From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Social cognitive theory (SCT), used in psychology, education, and communication, holds that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences. This theory was advanced by Albert Bandura as an extension of his social learning theory.
The theory states that when people observe a model performing a
behavior and the consequences of that behavior, they remember the
sequence of events and use this information to guide subsequent
behaviors. Observing a model can also prompt the viewer to engage in
behavior they already learned.
In other words, people do not learn new behaviors solely by trying
them and either succeeding or failing, but rather, the survival of
humanity is dependent upon the replication of the actions of others.
Depending on whether people are rewarded or punished for their behavior
and the outcome of the behavior, the observer may choose to replicate
behavior modeled. Media provides models for a vast array of people in
many different environmental settings.
History
The conceptual roots for social cognitive theory come from Edwin B. Holt and Harold Chapman Brown's
1931 book theorizing that all animal action is based on fulfilling the
psychological needs of "feeling, emotion, and desire". The most notable
component of this theory is that it predicted a person cannot learn to
imitate until they are imitated.
In 1941, Neal E. Miller and John Dollard
presented their book with a revision of Holt's social learning and
imitation theory. They argued four factors contribute to learning:
drives, cues, responses, and rewards. One driver is social motivation, which includes imitativeness,
the process of matching an act to an appropriate cue of where and when
to perform the act. A behavior is imitated depending on whether the
model receives a positive or negative response consequences.
Miller and Dollard argued that if one were motivated to learn a
particular behavior, then that particular behavior would be learned
through clear observations. By imitating these observed actions the
individual observer would solidify that learned action and would be
rewarded with positive reinforcement.
The proposition of social learning was expanded upon and theorized by Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura. Bandura, along with his students and colleagues conducted a series of studies, known as the Bobo doll experiment,
in 1961 and 1963 to find out why and when children display aggressive
behaviors. These studies demonstrated the value of modeling for
acquiring novel behaviors.
These studies helped Bandura publish his seminal article and book in
1977 that expanded on the idea of how behavior is acquired, and thus
built from Miller and Dollard's research.
In Bandura's 1977 article, he claimed that Social Learning Theory
shows a direct correlation between a person's perceived self-efficacy
and behavioral change. Self-efficacy comes from four sources:
"performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion,
and physiological states".
In 1986, Bandura published his second book, which expanded and renamed his original theory. He called the new theory social cognitive theory.
Bandura changed the name to emphasize the major role cognition plays
in encoding and performing behaviors. In this book, Bandura argued that
human behavior is caused by personal, behavioral, and environmental
influences.
In 2001, Bandura brought SCT to mass communication
in his journal article that stated the theory could be used to analyze
how "symbolic communication influences human thought, affect and
action". The theory shows how new behavior diffuses through society by
psychosocial factors governing acquisition and adoption of the behavior.
In 2011, Bandura published a book chapter -- The Social and Policy Impact of Social Cognitive Theory—to extend SCT'S application in health promotion and urgent global issues,
which provides insight into addressing global problems through a macro
social lens, aiming at improving equality of individuals' lives under
the umbrellas of SCT.
SCT has been applied to many areas of human functioning such as career choice and organizational behavior as well as in understanding classroom motivation, learning, and achievement.
Current status
Social
Cognitive Theory originated in psychology, but based on an unofficial
November 2013 Google Scholar search, only 2 percent of articles
published on SCT are in the pure psychology field. About 20 percent of
articles are from Education and 16 percent from Business. The majority
of publications using SCT, 56 percent, come from the field of Applied
Health Psychology.
The majority of current research in Health Psychology focuses on
testing SCT in behavioral change campaigns as opposed to expanding on
the theory. Campaign topics include: increasing fruit and vegetable
intake, increasing physical activity, HIV education, and breastfeeding.
Born in 1925, Bandura is still influencing the world with
expansions of SCT. His recent work, published May 2011, focuses on how
SCT impacts areas of both health and population in relation to climate
change.
He proposes that these problems could be solved through television
serial dramas that show models similar to viewers performing the desired
behavior. On health, Bandura writes that currently there is little
incentive for doctors to write prescriptions for healthy behavior, but
he believes the cost of fixing health problems start to outweigh the
benefits of being healthy. Bandura argues that we are on the cusp of
moving from a disease model (focusing on people with problems) to a
health model (focusing on people being healthy) and SCT is the theory
that should be used to further a healthy society. Specifically on
Population, Bandura states that population growth is a global crisis
because of its correlation with depletion and degradation of our
planet's resources. Bandura argues that SCT should be used to increase
birth control use, reduce gender inequality through education, and to
model environmental conservation to improve the state of the planet.
