SW 104- Albert Bandura

Social Learning Theory

Social Learning Theory focuses on conditions that affect the acquisition, performance, and maintenance of behavior. Through observational learning or modeling, people may acquire complex patterns of behavior even without being rewarded.

Self-Regulation

• Self-regulation refers to the ability of individuals to monitor, control, and adapt their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to achieve desired goals or standards.

Goal-Setting

Goal setting involves establishing specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives to guide behavior and achievement.

Self-Efficacy

The belief in one's own ability to successfully perform a specific task or achieve a particular goal.

Observational Learning

Observation allows people to learn without performing any behavior. A person's behavior changes as a result of being exposed to the behavior of another person, the model. Specific components of a model's behavior are called modeling cues.

Modeling

• Core of observational learning.

• Involves adding and subtracting.

• observing appropriate activities, properly coding events, actually performing, being sufficiently motivated.

• Generalizing from one observation to another.

• Involves cognitive processes and not simply mimicry or imitation.

• Representing information and storing for future time.

• observing appropriate activ

Live modeling

observering models "in the flesh."

Symbolic modeling

exposed to models indirecty.

Three Stages of Observational Learning

• Exposure

• Acquisition

• Acceptance

Processes Governing Observational Learning

• Attention

• Representation

• Behavioral Production

• Motivation

Three effects of Observation and Imitation:

• Modeling effect

• Observer attends to and imitates new model, but only to behaviors they have the capacity of doing.

• Disinhibitory effect

• The release of a whole class of behavior that is usually inhibited.

• Eliciting effect

• Observer matches the model's behavior with response already in their repertoire or learned earlier.

Triadic Reciprocal Causations

Personal Factors

Behavior

Environmental Factors

Chance Encounter

Unintended meeting of persons unfamiliar to each other.”

Fortuitous Events

• An environmental experience that is unexpected and unintended

Human Agency

• Essence of humanness.

• An active process of exploring, manipulating, and influencing the environment in order to attain desired outcomes.

Four core features of human agency

Intentionality

Forethought

self-reactiveness

self-reflectiveness

Intentionality

acts a person performs intentionally.

Forethought

to set goals, to anticipate outcomes, and to select behavior.

Self-reactiveness

process of motivating and regulating their own actions.

Self-reflectiveness

examiners of their own actions.

Self-Efficacy

• According to Bandura (1994) “people’s beliefs in their capability to exercise some measure of control over their own functioning and over environmental events.”

Efficacy expectations

• People’s confidence that they have the ability to perform certain behaviors.

Outcome expectations

• One’s prediction of the likely consequences of that behavior

Bobo doll experiment

aimed to investigate the impact of observational learning and modeling on aggressive behavior in children.

Vicarious Reinforcement

• The process via which watching another person receiving reinforcement for a specific conduct increases one's likelihood of engaging in that same behavior (response).

Proxy Agency

• Proxy, indirect control over those social conditions that affect everyday living.

• Bandura (2001) noted that “no one has the time, energy, and resources to master every realm of everyday life. Successful functioning necessarily involves a blend of reliance on proxy agency in some areas of functioning”

Collective-Efficacy

• People’s shared belief in their collective power to produce desired results”

• two techniques for measuring collective efficacy:

• To combine individual member’s evaluations of their personal capabilities to enact behaviors that benefit the group.

• To measure the confidence each person has in the group’s ability to bring about a desire outcome.

Self-Regulation

• When people have high levels of self-efficacy, are confident in their reliance on proxies, and possess solid collective efficacy, they will have considerable capacity to regulate their own behavior.

• Bandura believes that people use both reactive and proactive strategies for self-regulation.

External Factors in Self-Regulation

• Provide us with a standard for evaluating our own behavior

• External factors influence self-regulation by providing the means for reinforcement

Intrinsic rewards are not always sufficient; we also need incentives that emanate from external factors.

Internal Factors in Self-Regulation