scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question

Showing papers by "Albert Bandura published in 1988"


Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: In this article, a micro-relation between perceived selfefficacy and anxiety arousal was found to be associated with high levels of subjective distress, autonomic arousal and catecholamine secretion.
Abstract: In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy to exercise control over potential threats plays a central role in anxiety arousal. Threat is a relational property reflecting the match between perceived coping capabilities and potentially hurtful aspects of the environment. People who believe they can exercise control over potential threats do not engage in apprehensive thinking and are not perturbed by them. But those who believe they cannot manage threatening events that might occur experience high levels of anxiety arousal. Experimental analyses of the microrelation between perceived self-efficacy and anxiety arousal reveal that perceived coping inefficacy is accompanied by high levels of subjective distress, autonomic arousal and catecholamine secretion. Environmental events are not always completely under personal control and most human activities contain some potential risks. The exercise of control over anxiety arousal, therefore, requires not only development of behavioral coping effi...

670 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, social cognitive theory explains psychosocial functioning in terms of triadic reciprocal causation, where behaviour, cognitive and other personal factors and environmental events are modelled in a causal model.
Abstract: Social cognitive theory explains psychosocial functioning in terms of triadic reciprocal causation. In this causal model, behaviour, cognitive and other personal factors and environmental events al...

521 citations


Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: In cognitively-generated motivation, people motivate themselves and guide their actions anticipatorily through the exercise of forethought, they anticipate likely outcomes of prospective actions, they set goals for themselves and plan courses of action designed to realize valued futures as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Social cognitive theory distinguishes between two broad classes of motivation (Bandura, 1986). One class of motivators is biologically based. They include physiological conditions arising from cellular deficits and external aversive events that activate behavior through their physically painful effects. The second major source of motivators is cognitively based. In cognitively-generated motivation, people motivate themselves and guide their actions anticipatorily through the exercise of forethought. They anticipate likely outcomes of prospective actions, they set goals for themselves and plan courses of action designed to realize valued futures.

442 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors tested the hypothesis that perceived self-inefficacy in exercising control over cognitive stressors activates endogenous opioid systems and found that self-efficacious stressed subjects were able to withstand increasing amounts of pain stimulation under saline conditions.
Abstract: This experiment tested the hypothesis that perceived self-inefficacy in exercising control over cognitive stressors activates endogenous opioid systems. Subjects performed mathematical operations under conditions in which they could exercise full control over the cognitive task demands or in which the cognitive demands strained or exceeded their cognitive capabilities. Subjects with induced high perceived self-efficacy exhibited little stress, whereas those with induced low perceived self-efficacy experienced a high level of stress and autonomic arousal. Subjects were then administered either an inert saline solution or naloxone, an opiate antagonist that blocks the analgesic effects of endogenous opiates, whereupon their level of pain tolerance was measured. The self-efficacious nonstressed subjects gave no evidence of opioid activation. The self-inefficacious stressed subjects were able to withstand increasing amounts of pain stimulation under saline conditions. However, when endogenous opioid mechanisms that control pain were blocked by naloxone, the subjects were unable to bear much pain stimulation. This pattern of changes suggests that the stress-induced analgesia found under the saline condition was mediated by endogenous opioid mechanisms and counteracted by the opiate antagonist.

290 citations