Overview
Social
cognitive theory is a learning theory based gists agree that the
environment one grows up in contributes to behavior, the individual
person (and therefore cognition) is just as important. People learn by
observing others, with the environment, behavior, and cognition acting
as primary factors that influence development in a reciprocal triadic
relationship.
Each behavior witnessed can change a person's way of thinking
(cognition). Similarly, the environment one is raised in may influence
later behaviors. For example, a caregiver's mindset (also cognition)
determines the environment in which their children are raised.
The core concepts of this theory are explained by Bandura through a schematization of triadic reciprocal causation.
The schema shows how the reproduction of an observed behavior is
influenced by getting the learner to believe in his or her personal
abilities to correctly complete a behavior.
- Behavioral: The response an individual receives after they
perform a behavior (i.e. Provide chances for the learner to experience
successful learning as a result of performing the behavior correctly).
- Environmental: Aspects of the environment or setting that influence
the individual's ability to successfully complete a behavior (i.e. Make
environmental conditions conducive for improved self-efficacy by
providing appropriate support and materials).
It is important to note that learning can occur without a change in
behavior. According to J.E. Ormrod's general principles of social
learning, while a visible change in behavior is the most common proof of
learning, it is not absolutely necessary. Social learning theorists
believe that because people can learn through observation alone, their
learning may not necessarily be shown in their performance. These are
interdependent on each other and its influence can be directly linked
with individual or group psychological behavior.
According to Alex Stajkovic and Fred Luthans it is critically important
to recognize that the relative influences exerted by one, two, or three
interacting factors on motivated behavior will vary depending on
different activities, different individuals and different circumstances.
Theoretical foundations
Human agency
Social
cognitive theory is proposed in an agentic perspective, which suggests
that, instead of being just shaped by environments or inner forces,
individuals are self-developing, self-regulating, self-reflecting and
proactive. Specifically, human agency operates within three modes:
- Individual Agency: A person’s own influence on the environment;
- Proxy Agency: Another person’s effort on securing the individual’s interests;
- Collective Agency: A group of people work together to achieve the common benefits.
Human agency has four core properties:
- Intentionality: Individuals’ active decision on engaging in certain activities;
- Forethought: Individuals’ ability to anticipate the outcome of certain actions;
- Self-reactiveness: Individuals’ ability to construct and regulate appropriate behaviors;
- Self-reflectiveness: Individuals’ ability to reflect and evaluate the soundness of their cognitions and behaviors.
Human capability
Evolving
over time, human beings are featured with advanced neural systems,
which enable individuals to acquire knowledge and skills by both direct
and symbolic terms.
Four primary capabilities are addressed as important foundations of
social cognitive theory: symbolizing capability, self-regulation
capability, self-reflective capability, and vicarious capability.
- Symbolizing Capability: People are affected not only by direct
experience but also indirect events. Instead of merely learning through
laborious trial-and-error process, human beings are able to symbolically
perceive events conveyed in messages, construct possible solutions, and
evaluate the anticipated outcomes.
- Self-regulation Capability: Individuals can regulate their own
intentions and behaviors by themselves. Self-regulation lies on both
negative and positive feedback systems, in which discrepancy reduction
and discrepancy production are involved. That is, individuals
proactively motivate and guide their actions by setting challenging
goals and then making effort to fulfill them. In doing so, individuals
gain skills, resources, self-efficacy and beyond.
- Self-reflective Capability: Human beings can evaluate their thoughts
and actions by themselves, which is identified as another distinct
feature of human beings. By verifying the adequacy and soundness of
their thoughts through enactive, various, social, or logical manner,
individuals can generate new ideas, adjust their thoughts, and take
actions accordingly.
- Vicarious Capability: One critical ability human beings feature is
the ability to adopt skills and knowledge from information communicated
through a wide array of mediums. By vicariously observing others’
actions and their consequences, individuals can gain insights into their
own activities. Vicarious capability is of great value to human beings’
cognitive development in nowadays, in which most of our information
encountered in our lives derives from the mass media than
trial-and-error processes.
