the opinions of others who presumably possess evaluative competence

When experience contradicts firmly held judgments of self-efficacy, people may not change their beliefs about themselves if the conditions of performance are such as to lead them to discount the import of the experience

Students judge how well they might do in a chemistry course from knowing how peers, who performed comparably to them in physics, fared in chemistry

Even noteworthy performance attainments do not necessarily boost perceived self-efficacy

Humans are producers of their life circumstance not just products of them.

Reasonably accurate appraisal of one's own capabilities is, therefore, of considerable value in successful functioning. Large misjudgments of personal efficacy in either direction have consequences. People who grossly overestimate their capabilities undertake activities that are clearly beyond their reach. As a result, they get themselves into considerable difficulties, undermine their credibility, and suffer needless failures. Some of the missteps, of course, can produce serious, irreparable harm

Except for events that carry great weight, it is not experience per se, but how they match expectations, that governs their emotional impact

Even the self-assured will raise their perceived self-efficacy if models teach them better ways of doing things.

Where everyone is responsible, no one is really responsible.

Once established, reputations do not easily change.

A problem of future research is to clarify how young children learn what type of social comparative information is most useful for efficacy evaluation

Self-appraisals are influenced by evaluative reactions of others

If you look at our theories of social pathology and then at the dismal conditions in which children grow up in our ghettos, you would predict that all of them would be on drugs or psychological basket cases. Yet if you use criteria like gainful employment, forming partnerships and life without crime, you will find that most of those kids make it.

Dysfunctions can occur in each of the self-regulatory subfunctions-in how personal experiences are self-monitored and cognitively processed, in the evaluative self-standards that are adopted, and in the evaluative self-reactions to one's own behavior.. Problems at any one of these points can create self-dissatisfactions and dejection. dysfunctions in all aspects of the self system are most apt to produce the most chronic self-disparagement and despondency

The satisfactions people derive from what they do are determined to a large degree by their self-evaluative standards

Indeed there are many competent people who are plagued by a sense of inefficacy, and many less competent ones who remain unperturbed by impending threats because they are self-assured of their coping capabilities

Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences.

Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing.

As a general rule, moderate levels of arousal facilitate deployment of skills, whereas high arousal disrupts it. This is especially true of complex activities requiring intricate organization of behavior

It is widely assumed that beliefs in personal determination of outcomes create a sense of efficacy and power, whereas beliefs that outcomes occur regardless of what one does result in apathy

Success and failure are largely self-defined in terms of personal standards. The higher the self-standards, the more likely will given attainments be viewed as failures, regardless of what others might think

Behavior must also be adequately assessed under appropriate circumstances. Ill-defined global measures of perceived self-efficacy or defective assessments of performance will yield discordances. Disparities will also arise when efficacy is judged for performances in actual situations but performance is measured in simulated situations that are easier to deal with than the actualities

A theory that denies that thoughts can regulate actions does not lend itself readily to the explanation of complex human behavior.

Discrepancies between self-efficacy judgment and performance will arise when either the tasks or the circumstances under which they are performed are ambiguous

People who hold a low view of themselves [will credit] their achievements to external factors, rather than to their own capabilities

It is no more informative to speak of self-efficacy in global terms than to speak of nonspecific social behavior

Given a sufficient level of perceived self-efficacy to take on threatening tasks, phobics perform them with varying amounts of fear arousal depending on the strength of their perceived self-efficacy