Best 104 quotes of Albert Bandura on MyQuotes

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

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

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

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

People regulate their level and distribution of effort in accordance with the effects they expect their actions to have. As a result, their behavior is better predicted from their beliefs than from the actual consequences of their actions

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

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

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

People who are burdened by acute misgivings about their coping capabilities suffer much distress and expend much effort in defensive action... they cannot get themselves to do things they find subjectively threatening even though they are objectively safe. They may even shun easily manageable activities because they see them as leading to more threatening events over which they will be unable to exercise adequate control.

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.

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

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.

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

People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided.

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

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

Perceived self-efficacy in coping with potential threats leads people to approach such situations anxiously, and experience of disruptive arousal may further lower their sense of efficacy that they will be able to perform skillfully

Perceived self-efficacy influences the types of causal attributions people make for their performances

Perceived self-inefficacy predicts avoidance of academic activities whereas anxiety does not

Persons who have a strong sense of efficacy deploy their attention and effort to the demands of the situation and are spurred by obstacles to greater effort.

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.

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

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

Self-appraisals are influenced by evaluative reactions of others.

Self-appraisals of efficacy are reasonably accurate, but they diverge from action because people do not know fully what they will have to do, lack information for regulating their effort, or are hindered by external factors from doing what they can

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

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

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

Self-efficacy beliefs differ from outcome expectations, judgments of the likely consequence [that] behavior will produce.

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

Self-percepts foster actions that generate information, as well as serve as a filtering mechanism for self-referent information in the self-maintaining process

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

This has increased with the tremendous technological advances in communications. We have a vast new world of images brought into our sitting rooms electronically. Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience. This has increased with the tremendous technological advances in communications. We have a vast new world of images brought into our sitting-rooms electronically.

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

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

What people think, believe, and feel affects how they behave. The natural and extrinsic effects of their actions, in turn, partly determine their thought patterns and affective reactions.