Albert Bandura’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

Despite efforts by the adult generation to stem the rise of global warming, the planet is getting hotter every year. The present article analyzes, within the framework of social-cognitive theory, highly resourceful youth conducting environmental programs that curtail heat-trapping gases and protect various ecological supports of life. The children's intuitive principles of change closely matched the formal principles of social-cognitive theory. Social media equip youth with unlimited reach and promote large-scale environmental impact. Their ingenious practices provide the foundation for a powerful youth environmental movement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Social cognitive theory is founded on an agentic perspective. This article reviews the core features of human agency and the individual, proxy, and collective forms in which it is exercised. Agency operates through a triadic codetermination process of causation. Knowledge from this line of theorizing is widely applied to effect individual and social change, including worldwide applications that address some of the most urgent global problems.

The Big Five personality traits and self-efficacy independently relate to a multitude of outcomes across domains of functioning. Yet, only a small number of studies examined these variables together as part of the same conceptual model, and findings are mixed. We revisit their joint relationships, and test three conceptual models of influence on academic performance of college students over a semester. Because of the key role college graduates will play in society, many have a stake in better understanding their performance. The trait model specifies that the Big Five traits influence performance directly and indirectly through partial mediation of self-efficacy. In the independent model, the Big Five traits influence self-efficacy and performance independently, without mediation of self-efficacy. In the intrapersonal model, the effects of the Big Five traits on performance are fully mediated by self-efficacy. We collected data in five samples, three Universities, and two countries, N = 875, and conducted a meta-analytic path-analysis. Self-efficacy positively related to academic performance across the models, conscientiousness and emotional stability were predictive of self-efficacy and performance in some analyses, and the significance of the other three traits was fleeting.

Human behavior is extensively motivated and regulated anticipatorily by cognitive self‐influence. Among the mechanisms of self‐influence, none is more focal or pervading than belief of personal efficacy. Unless people believe that they can produce desired effects and forestall undesired ones by their actions, they have little incentive to act. Whatever other factors may operate as motivators, they are rooted in the core belief that one has the power to produce desired results. That self‐efficacy belief is a vital personal resource is amply documented by meta‐analyses of findings from diverse spheres of functioning under laboratory and naturalistic conditions.

The present commentary addresses issues raised in four replies to my editorial on the functional properties of perceived self-efficacy (Bandura, 2012). In my comments on the paper by Jackson, Hill, and Roberts (2012), I discuss the arbitrary nature of “disposition” and question whether an essentially atheoretical computer-structured inventory based on a mixture of superficially assessed habitual behaviors constitutes a theory of personality. In another set of comments, which speak to the paper by Vancouver (2012), I identify two major flaws in Powers’ (1991) perceptual control theory and document experimental compromises in Vancouver’s efforts to demonstrate that goals and self-efficacy operate counteractively. My comments on the Yeo and Neal (2013) paper center on their unsuccessful efforts to explain and verify the proposition that general and specific self-efficacy work at cross-purposes. In response to Bledow’s (2013) entry, I address the conceptual ambiguity of his theory of unconscious self-motivation, misconstruals of the role of self-efficacy in the process of change, and marginalization of the functional role of consciousness in human behavior.

This commentary addresses the functional properties of perceived self-efficacy in the context of a set of studies contending that belief in one’s capabilities has debilitating or null effects. It encompasses four theoretical orientations. These include social cognitive theory rooted in an agentic perspective, control theory grounded in a cybernetic model, and trait self-efficacy theory and Big Five theory based on a decontextualized trait model. Critical analyses of the studies in question document their failure to fulfill key theoretical, methodological, analytical, and construct assessment requirements. The article extends beyond critical analyses of the published studies. It specifies the theoretical, methodological, and analytical requirements essential to the advancement of knowledge on the role that perceived self-efficacy plays in human self-development, adaption, and change at both the individual and collective levels.

The present study tested with 142 families a structural model of the interplay of perceived dyadic and collective forms of efficacy within the interdependent family system, and how these different forms of efficacy are structurally related to quality of family functioning and satisfaction with family life. Dyadic parent–child efficacy, dyadic spousal efficacy, and filial efficacy were linked to family satisfaction through the mediating impact of collective family efficacy. A high sense of collective family efficacy was accompanied by open family communication and candid disclosure by adolescents of their activities outside the home. Collective family efficacy contributed to parents' and adolescents' satisfaction with their family life both directly and through its impact on quality of family functioning. An alternative structural model in which quality of family functioning affects the different forms of perceived family efficacy and family satisfaction provided a poorer fit to the data.