Bandura Self Efficacy Quotes

Individuals who come to believe that they can effect change are more likely to accomplish what they set out to do. Bandura calls that conviction “self-efficacy.” People with self-efficacy set their sights higher, try harder, persevere longer, and show more resilience in the face of failure.

Albert Bandura, a Stanford psychologist who has done much of the research on self-efficacy, sums it up well: “People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failures; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.”24

I think I can, I think I can!” Another word for that mind-set is “self-efficacy,” a central concept within the field of human psychology developed in the 1970s by eminent psychologist Albert Bandura. Self-efficacy means having the belief in your abilities to complete a task, reach goals, and manage a situation.2 It means believing in your abilities—not in your parents’ abilities to help you do those things or to do them for you.

Bandura argued that being surrounded by other people who show persistence and effort in overcoming challenges can increase our own feelings of self-efficacy because they demonstrate to us that these challenges can be overcome.

Bandura argued that being surrounded by other people who show persistence and effort in overcoming challenges can increase our own feelings of self-efficacy because they demonstrate to us that these challenges can be overcome. In the words of Bandura, ‘Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers’ beliefs that they too possess the capabilities to master comparable activities to succeed.

self-efficacy. Drawing on his research over the previous decade, Bandura argued that it’s not just our abilities that are important in human performance and wellbeing; it’s how we feel about our abilities. Self-efficacy was the term he coined to describe such feelings, referring to how much belief we have that we’re able to achieve our objectives. Believing you can is the first step to making sure you actually can.

Brown I., Inouye D. K. “Learned helplessness through modeling: The role of perceived similarity in competence.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1978, 36 (8): 900–908. See also: Bandura, A. (1981). Self-referent thought: A development analysis of self-efficacy. In J. H. Flavell & L. Ross (Eds.), Social cognitive development: Frontiers and possible futures (pp. 200–239). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.