Theoretical components
Modeling
Social
cognitive theory revolves around the process of knowledge acquisition
or learning directly correlated to the observation of models. The models
can be those of an interpersonal imitation or media sources. Effective
modeling teaches general rules and strategies for dealing with different
situations.
To illustrate that people learn from watching others, Albert
Bandura and his colleagues constructed a series of experiments using a
Bobo doll. In the first experiment, children were exposed to either an
aggressive or non-aggressive model of either the same sex or opposite
sex as the child. There was also a control group. The aggressive models
played with the Bobo doll in an aggressive manner, while the
non-aggressive models played with other toys. They found that children
who were exposed to the aggressive models performed more aggressive
actions toward the Bobo doll afterward, and that boys were more likely
to do so than girls.
Following that study, Albert Bandura tested whether the same was
true for models presented through media by constructing an experiment he
called Bobo Doll Behavior: A Study of Aggression. In this
experiment Bandura exposed a group of children to a video featuring
violent and aggressive actions. After the video he then placed the
children in a room with a Bobo doll to see how they behaved with it.
Through this experiment, Bandura discovered that children who had
watched the violent video subjected the dolls to more aggressive and
violent behavior, while children not exposed to the video did not. This
experiment displays the social cognitive theory because it depicts how
people reenact behaviors they see in the media. In this case, the
children in this experiment reenacted the model of violence they
directly learned from the video.
Observations should include:
- Attention Observers selectively give attention to
specific social behavior depending on accessibility, relevance,
complexity, functional value of the behavior or some observer's personal
attributes such as cognitive capability, value preference,
preconceptions.
- Retention Observe a behavior and subsequent consequences,
then convert that observation to a symbol that can be accessed for
future reenactments of the behavior. Note: When a positive behavior is shown a positive reinforcement should follow, this parallel is similar for negative behavior.
- Production refers to the symbolic representation of the
original behavior being translated into action through reproduction of
the observed behavior in seemingly appropriate contexts. During
reproduction of the behavior, a person receives feedback from others and
can adjust their representation for future references.
- Motivational process reenacts a behavior depending on responses and consequences the observer receives when reenacting that behavior.
Modeling does not limit to only live demonstrations but also verbal
and written behaviour can act as indirect forms of modeling. Modeling
not only allows students to learn behaviour that they should repeat but
also to inhibit certain behaviours. For instance, if a teacher glares at
one student who is talking out of turn, other students may suppress
this behavior to avoid a similar reaction. Teachers model both material
objectives and underlying curriculum of virtuous living. Teachers
should also be dedicated to the building of high self-efficacy levels in their students by recognizing their accomplishments.
Outcome expectancies
To
learn a particular behavior, people must understand what the potential
outcome is if they repeat that behavior. The observer does not expect
the actual rewards or punishments incurred by the model, but anticipates
similar outcomes when imitating the behavior (called outcome expectancies), which is why modeling impacts cognition and behavior.
These expectancies are heavily influenced by the environment that the
observer grows up in; for example, the expected consequences for a DUI
in the United States of America are a fine, with possible jail time,
whereas the same charge in another country might lead to the infliction
of the death penalty.
For example, in the case of a student, the instructions the
teacher provides help students see what outcome a particular behaviour
leads to. It is the duty of the teacher to teach a student that when a
behaviour is successfully learned, the outcomes are meaningful and
valuable to the students.
Self-efficacy
Social
cognitive theory posits that learning most likely occurs if there is a
close identification between the observer and the model and if the
observer also has a great self-efficacy.
Self–efficacy is the extent to which an individual believes that they
can master a particular skill. Self-efficacy beliefs function as an
important set of proximal determinants of human motivation, affect, and
action—which operate on action through motivational, cognitive, and
affective intervening processes.
According to Bandura, self-efficacy is "the belief in one's
capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to
manage prospective situations".
Bandura and other researchers have found an individual's self-efficacy
plays a major role in how goals, tasks, and challenges are approached.
Individuals with high self-efficacy are more likely to believe they can
master challenging problems and they can recover quickly from setbacks
and disappointments. Individuals with low self-efficacy tend to be less
confident and don't believe they can perform well, which leads them to
avoid challenging tasks. Therefore, self-efficacy plays a central role
in behavior performance. Observers who have high level of self-efficacy
are more likely to adopt observational learning behaviors.
