BANDURA: SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY
I. Overview of Bandura’s Social Cognitive
Theory
Bandura’s
social cognitive theory assumes an agentic perspective, meaning that humans
have some capacity to exercise control over events that shape their lives.
Bandura believes that (1) human activity is a function of behavior, person
variables, and the environment; (2) people have the capacity for language and
self-reflectiveness; (3) people can learn in the absence of a response; (4)
humans have the ability to see the connection between their actions and the
consequences of their actions; and (5) people are quite flexible and can learn
a wide variety
of responses.
II. Biography of Albert Bandura
Albert
Bandura was born in Canada in 1925, but he has spent his entire professional
life in the United States. He completed a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the
University of Iowa in 1951 and since then has worked almost entirely at
Stanford University, where he continues to be the most active of all
personality theorists in investigating hypotheses generated by his social
cognitive theory.
III. Human Agency
Bandura
believes that human agency is the essence of humanness; that is, humans are
defined by their ability to organize, regulate, and enact behaviors that they
believe will produce desirable consequences. Human agency has four core
features: (1) intentionality, or a
proactive commitment to actions that may bring about desired outcomes; (2) foresight, or the ability to set goals;
(3) self-reactiveness, which includes
monitoring their progress toward fulfilling their choices; and (4) self-reflectiveness, which allows people
to think about and evaluate their motives, values, and life goals.
IV. Reciprocal Determinism
Bandura
holds that human functioning is molded by the reciprocal interaction of
(1) behavior; (2) personal factors, including cognition;
and (3) the environment—a model he
calls reciprocal determinism. Bandura
sees no incompatibility between human agency and determinism. Behavior is
influenced by external forces, but people retain the capacity to choose to
behave in ways that influence their environment, which then helps shape their
future behavior.
A. Differential
Contributions
Bandura
does not suggest that the three factors in the reciprocal determinism
model make equal contributions to behavior. The relative influence of
behavior, environment, and person depends on which factor is strongest at
any particular moment.
B. Chance
Encounters and Fortuitous Events
The
lives of many people have been fundamentally changed by a chance meeting with
another person or by a fortuitous, unexpected event. Chance encounters
and fortuitous events enter the reciprocal determinism paradigm at the
environment point, after which they influence behavior in much the same
way as do planned events.
V. Self System
Bandura
views the self system as a set of cognitive structures that gives some degree
of consistency to peoples’ behavior. The self system allows people to observe
and symbolize their own behavior and to regulate it on the basis of how they
see the future. Bandura believes that people are not so flexible as to react to
every environmental change, but he also rejects the idea that people are
motivated by a small number of traits or personal dispositions. An important
part of the self system is self-efficacy.
A. Self-Efficacy
How people
behave in a particular situation depends in part on their self-efficacy. Self-efficacy combines with
environmental variables, prior behavior, and other personal variables to
predict behavior.
1. What Is
Self-Efficacy?
Self-efficacy
refers to people’s beliefs about their ability to exercise some control over
their own functioning. Efficacy expectations differ from outcome expectations, which refer to people’s prediction of the
likely consequences of their behavior. Self-efficacy differs from self-esteem
in that self-efficacy is specific to a given situation, whereas self-esteem is
more global.
2. What
Contributes to Self-Efficacy?
Self-efficacy
is acquired, enhanced, or decreased by any one or combination of four sources:
(1) enactive attainments, or mastery
experiences, which ordinarily are the most powerful source; (2) social modeling, or observing someone
else succeed or fail at a task; (3) social
persuasion, or listening to a trusted person’s encouraging words; and (4) physical and emotional states such as
anxiety, which usually lowers self-efficacy.
3. Does
Self-Efficacy Predict Performance?
High and
low self-efficacy combine with responsive and unresponsive environments to
produce four possible predictive variables. High efficacy and a responsive
environment is the best predictor of successful outcomes; low efficacy and a
responsive environment may produce depression as people see that others can do
what they cannot; high efficacy and an unresponsive environment may result in people
intensifying their efforts, or, if that fails, giving up; and low efficacy and
an unresponsive environment often leads to apathy and learned helplessness.
