Bandura – Social Cognitive Theory
postdoctoral internship at the Witchita Guidance
Overview of Social Cognitive Theory
 Social cognitive theory takes change encounter
and fortuitous events seriously, even while
recognizing that these meetings or events do
not invariably alter one’s life.
Social cognitive theory rest on several basic assumptions:
 First, the outstanding characteristic of human is
plasticity.
 Second, through the variable of triadic reciprocal
causation which are the behavior, environment
and personal factors, people have the
capacity to regulate their lives.
 Two important environmental forces in the
triadic model are change encounters and
fortuitous events.
 Third, social cognitive takes an agentic
perspective.
Self-Efficacy - A person’s confidence to perform behavior that
will produce desired behavior in a particular
situation. In addition to self-efficacy, both proxy
agency and collective efficacy can predict
performance.
 Fourth, people regulate their conduct through both
external and internal factors.
1. External Factors – It includes the people’s physical and
social environment.
2. Internal Factors - It includes the self-observation,
judgmental process, and self-reaction.
 Fifth, when people find themselves in morally
ambiguous situation, they typically attempt to regulate
their behavior through moral agency.
ALBERT BANDURA
 Albert Bandura was born on December 4, 1925, in
Mundare. He grew up the only boy in a family of five
older sister.
 During his high school years, in their town’s tiny school
that had few teachers and little resources, he learned
self-directiveness.
 After graduating from high school, Bandura spent a
summer in the Yukon working on the Alaska highway.
 Bandura pursued psychology in University of British
Columbia in Vancouver.
 After graduating from British Columbia in just 3 years,
Bandura took a graduate program in clinical
psychology in University of Iowa.
 He completed a master’s degree in 1951 and a PhD in
clinical psychology the following year.
 Then he spent a year in Wichita completing
Center.
 In 1953, he joined the faculty at Stanford University,
except for 1 year as Fellow at the Center for Advance
Study in the Behavior, he has remained.
 In 1958, he collaborated with late Richard H. Walters,
his first doctoral student to publish a paper on
aggression delinquents. The following year, their book,
Adolescent Aggression (1959).
 Bandura has held more than a dozen ofoffices in
prestigious scientific societies including president of
the American Psychological Association (APA) in
1974, president of the Western Psychological
Association in 1980 and among others.
 In addition, he has received more than dozen honorary
degrees from prestigious universities throughout the
world. He also received other awards and he currently
holds David Starr Jordan Professorship of Social
Science in Psychology at Stanford University.
LEARNING
 Human are quite flexible and capable of learning a
multitude of attitudes, skills, and behaviors and a good
bit of those learnings are a result of vicarious
experiences.
OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING
 Bandura believes that observation allows people
to learn without performing any behavior.
 They learn through observing the behavior of the
other people.
 He believes that observational learning is much more
efficient than learning through direct experience.
MODELING
 The core of observational learning is modeling.
 Learning through modeling involves adding
and subtracting from the observed behavior
and generalizing from one observation to
another.
 It involves symbolically representing
information and storing it for use at a future
time.
 Several factors that determine whether a person will
learn from a model in any particular situation:
1. Characteristics of the model
2. The characteristics of the observer affect the
likelihood of modeling.
3. The consequences of the behavior modeled
 Processes, Governing Observational Learning BASIC LAYOUT
 Four processes that govern observational learning:
1. Attention
2. Representation
3. Behavior Production
4. Motivation
 Representation
In order for observation to lead to new patterns, those
pattern must be symbolically represented in memory.
 Reciprocal
Symbolic representation need not to be verbal,
because some observation are retained in imagery and - To indicate a triadic interaction of forces, not a similar or
can be summoned in the absence of the physical opposite counteraction.
model.  Change encounter
Verbal coding – the use language to verbally - An unintended meeting of persons unfamiliar to each
evaluate our behaviors and decide which ones we other.
discard and which ones we desire to try.
 Fortuitous events
 Behavior Production
- It is an environmental experience that is unexpected and
After attending to model and retaining what we have unintended
observed, we then produce behavior.
 Motivation HUMAN AGENCY
Observational behavior is most effective when  Social cognitive theory takes an agentic view of
learners are motivated to perform the modeled personality to exercise control over their own lives.
behavior.
 Bandura believe that people are self-
regulating proactive, self-reflective, and self-organizing
ENACTIVE LEARNING and that they have the power to influence their own
actions to produce desired consequences.
 Every response a person makes is followed by some
consequence.  Human agency does not mean that people
possess a homunculus.
 The consequences of a response have at least 3
functions:  Human agency is an active process of exploring,
manipulating and influencing the environment in order
1. Response consequences inform us of the to maintain in order to attain desired outcomes.
effect of our actions.
Core Features of Human Agency:
2. The consequences of our responses motivate
our anticipatory behavior.  Intentionality

