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.
Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling from others.
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.
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.
People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failure; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.
The content of most textbooks is perishable, but the tools of self-directedness serve one well over time.
Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do.
Some of the most important determinants of life paths arise through the most trivial of circumstances.
Moral justification is a powerful disengagement mechanism. Destructive conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of moral ends. This is why most appeals against violent means usually fall on deaf ears.
As we develop the moral aspect of our lives, we often adapt standards of right and wrong that serve as guides and deterrents for our conduct.
Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing.
Given appropriate social conditions, decent, ordinary people can be led to do extraordinarily cruel things.
Perpetrators absolve their harmful behavior as serving worthy causes.
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.
It's in our ability to selectively engage and disengage our moral standards, and it helps explain how people can be barbarically cruel in one moment and compassionate the next.
When I'm introduced at invited lectures at other universities, the students place a Bobo doll by the lectern. From time to time, I have been asked to autograph one. The Bobo doll has achieved stardom in psychological circles.
In the past, modeling influences were largely confined to the styles of behavior and social practices in one's immediate community. The advent of television vastly expanded the range of models to which members of society are exposed day in and day out.
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.
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.
