Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory Albert

Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory

Albert Bandura is one of the most prominent psychological theorists of the modern era. Bandura developed a foundational theory he calls Social Cognitive Theory, though is also often referred to as Social Learning Theory. In this theory Bandura contends that individuals produce behaviors based on their environmental cues, in agreement with behaviorists, yet he also contends that human behavior is not that simple and that "learning" and/or "cognition" internal information also plays a part in behavior and that behavior also influences environment in a reciprocal fashion. In this addition, Bandura departed from traditional behaviorists in that he contended that people are not at all that simple and though they might model behavior these behavioral decisions are more complex and are influenced by internal information, such as the psychology established by previous learning and past modeled behavior and/or rewards and sanctions. This work first provides a brief biographical detail of Bandura and then describes Bandura's "social cognitive theory" and finally discusses how Bandura's theory has influenced the development of psychology and other fields that are intermediated with it, such as criminology, education and child development.

Introduction

"Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately,

most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action" (Bandura, 1977, p. 22).

Albert Bandura is one of the most prominent and important psychological researchers and theorists of the modern era. Bandura developed a foundational theory he calls Social Cognitive Theory, though is also often referred to as Social Learning Theory. In this theory Bandura contends that individuals produce behaviors based on their environmental cues, mostly through modeling the behaviors of others but that this is also reciprocal in that the behavior alters the environment, as well as the reverse. Bandura labeled this reciprocal determinism, (Bandura a., the Self System in Reciprical Determinism, 1978) and used it as a basis for explaining a great deal of bias and change associated with the individual and haw he or she interacts with the environment (Boeree, 2006). Though partly in agreement with behaviorists Bandura also contends that human behavior is not that simple and that "learning" and/or "cognition" internal information also plays a part in behavior and that behavior will also influence environment. In this addition to simple behaviorism, Bandura departed from traditional behaviorists in that he contended that people are not at all that simple, learning by reward and sanction of behavior alone, and though they might model behavior these behavioral decisions are more complex and are influenced by internal information, such as the psychology established by previous learning and past modeled behavior and/or rewards and sanctions for such behavior as well as external, environmental influences or novel modeling and reward and sanction events. Bandura has also contributed greatly to a better general understanding of how self-efficacy, or ones overall belief in his or her skills and abilities affects behavior and even life skill development (Bandura, Guide for Constructing Self-Efficacy Scales, 2006). This work first provides a brief biographical detail of Bandura and then describes Bandura's "social cognitive theory" and finally discusses how Bandura's theory has influenced the development of psychology and other fields that are intermingled with it, such as criminology, education and child development.

Bandura's History

Bandura was born in 1925 in a rural town in Alberta Canada, where he had a normal childhood in a small town and he attended a small elementary, middle, high school combination school, that had extremely high success rates for students, despite resource limitations. After graduation he then went on to earn an undergraduate degree in 1949 from University of British Columbia and then a PhD from University of Iowa in 1952 and began teaching at Stanford University in 1953, where he continues his distinguished career even today. His initial full length book publications began in 1959, though he had published several articles prior to this beginning in his first year at Stanford. (Bandura a., Albert Bandura Cirriculum Vita, 2006) the focus and title of his first full length book was on the phenomena of Adolescent Aggression (Bandura & Walters, 1959). Since that time Bandura has become a consummate writer, developing alone and in collaboration several key texts in both journal and book form that serve as guides for his own theories and additional research and theories regarding how people learn and exhibit behavior and why these issues are important and really fundamental to development (Rosenstock, Strecher, & Becker, 1988).

Bandura's main impetus has always been on a greater global understanding of how bad modeling behaviors create bad behaviors in individual even in the long-term and how to produce better models or intervene in early bad modeling and through building self-efficacy. (Bandura & Schunk, Cultivating Compitence, Self-Efficacy, and Intrinsic Interest Through Proximal Self-Motivation, 1981). Bandura contends that modeling, good or bad, begins in the home and with the family, the child's most influential teachers and ends with behaviors (Bandura a., Social Learning Theory of Aggression, 1978). Bandura believes that early intervention regarding aggression and deviance should be the ultimate goal of all social scientists and even all parents and/or educators and that doing so could ultimately resolve a great deal of social and individual ills (Bandura & Walters, 1959). Some of his most influential and lasting experimental models are those surrounding children and adolescents and how they learn and unlearn deviant behaviors.

Bandura's bobo doll experiment, where a filmed model assaults a toy doll and then children viewing it exhibit the same aggressive behavior toward the toy, even in the long-term is a lasting impression of his work as well as one of the first examples of proof of environmental rather than simple genetic examples of learned behavior in children. In this work Bandura expanded the understandings of influencing environmental factors as well; doing many experiments that changed the model characteristics as well as other possible dependent variables to demonstrate how different models and circumstances altered the assimilation of behavior by the children (Boeree, 2006). This experiment and Bandura's subsequent theories and writings began to elicit serious questions regarding media demonstrations of aggression and how children and adolescents utilize even obvious fiction examples of aggression to develop their own aggressive behavior styles and of course more positive social learning models (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, Imitation of Film-Mediated Aggressive Models, 1963) (Eron, Lefkowitz, Huesmann, & Walder, 1972, pp. 253-263). "Bandura's theory has made the public and political affairs realize that [media] violence does cause aggression in children" (Isom, 1998).

