The FBI Academy teaches new agents that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
Regression analyses show that self-efficacy contributes to achievement behavior beyond the effects of cognitive skills
In any given instance, behavior can be predicted best by considering both self-efficacy and outcome beliefs . . . different patterns of self-efficacy and outcome beliefs are likely to produce different psychological effects
People regulate their level and distribution of effort in accordance with the effects they expect their actions to have. As a result, their behavior is better predicted from their beliefs than from the actual consequences of their actions
Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations.
To know how a character will behave in any given situation is a necessity and a gift.
I love watching people, guessing what they are going to do next. I'm no Derren Brown, but I love that people stuff. Maybe that's why I'm an actor.
Researchers have always tried to use psychology for predictive ends: Can what we already know about a person tell us how she will behave in a given situation? The results of these endeavors have been mixed.
