Albert Bandura

• Social-Cognitive Theory

  • Takes chance encounters and fortuitous events seriously, while recognizing that these meetings and events do not invariably alter one’s life path
• Plasticity 

  • Humans have the flexibility to learn a variety of behaviors in diverse situations
  • Vicarious Learning - learning by observing others
• 1. Triadic Reciprocal Causation Model 

  • Includes behavioral, environment, and personal factors 
  • Environmental factors - chance encounters and fortuitous events 
  • People have the capacity to regulate their lives
  • Self-efficacy - confidence that they can perform those behaviors that will produce desired behaviors in a particular situation
• Agentic Perspective 

  • Humans have the capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of their lives
  • People are the producers as well as the products of social systems

  1. Proxy Agency - people are able to rely on others for goods and services
  2. Collective Agency - refers to people’s shared beliefs that they can bring about change
• 1. External Factors - include people’s physical and social environments
• Internal Factors - include self-observation, judgmental process, and self-reaction
• Moral Agency 

  • Fifth, when people find themselves in morally ambiguous situations, they typically attempt to regulate their behavior through moral agency
  • Redefining the behavior
  • Disregarding or distorting the consequences of their behavior
  • Dehumanizing or blaming the victims of their behavior
  • Displacing or diffusing responsibility for their actions
• 1. Observation - allows people to learn without performing any behavior
• Learning

  • Much of what an individual learns is through observational learning and need not be via reinforcement 
  • “If knowledge could be acquired only through the effects of one’s own actions, the process of cognitive and social development would be greatly retarded, not to mention exceedingly tedious” 
• Observational Learning 

  • Much more efficient than learning through direct experience
  • By observing other people, humans are spared countless responses that might be followed by punishment or by no reinforcement
• Modeling 

  • The core of observational learning 
  • Involves cognitive processes and is not simply mimicry or imitation
• • Several factors determine whether a person will learn from a model in any particular situation;

  1. Characteristics of the model 
  2. Characteristics of the observer
  3. Consequences of the behavior being modeled
• Process of Observational Learning

  • Attention observer must attend to what the model is doing or saying 
• Process of Observational Learning

  • Representation observer must code the information and keep it in memory so they can retrieve it
• Process of Observational Learning

  • Behavioral Production observer must be able to reproduce the model’s behavior 
• Process of Observational Learning

  • Motivation observer must be motivated to imitate the modeled behavior
• Enactive Learning

  • Every response a person makes is followed by some consequence
  • Allows people to acquire new patterns of complex behavior through direct experience by thinking about and evaluating the consequences of their behaviors
  • Serve at least three functions: 

  1. Inform us of the effects of our actions 
  2. Motivates our anticipatory behavior 
  3. Serve to reinforce behavior
• • Triadic Reciprocal Causation 
  • This system assumes that human action is a result of an interaction among three variables—environment, behavior, and person (memory, anticipation, planning, and judging)
• • Bandura uses the term “reciprocal” to indicate a triadic interaction of forces, not a similar or opposite counteraction
• Triadic Reciprocal Determinism 

  • Differential Contributions the relative influence of behavior, environment, and person depends on which of the triadic factors is strongest at the moment
• Triadic Reciprocal Determinism 

  • Chance Encounters unintended meeting of persons unfamiliar to each other or environmental experience that is unexpected or unintended
• Triadic Reciprocal Determinism 

  • Fortuitous Events environmental experience that is unexpected and unintended
• Human Agency

  • The essence of humanness
• • Personality is seen as agentic — something an individual has control over 
• Human Agency

  • An active process of ­exploring, manipulating, and influencing the environment in order to attain desired ­outcomes
  • Individual as self-regulating, proactive, self reflective and self-organizing, and power to influence their own actions to produce desired consequences
• Core Features of Human Agency

  1. Intentionality - this refers to acts a person performs intentionally; planning + action 
• Core Features of Human Agency

  1. Forethought - ability to set goals and anticipate likely outcomes of their actions; ability to produce desirable outcomes and avoid undesirable one which allows one to break free from one’s environment 
• Core Features of Human Agency

  1. Self-Reactiveness - process of motivating and regulating one’s actions 
• Core Features of Human Agency

  1. Self-Reflectiveness - individuals examine their own functioning
• Modes of Human Agency

  1. Proxy Agency

  • Involves indirect control over social conditions that may affect everyday living 
  • Through proxy agency, we are able to rely on others to help accomplish personal goals 
  • One downside; by relying too much on the competence and power of others, people may weaken their sense of personal and collective efficacy
• Modes of Human Agency

  1. Collective Efficacy

  • Refers to people’s shared beliefs in their collective power to produce desired results 
  • The confidence people have that their combined efforts will bring about group accomplishments
  • The confidence people have that their combined efforts will bring about group accomplishments
• Self-efficacy

  • The foundation of human agency
  • Belief in one’s capability to exercise some measure of control over one’s own regarding whether or not one has what it takes to produce a desired outcome. 
  • Refers to the person’s confidence not an expectation of our action’s outcomes or outcome expectancies 
• • Reactive and Proactive Strategies 
  • Reactive - attempts to reduce discrepancy between accomplishments and goals 
• • Reactive and Proactive Strategies 
  • Proactive - set newer and higher goals
• • Reactive and Proactive Strategies 
  • Remember - behavior stems from a reciprocal influence of both external and internal factors 
• External Factors in Self-Regulation

  1. Provides us with a standard for evaluating our own behaviors  
  2. Provides the means for reinforcement 
• Internal Factors in Self-Regulation 

  • Self-Observation monitoring our own performance 
• Internal Factors in Self-Regulation 

  • Self-Observation monitoring our own performance 
  • Judgmental Process helps us regulate our behavior through the process of cognitive mediation
• Internal Factors in Self-Regulation 

  • Judgmental Process helps us regulate our behavior through the process of cognitive mediation

  1. Personal Standards - allow us to evaluate our performances without comparing them to the conduct of others
• Internal Factors in Self-Regulation 

  • Judgmental Process helps us regulate our behavior through the process of cognitive mediation

  1. Referential Performances - we evaluate our performances by comparing them to a standard of reference