Albert Bandura Elf Quotations

Convictions that outcomes are determined by one's own actions can be either demoralizing or heartening, depending on the level of self-judged efficacy. People who regard outcomes as personally determined, but who lack the requisite skills, would experience low self-efficacy and view the activities with a sense of futility

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

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

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

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

If there is any characteristic that is distinctly human, it is the capability for reflective self-consciousness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The adequacy of performance attainments depends upon the personal standards against which they are judged

Self-appraisals are influenced by evaluative reactions of others

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If self-efficacy is lacking, people tend to behave ineffectually, even though they know what to do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In any given instance, behavior can be predicted best by considering both self-efficacy and outcome beliefs . . . different patterns of self-efficacy and outcome beliefs are likely to produce different psychological effects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.