Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory: Behavior and Empowering Change

People make social connections which greatly influence human health. Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory (SCT) explains that personal factors, environmental influences, and interaction with others can impact human behavior. The theory suggests that interaction between human and environment, leads to behavioral change in individuals. There are a few important elements to this theory that relates people’s attitude towards their health. These are observational learning, reinforcement, self-control, and self-efficacy. We will analyse social cognitive theory  in this essay as it helps people by informing, guiding, and motivating them to change habits that promote healthy behavior and assists with reducing habits that impair health.

Albert Bandura is considered to be the father of social cognitive theory. A young Bandura was always fascinated with psychology that lead him to obtain a degree in psychology from the University of British Columbia. Later, he received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Iowa. He was interested in human behavior that lead him to experiment with a group of psychologists and social scientists, on children. The study is known as the Bobo doll experiment. They learned that children imitate behaviors that they observe. With this experiment, he moved away from Pavlo’s theory that people only acquire new behavior from conditional stimulus, positive or negative reinforcement, or punishment. After this finding, Bandura renamed social learning theory to social cognitive theory. Bandura explains SCT as a cognitive process that occurs through observation. Social cognitive theory highlights the importance of observation and cognitive factors in learning, understanding, and predicting behavior.

Elements of Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory

Bandura’s social cognitive theory consists of three elements and they are personal cognitive factors, socioenvironmental factors, and behavioral factors.

Personal Cognitive Factors

In the 1970’s when psychologists started realizing the influence on cognition is crucial to human behavior, social cognitive theory was developed. Personal cognitive factors are a person’s ability to process information and apply that knowledge to analyze their experiences. Four major elements construct personal cognitive factors. They are self-efficacy, collective efficacy, outcome expectation, and knowledge. However, self-efficacy is the major element in the SCT theory.

Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is an internal mental process of a person’s confidence in their capabilities to perform a behavior. For example, self-regulation helps to build strategies to increase awareness of one’s actions. Based on the goal people set for themselves, self-monitoring allows people to progress and achieve goals. Low self-efficacy can lead people to be pessimistic and they are less likely to maintain a good habit. On the other hand, people with high efficacy have high self-esteem and are more likely to be confident in their abilities. People with high self-esteem are likely to work on enhancing their skills through different experiences.

As Bandura’s SCT theory explains, a person’s self-efficacy forms through their personal or vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and emotional arousal. When people want to start a new task, they look at their past behaviors on whether they have accomplished it. For example, a person who has successfully lost weight by diet in the past is more likely to diet again. Positive personal experiences help build morale to form new goals. People also make decisions by observing others. Additionally, social persuasion can have direct effects on people’s lives. For example, if teenagers see their role models are avoiding drugs, they will more likely to follow it. The last thing that helps form self-efficacy is the emotional state of a person. Negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, or depression can lead to lower self-esteem which may impair a person’s ability to successfully perform a task.

Collective Efficacy and Outcome Expectations

We all function individually as well as collectively whether we are at home, school, work, or in a social gathering. People’s behavior is influenced by social conditions that they might not be able to control. But, one’s ability to work toward common goals or willingness to act for greater good is known as collective efficacy. It motivates individuals to collaborate with others and increase social cohesiveness. Schools, neighborhoods organizations, or unions can help people build the sense of unity. With collaborations individuals can change many health outcomes. People have expectations of what their health outcome should be before engaging in activities. Bandura describes outcome expectations to be the result of an individual’s action. For example, a person runs with a group of their friends for thirty minutes every day expecting to decrease his chance of cardiovascular disease. This person expecting a positive outcome of his health while working in a group.

Self-Evaluate Outcome Expectations and Knowledge

Bandura describes self-evaluate outcome expectation as a behavior a person has with their internal standard such as self-satisfaction and self-worth. People tend to do things that satisfies them. For example, a person excises to clear their mind. People should have knowledge of the behavior they are about to adopt. Knowledge is understanding the health risk and benefits of choosing different health practices. Bandura emphasizes that only knowledge itself is not sufficient to bring change in people’s behavior, skills are also necessary. For example, a person knows that smoking is bad for health. However, that person is unable to quit because they may not know how to stop smoking. Health care practitioners can provide information and the necessary tools to perform that behavior. Also, providers can help the patient understand that their actions will lead to a certain outcome.

Socioenvironmental Factors

Socioenvironmental factors are aspects that encourage or discourage individual’s health habits. Learning by observing role models or through cultural beliefs determines these factors. A person can learn new things by observing other people’s behavior as well as their behavior consequences. Cultural beliefs or norms affect how one behaves. When people receive social encouragement and accessibility, these resources help them engage in healthy behavior. However, obstacles and barriers make things complicated to achieve the goal.

Observational Learning and Normative Beliefs

Observational learning is when a person learns by observing others and the consequences of that behavior. While people can learn good habits by observing others, bad habits also can be learned. Before changing any health habits, it is important to assess their intentions. A person’s intentions can be determined by what they believe to be the norm is. People may prevent themselves from doing a task that might not be socially approved. On the other hand, people may adopt a negative behavior because the social norm around them approves the behavior. For example, a teenager might start vaping because his/her peers think it makes them look “cool” and can be a part of a popular group in school by vaping.

Social Support, Barriers and Opportunities

Social support is a big part of human being. By creating social support one can bring changes to health behavior. Interpersonal relationship promotes an individual’s well-being and helps people getting through tough times. For instance, if someone gets diagnosed with skin cancer and feels stressed out, a friend can provide information regarding treating skin cancer that would make them feel comfortable. Even with social support people receive, health behavior change can be difficult because of the barriers people face. SCT theory explains that barriers can be cognitive and environmental. Beliefs about the obstacles can interfere with performing a task. Such as, thinking about the health-associated cost of colorectal cancer screening may prevent someone from doing it.