B. Proxy Agency
Bandura
recognizes the influence of proxy agency through which people exercise partial
control over everyday living by relying on the efforts of others. Successful
living in the 21st century requires people to seek proxies to supply their
food, deliver information, provide transportation, and so forth. Without the
use of proxies, modern people would be forced to spend most of their time
seeking the necessities of survival.
C. Collective
Efficacy
Collective
efficacy refers to the level of confidence that people have that their combined
efforts will produce social change. Personal efficacy, proxy agency, and
collective efficacy complement each another to shape people’s lifestyles. At
least four factors can lower collective efficacy. First, events in other parts
of the world can leave people with a sense of helplessness; second, complex
technology can reduce people’s collective confidence; third, entrenched
bureaucracies discourage change; and fourth, the scope and magnitude of
problems such as wars, famine, overpopulation, and crime contribute to a sense
of powerlessness.
D. Self-Regulation
By using
reflective thought, humans can manipulate their environments and produce
desired consequences of their actions, which gives them some ability to
regulate their own behavior. People use both reactive and proactive strategies for
self-regulation; that is, they reactively attempt to reduce the gap between
accomplishment and goals, and they proactively set newer and higher goals.
People have the capacity to manipulate external factors that influence their
future behavior, but they also have the ability to regulate internal factors by
monitoring their behavior and evaluating it in terms of their personal goals.
1. External
Factors in Self-Regulation
Two
external factors contribute to self-regulation. First, standards of evaluation provide people with an external standard,
such as par in golf or grades in a college course. Second, external reinforcement helps regulate the behavior of those people
who are not satisfied with internal rewards. External factors in
self-regulation include rules learned from others, observation of others,
praise, money, food, and so forth.
2. Internal Factors
in Self-Regulation
Bandura
recognizes three internal requirements for self-regulation: (1) self-observation, (2) judgmental process, and (3) self reaction. Self-observation suggests
that we must monitor our own performance and have some awareness of what we are
doing. Judgmental processes imply that we judge our performance according to
our goals, our personal standards, standards of reference, our evaluation of
our behavior, and our level of belief that success is due to our own efforts.
Self-reaction means that we respond positively or negatively to our behavior
depending on how it measures up to our personal standards.
3. Self-Regulation
Through Moral Agency
Internalized
self-sanctions prevent people from violating personal moral standards either
through selective activation or disengagement of internal control. Selective activation refers to the
notion that self-regulatory influences are not automatic but operate only if
activated. It also means that people react differently in different situations
depending on their evaluation of the situation. Disengagement of internal control suggests that people are capable
of separating themselves from the negative consequences of their behavior.
People in ambiguous moral situations, who are uncertain that their behavior is
consistent with their own social and moral standards of conduct, may separate
their conduct from its injurious consequences through disengagement of internal
standards. Ambiguous moral behavior can be disengaged or selectively activated
through four techniques.
a. Redefine
the Behavior
With
redefinition of behavior, people justify otherwise reprehensible actions by
cognitively restructuring them, a manipulation that allows people to minimize
or escape responsibility. People can use redefinition of behavior to disengage
themselves from reprehensible conduct in three ways: (1) moral justification, as when otherwise unacceptable behavior is transformed
into desirable or even noble behavior; (2) making advantageous, or palliative comparisons between their
behavior and the even more reprehensible behavior of others; (3) using euphemistic labels to change the moral
tone of their behavior.
b. Disregard or Distort the
Consequences of Behavior
Second,
people can distort or obscure the
relationship between behavior and its injurious consequences. People can do
this by minimizing, disregarding, or distorting the consequences of their
behavior.
c. Dehumanize
or Blame the Victims
Third,
people can blur responsibility for their actions either by dehumanizing their victims or by attributing blame to them.
d. Displace or
Diffuse Responsibility
Fourth,
people can disengage themselves from personal responsibility by displacing responsibility onto others or
by diffusing it among a number of
other people.
VI. Learning
People
learn through observing others and by attending to the consequences of their
own actions. Although Bandura believes that reinforcement aids learning, he
contends that people can learn in the absence of reinforcement and even in the
absence of a response.
A. Observational
Learning
Bandura
believes that reinforcement is not always necessary for learning, as when we
learn from observing others. Observational learning is more efficient than
learning through direct experience.