Self-efficacy can be developed or increased by:
- Mastery experience, which is a process that helps an individual achieve simple tasks that lead to more complex objectives.
- Social modeling provides an identifiable model that shows the processes that accomplish a behavior.
- Improving physical and emotional states refers to ensuring a
person is rested and relaxed prior to attempting a new behavior. The
less relaxed, the less patient, the more likely they won't attain the
goal behavior.
- Verbal persuasion is providing encouragement for a person to complete a task or achieve a certain behavior.
For example, students become more effortful, active, pay attention,
highly motivated and better learners when they perceive that they have
mastered a particular task.
It is the duty of the teacher to allow student to perceive in their
efficacy by providing feedback to understand their level of proficiency.
Teachers should ensure that the students have the knowledge and
strategies they need to complete the tasks.
Self-efficacy
has also been used to predict behavior in various health related
situations such as weight loss, quitting smoking, and recovery from
heart attack. In relation to exercise science, self-efficacy has produced some of the most consistent results revealing an increase in participation in exercise.
Identification
Identification
allows the observer to feel a one-to-one similarity with the model, and
can thus lead to a higher chance of the observer following through with
the modeled action.
People are more likely to follow behaviors modeled by someone with whom
they can identify. The more commonalities or emotional attachments
perceived between the observer and the model, the more likely the
observer learns and reenacts the modeled behavior.
Applications
Mass communication
Media contents studies
Social
cognitive theory is often applied as a theoretical framework of studies
pertained to media representation regarding race, gender, age and
beyond.
Social cognitive theory suggested heavily repeated images presented in
mass media can be potentially processed and encoded by the viewers
(Bandura, 2011). Media content analytic studies examine the substratum
of media messages that viewers are exposed to, which could provide an
opportunity to uncover the social values attached to these media
representations. Although media contents studies cannot directly test the cognitive process,
findings can offer an avenue to predict potential media effects from
modeling certain contents, which provides evidence and guidelines for
designing subsequent empirical work.
Media effects studies
Social
cognitive theory is pervasively employed in studies examining attitude
or behavior changes triggered by the mass media. As Bandura suggested,
people can learn how to perform behaviors through media modeling.
SCT has been widely applied in media studies pertained to sports,
health, education and beyond. For instance, Hardin and Greer in 2009
examined the gender-typing of sports within the theoretical framework of
social cognitive theory, suggesting that sports media consumption and gender-role socialization significantly related with gender perception of sports in American college students.
In health communication, social cognitive theory has been applied in research related to smoking cessation, HIV prevention, safe sex behaviors, and so on.
For example, Martino, Collins, Kanouse, Elliott, and Berry in 2005
examined the relationship between the exposure to television’s sexual
content and adolescents’ sexual behavior through the lens of social
cognitive theory, confirming the significant relationship between the
two variables among white and African American groups; however, no
significant correlation was found between the two variables in the ethic
group of Hispanics, indicating that peer norm could possibly serve as a
mediator of the two examined variables.
Public health
Physical Activity
Albert Bandura
defines perceived self-efficacy as “people's beliefs about their
capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise
influence over events that affect their lives.”
Self-efficacy is just one of six constructs that SCT is based on; the
other five include reciprocal determinism, behavioral capability,
observational learning, reinforcements, and expectations.
A lack of physical activity has been shown to contribute to heart
disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer even in individuals without any
other risk factors.
Social cognitive theory can be helpful in identifying motivating
factors that lead to increased physical activity across age and gender. A
study by Yael Netz and Shulamith Raviv in 2004 found positive
correlations between high levels of self-efficacy when compared to
physical activity.
These findings suggest the best motivational method to increase the
rate of physical activity is one that first increases perceived
self-efficacy. As applied to public health campaigns, the first symptom
to address is low levels of perceived self-efficacy rather than low
levels of physical activity, since addressing the former may rectify the
latter.
A different study conducted in 2015 observed similar results.