Behavioral Factors

People’s ability to successfully achieve a goal is associated with developing the necessary skill as Bandura calls it behavior capability. People can create short- and long-term intentions to achieve their goals.

Bringing change to complex behaviors often requires acquiring new behavioral skills. To perform a particular task, people should have the ability and know how to perform the task. For instance, a person may know proper wound care is important for healing but does not know how to change the dressing. Health care providers can demonstrate the patients how to change dressing and ask patients to teach back. Before performing a task, it is important to set a goal that one can accomplish. Assessment of an individual’s readiness can help practitioners to understand whether the patient will likely to change behaviors. Bandura describes that one must be able to participate in planning their futures and create an internal standard on how to reach that goal.

Reinforcement and Punishment

Both reinforcement and punishment can be positive and negative. An example of positive reinforcement is that a child eats fruits and vegetables at dinner, as a reward she gets to watch her favorite cartoon for half an hour after dinner. The child might associates eating vegetables with television. She will more likely eat more vegetables thinking for the reward she receives. On the other hand, punishment can bring positive outcomes. For example, if a child does poorly in school because of excessive screen time, the parents may punish the child they can get the cell phone back. Reinforcement and punishments can both strengthen and weaken health behaviorr.

Strengths and Weakness

Albert Bandra’s social cognitive theory is one of the most studied theories in psychology. Health care professionals use this theory as a basic concept to create health behavior interventions for their patients. Studies show that people use this SCT theory in management of diseases, such as arthritis, asthma, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. Social cognitive theory is largely used by the advance practice nurses as it can help patients bring behavioral change in a personal and group-level. Health promotion, health practices, and environmental change strategies can help manage many chronic diseases and mental health disorders. This model promotes health among young people since many bad habits start from childhood. Bandura’s model encourages preventing the initiation of poor habits before it begins. Additionally, providers in the field of sport and exercise medicine prefer the SCT model to assist their patients. One of the strengths of this theory is that it provides practical guidelines for application, as well as intervention and policy instructions.

The social cognitive theory mainly emphasizes on individual behavior change. Often, environmental influences are overlooked when studying individuals. Therefore, designed interventions do not adequately address an individual’s issue. One of the critiques for SCT theory is that researchers can influence the outcome expectations. For instance, while doing research, the researchers may give only a few options to choose as incentives. Based on different personalities people have, the incentives they chose may result a different outcome. Additionally, researchers often use interview questions to find the self-efficacy in people. While self-reporting is a great way to know details about a person, it can also be reported inadequately. Bennett et al., conducted a study to evaluate the relationship between depression and medication compliance. The study outcome was determined by the self-reported responses from the participants. The researchers found that the responses indicated a lack of understanding and dishonesty. Even with limitations, SCT theory is one of the most influential theories being used in human behavior change.

Final Point: Philosophical Underpinnings

When developing a theory, it is very crucial to consider the theorist’s point of view. A philosophical stance impacts how the theory will be built. Based on Bandura’s SCT theory, it follows the paradigm of constructivism. From a constructivist stance, the type of ontology this theory follows is relativism. Relativism means that multiple realities exist on an individual level. A person’s reality can be altered based on their social environment. Constructivists believe that people can build knowledge as they interact with the world and possibly have multiple truths that are considered as correct. Anything unobjective does not exist in the real world. Their epistemology is while experimenting, a researcher and its participants both interact with each other to build the findings. Constructivist believes that these interactions between the researcher and participants can create meaningful finding and are essential for research as Bandura did developing SCT. Additionally, researchers think interaction between the researcher and the participants assist to find in-depth meaning of the experiment. The researchers and the participants agree with the outcome of the experiment. Constructivists position is often backed with qualitative methods in their research. The qualitative method aims for holistic approach to study participants. This way researchers do not study participants separately from the contexts. The base of qualitative research came from individuals experiencing the world differently.

As a constructivist, Bandura created this SCT theory based on personal behaviors, socioenvironmental factors, and individual cognitive factors. Bandura explains that human behaviors change within social contexts. Social cognitive theory focuses on individuals and how they generate information through observation of personal experiences or environmental influences. Bandura believed the true outcome of his research could be found through meaning and experiences. Bandura’s theory is associated with my reciprocal worldview as I believe human beings are part of the whole context and have interchangeable relationships with the environment.  

References

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2. Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

3. Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. In W. M. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Handbook of moral behavior and development (Vol. 1, pp. 45-103). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

4. Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Attaining self-regulation: A social cognitive perspective. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 13-39). Academic Press.

5. Schunk, D. H. (1989). Social cognitive theory and self-regulated learning. In B. J. Zimmerman & D. H. Schunk (Eds.), Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 83-110). Springer.

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7. Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D., & Hackett, G. (1994). Toward a unifying social cognitive theory of career and academic interest, choice, and performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45(1), 79-122.

8. Wood, R., & Bandura, A. (1989). Social cognitive theory of organizational management. Academy of Management Review, 14(3), 361-384.

9. Lent, R. W., & Hackett, G. (1987). Career self-efficacy: Empirical status and future directions. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 30(3), 347-382.

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10. Schunk, D. H., & Zimmerman, B. J. (Eds.). (2008). Motivation and self-regulated learning: Theory, research, and applications. Routledge.