Quotes from Albert Bandura

I have often been struck by the fact that most parents who are experiencing positive and rewarding relationships with their pre-adolescent children are, nevertheless, waiting apprehensively and bracing themselves for the stormy adolescent period.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Where everyone is responsible, no one is really responsible.

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.

It requires conducive social conditions, rather than monstrous people, to produce heinous deeds.

Analyses of moral disengagement mechanisms usually draw heavily on examples from military and political violence. This tends to convey the impression that selective disengagement of self-sanctions occurs only under extraordinary circumstances. The truth is quite the contrary. Such mechanisms operate in everyday situations in which decent people routinely perform activities having injurious human effects, to further their own interests or for profit.

What is immoral to do is immoral to threaten.

In the social learning view, people are neither driven by inner forces nor buffeted by environmental stimuli. Rather, psychological functioning is explained in terms of a continuous reciprocal interaction of personal and environmental determinants.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The higher the level of people's perceived self-efficacy, the wider the range of career options they seriously consider, the greater their interest in them, and the better they prepare themselves educationally for the occupational pursuits they choose.

Osama bin Laden characterized his terrorist activities as 'defensive jihad,' provoked by 'debauched infidels' bent on enslaving the Muslim world. The lead industry blamed 'ignorant parents' for applying lead paint to juvenile furniture.

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

We are more heavily invested in the theories of failure than we are in the theories of success.

People's beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is huge variablitiy in how you perform.

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