3. The consequences of responses serve to  Forethought

reinforce behavior.  Self-reactiveness
TRIADIC RECIPROCAL CAUSATION  Self-reflectiveness
 This system assumes that human action is a Intentionality
result of an interaction among three variables:
 Refers to an act of a person performs
 Environment intentionally.
 Behavior  It is not simply expectation or prediction of future actions
 Person but a proactive commitment to bring them about.
 Forethought
 People also possess forethought to set goals, to
anticipate likely outcome of their actions and to select
behaviors that will produce desired outcome and avoid
undesirable ones
  Forethought enables people to break free from the
constraints of their environment.
Self-reactiveness
 People capable of self-reactiveness in the process of
motivating and regulating their own actions.
 People not only make choices but they monitor their
progress towards fulfilling those choices.
Self-reflectiveness
- They are examiners of their own functioning; they can
think about and evaluate their motivations, values, and
the meanings of their life goals, and they can think
about the adequacy of their own thinking.
- People’s most crucial self-reflective mechanism is
self-efficacy.
BASIC LAYOUT
 3 Modes of Human Agency
1. Self-efficacy
2. Proxy agency
3. Collective efficacy
SELF-EFFICACY
 A person’s believe in their capability to
exercise some measured of control over their
own functioning and over their environment.
 Efficacy belief is the foundation of human
agency.
 Self-efficacy is not the expectation of our
actions outcomes.
Self-efficacy must be distinguish from several
other concepts:
 Efficacy does not refer to the ability to
execute basic motor skills such as walking or
grasping.
 Efficacy does not imply that we can perform
designated behaviors without anxiety, stress,
or fear.
 Judgments of efficacy are not the same as
levels aspiration
 Self-efficacy is not a global concept like
self-confidence and self-esteem. People can
have high efficacy in one situation and low
efficacy in another
 When people with high efficacy encounter
unresponsive environment, they usually
intensify their efforts to change their
environment.
 When people with low self-efficacy combines
with unresponsive environment, people are
likely to feel apathy, resignation and
helplessness.
Four sources that contributes to self-efficacy:
 Mastery Experience
 Social Modeling
 Social Persuasion
 Physical and Emotional State
1. Mastery Experience
 The most influential source of self-efficacy are
mastery experiences, that is, past
performance.
This are general corollaries statements:
 Successful performance raises self-efficacy in
proportion to the difficult task.
 Tasks successfully accomplished by oneself
are more efficacious than those completes
with the help of others
 Failure is likely to decrease personal efficacy
when we know that we know that we put our
best effort.
 . Failure under conditions of high emotional
arousal or distress are not as self-debilitating
as failure under maximal condition.
 Failure prior to establishment the sense of
mastery detrimental to feelings of personal
efficacy than later failure.
 Occasional failure has little effect on efficacy,
especially for people with a generally high
expectancy rate of success.
2. Social Modeling
 It is the vicarious experiences provided by other
people.
 Our self-efficacy is raised when we observe the
accomplishment of another person of equal
competence, but is lowered when we see them fail.
3. Social Persuasion
 Persuasion from other may raise or lower self-efficacy.
 Efficacious power of persuader is directly related to the
perceived status and authority of the
persuader.
4. Physical and Emotional States
 Strong emotional ordinarily lowers performance.
 For some situation, emotional arousal, if not too
intense is associated with increased performance
 Several variables related to arousal information:
 Level of arousal
 Perceived realism of the arousal
  Nature of the task
PROXY AGENCY
 Proxy involves indirect control over those
social condition that affects everyday living
 Through proxy agency, people can
accomplish their goals by relying on other
people.
 Proxy, however, has a downside. By relying
too much on the competence and power of
others, people may weaken their sense of
personal and collective efficacy.
COLLECTIVE EFFICACY
 People’s shared belief in their own collective
power to produce desired results.
 Bandura suggested 2 techniques for
measuring collective efficacy.
1. Combine individual members evaluate their
personal capabilities to enact behavior that
benefit the group.
2. Measure the confidence each person has
in the group’s ability to bring the desired
outcome
 Collective efficacy does not spring from a
collective “mind” but rather from the personal
efficacy of many individuals working together.
Factors that undermine collective efficacy:
1. Humans live in a transnational world;
2. Recent technology that people neither
understand nor believe that they can control
may lower their sense of collective efficacy.
3. Condition undermining collective efficacy is
the complex social machinery
4. The tremendous scope and magnitude of
human problems can undermine collective
efficacy.
SELF REGULATION
When people have high self-efficacy, are confident in
their reliance on proxies, and possess solid collective
efficacy, they will have considerable capacity to
regulate their own behavior.
Two strategies for Self-Regulation:
 Reactively - attempt to reduce the
discrepancies between their accomplishments
and their goal;
 Proactively - set newer and higher goals for
themselves.
External factors affect self-regulation in at least two
ways:
1. they provide us with a standard for evaluating
our own behavior. Standards do not stem
solely from internal forces.
2. influence self-regulation by providing the
means for reinforcement. Intrinsic rewards are
not always sufficient; we also need incentives
that emanate from external factors.
Three internal requirements in the ongoing exercise of
self-influence:
1. Self-observation
2. Judgmental Process
3. Self-reaction
Self-Observation
- Monitoring our own performance.
- Even though the attention we give to it need
not to be complete or accurate.
Judgmental Process
 We regulate our behavior through the process
of cognitive mediation
 We are capable not only of reflective self-
awareness but also of judging the worth of
our action on the basis of the goals we have
set for ourselves.
The judgment process depends on personal standard,
referential performances, valuation of activity, and
performance attribution.
Personal Standards – Allow us to evaluate our
behavior without comparing them to the conduct of
others
Referential Performances - Comparing our
performance to the performance of others or to a
“norm”.
Valuation of Activity - The values we place on an
activity help to determine where and how much effort
we exert to certain performance.
Performance Attribution - Depends on how we judge
the cause of our behavior.
Self-Reaction
 People respond positively or negatively to
their behaviors depending on how
these behaviors measure up to their
personal standard
Self-Reinforcement
• It does not rest on the fact that it immediately
follows a response.
• Rather it relies in large part on the use of our
cognitive ability to mediate the consequences of
behavior
 between that behavior and even greater
atrocities committed by others.
3. Euphemistic Labels
- Redefining behavior through the use of
euphemistic labels

