Chapter 16: Bandura – Social Cognitive Theory: Comprehensive Study Notes

Vocabulary flashcards summarizing essential terms and concepts from Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory lecture.

Social Cognitive Theory

Bandura’s framework that explains behavior through the reciprocal interaction of personal factors, behavior, and environment, emphasizing observational learning and human agency.

Observational Learning

Learning that occurs by watching others rather than through direct experience.

Modeling

The cognitive process of observing, encoding, and later reproducing another person’s behavior; the core of observational learning.

Enactive Learning

Learning derived from the consequences of one’s own actions.

Vicarious Reinforcement

Indirect reinforcement gained by observing someone else receive a reward, which influences the observer’s future behavior.

Triadic Reciprocal Causation

Bandura’s model in which behavior (B), personal factors (P), and environment (E) mutually influence one another.

Plasticity

Humans’ flexibility to learn many behaviors in diverse situations.

Human Agency

The capacity to intentionally plan, regulate, and reflect on one’s actions and thereby influence life circumstances.

Self-Efficacy

Belief in one’s capability to organize and execute actions required to achieve specific outcomes.

Proxy Agency

Exerting control indirectly by relying on others to act in one’s interests.

Collective Efficacy

Shared confidence that a group’s combined efforts can achieve desired results.

Intentionality

Proactive commitment to perform particular actions; includes planning and execution.

Forethought

Anticipating future events, setting goals, and selecting behaviors to achieve preferred outcomes.

Self-Reactiveness

Motivating and regulating one’s behavior during goal pursuit.

Self-Reflectiveness

Examining and evaluating one’s motives, values, and thinking processes.

Mastery Experiences

Past successful performances that strengthen self-efficacy beliefs.

Social Modeling

Observing similar others succeed or fail, which alters one’s own sense of efficacy.

Social Persuasion

Verbal encouragement or discouragement from credible sources that influences efficacy expectations.

Physical and Emotional States

Bodily arousal and mood cues that affect judgments of personal efficacy.

Chance Encounters

Unintended meetings with unfamiliar people that can change life paths.

Fortuitous Events

Unexpected environmental happenings that influence behavior and development.

Self-Regulation

Process of using personal standards and external feedback to monitor, judge, and react to one’s behavior.

Self-Observation

Monitoring one’s own actions as part of the self-regulatory process.

Judgmental Process

Evaluating behavior against personal standards or reference norms.

Self-Reaction

Self-administered rewards or punishments following self-evaluation.

Moral Agency

Regulation of conduct through standards that emphasize doing no harm and helping others.

Selective Activation

Engaging moral self-sanctions only for certain behaviors or contexts.

Disengagement of Internal Control

Cognitive techniques that detach moral standards from harmful conduct, allowing inhumane acts.

Moral Justification

Reframing harmful acts as serving a noble or worthy purpose.

Euphemistic Labeling

Using sanitized language to disguise or soften harmful behavior.

Advantageous Comparison

Making one’s actions seem acceptable by contrasting them with more extreme misdeeds.

Displacement of Responsibility

Attributing harmful actions to the dictates of authority, thereby shifting blame.

Diffusion of Responsibility

Spreading accountability across a group so no individual feels personally responsible.

Dehumanization

Stripping victims of human qualities to reduce self-censure for mistreatment.

Bobo Doll Experiment

Bandura’s 1963 study showing that children imitate aggressive behaviors modeled by adults or films.

Cognitive Mediation

Mental processing that interprets experiences and influences learning and behavior change.

Systematic Desensitization

Therapeutic technique pairing relaxation with gradual exposure to feared stimuli to extinguish phobias.

Enactive Mastery (Performance Therapy)

Treatment requiring clients to perform previously feared behaviors to build efficacy.

Overt Modeling

Live or filmed demonstrations used to teach or modify behaviors.

Covert (Cognitive) Modeling

Visualization of models performing behaviors to reduce fear or teach skills.

Dysfunctional Behavior

Maladaptive actions (e.g., depression, phobias, aggression) learned and maintained through reciprocal interactions of person, behavior, and environment.