1. Modeling
The core
of observational learning is modeling, which is more than simple imitation; it
involves adding and subtracting from observed behavior. Modeling also calls for
generalizing from one observation to another. At least three principles
influence modeling: (1) people are most likely to model high-status people; (2)
people who lack skill, power, or status are most likely to model; and (3)
people tend to model behavior that they see as important to themselves, and
they are more likely to model behavior they see as being rewarding to the
model.
2. Processes
Governing Observational Learning
Bandura recognized
four processes that govern observational learning: (1) attention, or noticing what a model does; (2) representation, or symbolically representing
new response patterns in memory; (3) behavior
production, or producing the behavior that one observes; and (4) motivation, or being motivated to
perform the observed behavior.
B. Enactive
Learning
All behavior is followed by some consequence, but whether that consequence reinforces the behavior depends on the person’s cognitive evaluation of the situation. Learning is enhanced when people (1) notice the effects of their actions, retain this information, and use it as a guide for future actions; (2) think about the future consequences of their actions; and (3) attend to the present consequences of their actions.
VII. Dysfunctional Behavior
Dysfunctional
behavior is learned through the mutual interaction of the person (including
cognitive and neurophysiological processes), the environment (including
interpersonal relations), and behavioral factors (especially previous
experiences with reinforcement).
A. Depression
People
who develop depressive reactions often (1) underestimate their successes and
overestimate their failures, (2) set personal standards too high, or (3) treat
themselves badly for their faults.
B. Phobias
Phobias
are learned by (1) direct contact, (2) inappropriate generalization, and
(3) observational experiences. Once learned they are maintained by negative
reinforcement, as the person is reinforced for avoiding fear-producing situations.
C. Aggressive
Behaviors
When
carried to extremes, aggressive behaviors can become dysfunctional. In a study
of children observing live and filmed models being aggressive, Bandura and his
associates found that aggression tends to foster more aggression.
VIII. Therapy
The
goal of social cognitive therapy is self-regulation. Bandura noted three levels
of treatment: (1) induction of
change, (2) generalization of change
to other appropriate situations, and (3)
maintenance of newly acquired functional behaviors. Social cognitive
therapists sometimes use systematic
desensitization, a technique aimed at diminishing phobias through
relaxation.
VIII. Related Research
Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy has generated a great deal of research demonstrating that people’s beliefs are related to their ability to enact a wide variety of performances, including smoking cessation and academic performance.
A. Self-Efficacy and
Smoking Cessation
Saul Shiffman and his colleagues
(2000) studied the effects of daily fluctuations in self-efficacy on smoking
lapses and relapses among ex-smokers who had quit on their own for at least 24
hours. They found that when these participants smoked even a single cigarette,
their daily self-efficacy became more variable, leading to future lapses and
relapses among ex-smokers. Ex-smokers who believed in their ability to quit
smoking were able to maintain high self-efficacy and to avoid lapses and
relapse.
B. Self-Efficacy and
Academic Performance
Bandura and a group of Italian
researchers (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996) studied
level of self-efficacy and its relation to academic performance in
middle-school children living near Rome. They found that children who believed
that their parents had confidence in their academic ability were likely to have
high academic aspirations, high academic self-efficacy, and high
self-regulatory efficacy. Moreover, they found that each of these factors
related either directly or indirectly to high academic performance.
X. Critique of Bandura
Bandura’s
theory is one of the highest rated of any in the text largely because it was
constructed through a careful balance of innovative speculation and accurate
observations, which were based on rigorous research. In summary, Bandura’s
theory rates very high on its ability to generate research as well as on
internal consistency and parsimony. In addition, it rates high on its ability
to be falsified, to organize knowledge, and to guide the practitioner.
XI. Concept of Humanity
Bandura
sees humans as being relatively fluid and flexible. People can store past
experiences and then use this information to chart future actions. Although
people are goal-directed, they are also influenced by previous experiences.
Thus, Bandura rates in the middle on teleology versus causality and on free
choice versus determinism. His theory rates high on optimism, conscious
influences, and uniqueness, and very high on social determinants of
personality.