The goal of this study was to identify if SCT could be used to
“…improve physical activity (PA) interventions by identifying which
variables to target to maximize intervention impact.” By following 204
overweight men over the course of a three-month weight loss program,
researchers applied a longitudinal, latent variable structural equation
model to test SCT-related constructs including self-efficacy, outcome
expectations, intention and social support as they apply toward
self-reported changes in physical activity level. Researchers found
self-efficacy as the most important indicator for physical activity,
while noting a non-zero effect of intention on increased physical
activity. As such, weight loss programs focused on increasing the
physical activity levels of participants should aim to increase
participant self-efficacy in order to achieve desirable results.
Physical activity levels, on average, decline during one’s life – particularly during adolescence.
SCT can be used to explain the most prevalent contributing factors to
this marked decrease in physical activity among adolescents and then
develop appropriate intervention methods to best change this phenomenon.
One study in particular addresses this subject through the SCT
framework.
Researchers mailed questionnaires to a random sample of 937
undergraduate students in the U.S. to measure the influence of personal,
behavioral, and environmental factors on exercise behavior change. For
both men and women, increased self-efficacy was the most important
predictor in signifying positive changes to exercise behavior and
physical activity.
SCT can be applied to public health campaigns in an attempt to
foster a more healthy public through exercise; as it relates, multiple
studies find self-efficacy as the most important variable in predicting
high- or low-levels of physical activity.
AIDS
Miller's 2005 study found that choosing the proper gender, age, and ethnicity for models ensured the success of an AIDS
campaign to inner city teenagers. This occurred because participants
could identify with a recognizable peer, have a greater sense of
self-efficacy, and then imitate the actions to learn the proper
preventions and actions.
Breastfeeding
A
study by Azza Ahmed in 2009 looked to see if there would be an increase
in breastfeeding by mothers of preterm infants when exposed to a
breastfeeding educational program guided by SCT. Sixty mothers were
randomly assigned to either participate in the program or they were
given routine care. The program consisted of SCT strategies that
touched on all three SCT determinants: personal – showing models
performing breastfeeding correctly to improve self-efficacy, behavioral
–weekly check-ins for three months reinforced participants' skills,
environmental – mothers were given an observational checklist to make
sure they successfully completed the behavior. The author found that
mothers exposed to the program showed significant improvement in their
breastfeeding skills, were more likely to exclusively breastfeed, and
had fewer problems then the mothers who were not exposed to the
educational program.
Morality
Social cognitive theory emphasizes a large difference between an
individual's ability to be morally competent and morally performing. Moral competence involves having the ability to perform a moral behavior, whereas moral performance indicates actually following one's idea of moral behavior in a specific situation. Moral competencies include:
- what an individual is capable of
- what an individual knows
- what an individual's skills are
- an individual's awareness of moral rules and regulations
- an individual's cognitive ability to construct behaviors
As far as an individual's development is concerned, moral competence
is the growth of cognitive-sensory processes; simply put, being aware of
what is considered right and wrong. By comparison, moral performance is
influenced by the possible rewards and incentives to act a certain way.
For example, a person's moral competence might tell them that stealing
is wrong and frowned upon by society; however, if the reward for
stealing is a substantial sum, their moral performance might indicate a
different line of thought. Therein lies the core of social cognitive
theory.
For the most part, social cognitive theory remains the same for
various cultures. Since the concepts of moral behavior did not vary much
between cultures (as crimes like murder, theft, and unwarranted
violence are illegal in virtually every society), there is not much room
for people to have different views on what is morally right or wrong.
The main reason that social cognitive theory applies to all nations is
because it does not say what is moral and immoral; it simply states that
we can acknowledge these two concepts. Our actions in real-life
scenarios are based on whether we believe the action is moral and
whether the reward for violating our morals is significant enough, and
nothing else.
Limitations
Modelling and mass media
In
series TV programming, according to social cognitive theory, the
awarded behaviors of liked characters are supposed to be followed by
viewers, while punished behaviors are supposed to be avoided by media
consumers. However, in most cases, protagonists in TV shows are less
likely to experience the long-term suffering and negative consequences
caused by their risky behaviors, which could potentially undermine the
punishments conveyed by the media, leading to a modeling of the risky
behaviors.
Nabi and Clark conducted experiments about individual’s attitudes and
intentions consuming various portrayals of one-night stand sex– unsafe
and risky sexual behavior,
finding that individuals who had not previously experienced one night
stand sex, consuming media portrayals of this behavior could
significantly increase their expectations of having a one night stand
sex in the future, although negative outcomes were represented in TV
shows.
