Albert Bandura Quotes

Self-belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure.

People who regard themselves as highly efficacious act, think, and feel differently from those who perceive themselves as inefficacious. They produce their own future, rather than simply foretell it.

Among the types of thoughts that affect action, none is more central or pervasive than people's judgments of their capabilities to deal effectively with different realities

Once established, reputations do not easily change.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

There are countless studies on the negative spillover of job pressures on family life, but few on how job satisfaction enhances the quality of family life.

Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience.

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

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

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

Measures of self-precept must be tailored to the domain of psychological functioning being explored.

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

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

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

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.

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.

People not only gain understanding through reflection, they evaluate and alter their own thinking.

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

The content of most textbooks is perishable, but the tools of self-directedness serve one well over time.

Self-efficacy is the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the sources of action required to manage prospective situations.

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

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

The difficulty in judging what type of behavior works well arises not only because a given course of action does not always produce the outcomes. Similar outcomes can occur for reasons other than the person's actions, which further complicates inferential judgment. Effects that arise independently of one's actions distort the influence of similar effects produced by the actions, but only on some occasions. Given a strong cognitive set to perceive regularities, even chance joint occurrences of events can be easily misjudged as genuine relationships of low contingent probability

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

Misbeliefs in one's inefficacy may retard development of the very subskills upon which more complex performances depend

Very often we developed a better grasp of the subjects than the over worked teachers.

The performances of others are often selected as standards for self-improvement of abilities

Perceived self-efficacy also shapes causal thinking. In seeking solutions to difficult problems, those who perceived themselves as highly efficacious are inclined to attribute their failures to insufficient effort, whereas those of comparable skills but lower perceived self-efficacy ascribe their failures to deficient ability

When people are not aiming for anything in particular or when they cannot monitor their performance, there is little basis for translating perceived efficacy into appropriate magnitudes of effort

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

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

Self-appraisals are influenced by evaluative reactions of others.

Judgments of adequacy involve social comparison processes

Self efficacious children tend to attribute their successes to ability, but ability attributions affect performance indirectly through perceived self-efficacy

Because of such conjointedness, behavior that exerts no effect whatsoever on outcomes is developed and consistently performed

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.

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

People who underestimate their capabilities also bear costs, although, as already noted, these are more likely to take self-limiting rather than aversive forms. By failing to cultivate personal potentialities and constricting their activities, such persons cut themselves off from many rewarding experiences. Should they attempt tasks having evaluative significance, they create internal obstacles to effective performance by approaching them with unnerving self-doubts

Such self-referent misgivings creates stress and undermine effective use of the competencies people possess by diverting attention from how best to proceed to concern over personal failings and possible mishaps

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.

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