Posted: October 7th, 2022

Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory

Albert Bandura’s social-cognitive theory is about learning and living through other people. Explore Bandura’s theory, the reciprocal causation model, the role of consequences in learning from models, and the four ways to build self-efficacy.
Introduction
Have you ever been scared of snakes or other animals? Do you think that if you watched other people who were afraid of snakes, you could get over your fear? This exact experiment was done years ago to help Albert Bandura, a psychologist, understand how important behavioral models are.

Bandura and the Social Cognitive Theory

Bandura came up with his social cognitive theory by watching people who were afraid of snakes.

Bandura Snake Example

When Albert Bandura was helping people who were afraid of snakes, he realized how important behavioral models were. He found that letting the patients watch other patients handle snakes was a good way to help them. The patients in treatment learned that other people like them had handled snakes without getting sick. These patients thought about what they did based on what they learned. Bandura found that these things helped them get over their fears of snakes more than trying to talk them out of it or watching the psychologist handle the snakes.

Bandura’s theory of social learning emphasizes how important it is to learn by watching, imitating, and modeling. His theory is based on a model called “reciprocal causation,” which says that behavior, personal factors (like thinking), and the environment all interact with each other all the time.

But Bandura doesn’t think that the three parts of the triadic model all have the same effect on behavior. Which of behavior, environment, and person has the most impact at any given time depends on which is the strongest at that time.

In the model, B, which stands for “behavior,” means things like difficulty, length, skill, etc. The E stands for environment, which is made up of the situation, roles, models, and relationships. P, which stands for “person,” is mostly made up of knowledge, but it also includes things like self-efficacy, motivations, and personality.

Here’s an example from the classroom to help make this point clearer. As a teacher teaches a lesson in class, students think about what the teacher is saying. Here, the environment affects how people think, which is a personal factor. Students raise their hands to ask a question when they don’t understand something. Here, personal factors affect how people act. So, the teacher goes over it again (behavior influences environment).

The Bobo Doll study, which Bandura did in 1961, was his most well-known experiment. In short, he made a video in which an adult woman hit and yelled at a Bobo doll.

Diagram of the model of causes that affect each other

Reciprocal Causation Model

Groups of kids watched the movie. After that, the kids were allowed to play with the same doll in the room. The kids started to act like the model by hitting the doll and using the same kind of mean words. The study was important because it went against the idea that all behavior is controlled by reinforcement or rewards, which is what behaviorism says. The kids didn’t get any encouragement or rewards for beating up the doll. They were just copying what they had seen other kids do.

Bandura’s understanding of a model’s main job, which is to give information to the observer, was solidified by the Bobo doll experiment and others. This job can be done one of three ways:

Modeled behaviors serve as cues for others to do the same things.

They also serve to either strengthen or weaken the learner’s current barriers to doing a modeled behavior.

They are used to show new ways of doing things.

A hostess at a fancy dinner party shows how behavior can be used as a social cue. A guest who doesn’t know much about the different kinds of silverware watches the hostess choose the right one for each course.

Another way that behavior can be strengthened or weakened is when an observer is less likely to copy a behavior when the model is punished. For example, if a classmate breaks a school rule and gets in trouble for it, the other students will be less likely to try to break the rule themselves. On the other hand, the restraints of observers are weakened in one of two ways. One is that bad things people do don’t get punished. The other is showing how violence can be justified, which makes it seem more acceptable to use violence as a way to solve a problem. Unfortunately, we see violence on TV and in the media every day, which can make people more likely to act violently themselves.

The third effect of modeling is that it shows new ways of acting. Both children and adults need models to learn how to get along with other people. Language, social norms, and family traditions, as well as educational, social, and political ways of doing things, are all shown in many different ways. Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood is a good example of a symbolic model for kids that shows both how to act in a socially appropriate way and how to be kind to others.

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