SELF-REGULATION THROUGH MORAL AGENCY

2. Disregard or Distort the Consequences of Behavior
Bandura sees moral as having two aspects:
 3 techniques of distort or obscuring the
1. Doing no harm to people detrimental consequences of one’s action:

2. Proactively helping people 1. People minimize the consequences of their

behavior
Self-regulatory influences are not automatic but operate
2. Disregard or ignore the consequences of their
operate only if they are activated, a concept Bandura action
calls Selective Activation. 3. Distort or misconstrue the consequences of
 People do not ordinarily engage in reprehensible their action
conduct until they have justified to themselves the 3. Dehumanize or Blame the Victim
morality of their actions.
- People can obscure responsibility for their
 Disengagement of Internal Control actions by either dehumanizing the victim or
attributing blame them.
- By justifying the morality of our action, they
separate or disengage themselves from the
consequences of their behavior.
 Selective activation and disengagement of
internal control allow people with the same moral
standards to behave quite differently, just as they permit
the same person to behave differently in different
situation.
 Mechanisms through which self-control is disengaged or
selectively activated:
1. Redefine of behavior
4. Displace or Diffuse Responsibility
2. Disregard or distort the consequences of
 Displacement
behavior
- People minimize the consequences of their actions the by
3. Dehumanize or blame the victims
placing responsibility on an outside source.
4. Displace or diffuse responsibility
 Diffuse responsibility
- To the responsibility so thin that no one is responsible
1. Redefinition of behavior

 People justify otherwise reprehensible actions

by a cognitive restructuring that allows them
to escape responsibility
 They can relieve themselves of responsibility
for their behavior by at least three techniques:
1. Moral Justification
- Culpable behavior is made to seem
defensible or even noble
2. Palliative Comparisons
- Reducing responsibility through redefining
wrongful behavior is to make a
advantageous or palliative comparisons
DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOR
Bandura classify 3 dysfunctional behaviors:
1. Depression
When people set their personal goal to high, and fall
short, this failure can not only reduce feelings of self-
efficacy, but can lead to depression.
Dysfunctional depression can occur in any of the 3
self-regulatory sub functions:
1. Self-observation
2. Judgment processes
 3. Self-reactions
2. Phobias
 Fear that are strong enough and pervasive to have
and pervasive enough to have debilitating effects
on one’s life.
 Phobias and fear are learned by direct
contact inappropriate generalization, and especially
by observational experience.
 One phobias are maintained by consequent
determinants: that is, negative reinforcement the
phobic persons receive for avoiding the
fear-producing situation.
3. Aggression
- Aggressive behavior is acquired through
observation of others, direct experiences with
positive or negative reinforcements, training,
or instruction.
People continue for at least 5 reasons:
- They enjoy inflicting injury to the victim
(positive reinforcement)
- Hey avoid or counter the aversive
consequences of aggression by others
(negative reinforcement)
- They receive injury or harm for not behaving
aggressively (punishment)
- They live up to their personal standards of
conduct by their aggressive behavior (self-
reinforcement)
- They observe others receiving rewards for
aggression acts or punishment for
nonaggression behavior.