Bandura's Theories

Social Cognitive Theory

The first premise of Social Cognitive Theory or Social Learning Theory is that most human behavior is derived from modeling or imitation, where an individual observes another modeling the behavior and then they mimic it, based on the perception of possible reward for doing so. According to Bandura the requirements for observational learning are fourfold the individual must exhibit or have all four of these aspects present to develop modeled behavior; attention, retention, motor reproduction and finally, motivation (Isom, 1998). In other words the individual must be paying attention to the modeling, they must be able to remember the behavior, they must have the ability to physically exhibit the behavior and finally they must perceive or expect some sort of intrinsic or extrinsic reward for exhibiting the behavior. Bandura also contends that reward is fundamentally more effective as a tool for observational learning than sanction but that both have influence on behavior in both the long and short-term and that once a behavior has been learned through modeling and in other ways it is more difficult to eradicate it than it was to create it (Boeree, 2006).

Reciprocal Determinism

It is also essential to understand that Bandura's theory is very well grounded in reciprocal determinism, which departs from many learning theories that do not advocate for the idea that internal drives and exhibited behaviors also affect the environment in which those behaviors have been exhibited.

With the publication of Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, Bandura (1986) advanced a view of human functioning that accords a central role to cognitive, vicarious, self-regulatory, and self-reflective processes in human adaptation and change. People are viewed as self-organizing, proactive, self-reflecting and self-regulating rather than as reactive organisms shaped and shepherded by environmental forces or driven by concealed inner impulses. & #8230; how people interpret the results of their own behavior informs and alters their environments and the personal factors they possess which, in turn, inform and alter subsequent behavior. This is the foundation of Bandura's (1986) conception of reciprocal determinism, the view that (a) personal factors in the form of cognition, affect, and biological events, (b) behavior, and (c) environmental influences create interactions that result in a triadic reciprocality (Pajares, 2002).

Pajares of Emory University also contends that it was during this period that Bandura altered the name of his theory from Social Learning Theory to Social Cognitive Theory, in part to separate it from other social learning theories, but mainly to make people aware that cognition (the ability of individuals to learn and think) plays an absolutely crucial role in their ability to "construct reality, self-regulate, encode information, and perform behaviors" (Pajares, 2002).

Self-Regulation

Bandura understands that the development of self is influenced by the environment but that the individual also has significant responsibility of determinism that makes the individual responsible for his or her behaviors. According to Boeree self-regulation is absolutely essential to behavior control and provides the backbone of human personality. Boeree describes the three steps that Bandura suggests that contribute to self-regulation; self-observation, or the process of observing our own behavior and then keeping track of it, judgment, or the comparisons we draw between our own behavior and that of the socially acceptable performance standards of our culture and environment, and self-response where we reward or sanction ourselves based on this perception of standards as compared to our own behavior. How one performs on this perceptive scale over the long-term forms the sense of self, i.e. If one generally perform well on this scale and receives much self-reward then he or she will be likely to have a good self-concept, while if the reverse is true and one over the long-term punishes him or herself often for not meeting this perceived standard then he or she will likely have low self-concept (Boeree, 2006). It is essential to understand that a skewed standard will likely result in low self-concept, if say an individual has a skewed sense of reality, or a skewed sense of how well others perform in the environment it will also likely result in a low self-concept. The skew can go either way, if the standard is too high even success will be viewed as not enough and if the standard is too low it may result in apathy or even self-aggrandizement. From these concepts Bandura derives three possible results from excessive self-punishment: "a. compensation -- a superiority complex, for example, and delusions of grandeur. b. inactivity -- apathy, boredom, depression. c. escape -- drugs and alcohol, television fantasies, or even the ultimate escape, suicide " (Boeree, 2006). It takes only a small leap to see how these three possible negative scenarios, affect individuals and society as a whole. In short just these three concepts can explain a whole string of serious social ills and possibly help to reduce their affects on individuals. According to Boeree, Bandura's advice to those who have poor self-efficacy and therefore a poor concept of self is to build on the following three steps:

1. Regarding self-observation -- know thyself! Make sure you have an accurate picture of your behavior.

2. Regarding standards -- make sure your standards aren't set too high. Don't set yourself up for failure! Standards that are too low, on the other hand, are meaningless.

3. Regarding self-response -- use self-rewards, not self-punishments. Celebrate your victories, don't dwell on your failures. (Boeree, 2006)

The development of this theory, as well as all its offshoots and challenges to individuals and society can aide in a greater understanding of self as well as a greater understanding of our role as influencers of others.

Implications/Conclusion

One can see from these brief descriptions of Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory the massive implications it has for transcending psychology and becoming a part of education theory, criminology theory, therapeutic models as well as many other social science applications. Criminology has utilized Bandura's work as a substantial basis for the development of juvenile deviance and crime causation and intervention (Isom, 1998).

Albert Bandura believed that aggression is learned through a process called behavior modeling. He believed that individuals do not actually inherit violent tendencies, but they modeled them after three principles (Bandura, 1976: p.204). Albert Bandura argued that individuals, especially children learn aggressive reponses [sic] from observing others, either personally or through the media and environment. He stated that many individuals believed that aggression will produce reinforcements. These reinforcements can formulate into reduction of tension, gaining financial rewards, or gaining the praise of others, or building self-esteem (Isom, 1998).