Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura OCis a psychologist who is the David Starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University. For almost six decades, he has been responsible for contributions to the field of education and to many fields of psychology, including social cognitive theory, therapy, and personality psychology, and was also influential in the transition between behaviorism and cognitive psychology. He is known as the originator of social learning theory and the theoretical construct of self-efficacy, and is...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth4 December 1925
CountryCanada
Albert Bandura quotes about
The presence of many interacting influences, including the attainments of others, create further leeway in how one's performances and outcomes are cognitively appraised
Perceived self-efficacy influences the types of causal attributions people make for their performances
[Attributional] factors serve as conveyors of efficacy information that influence performance largely through their intervening effects on self-percepts of efficacy
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.
Behavior, cognitive, and other personal factors, and environmental influences all operate interactively as determinants of each other.
People's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances.
We find that people's beliefs about their efficacy affect the sorts of choices they make in very significant ways. In particular, it affects their levels of motivation and perseverance in the face of obstacles. Most success requires persistent effort, so low self-efficacy becomes a self-limiting process. In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, strung together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.
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
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
People judge their capabilities partly by comparing their performances with those of others
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