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.

Perpetrators absolve their harmful behavior as serving worthy causes.

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.

In the final forms of moral disengagement, wrongdoers treat adversaries as subhuman animalistic, demonic beings. Expunging any sense of shared humanity eliminates moral restraints.

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.

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.

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.

Some of the most important determinants of life paths arise through the most trivial of circumstances.

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.

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.