4.6b: Social Cognitive Theories of Psychology

Social-Cognitive Perspective: a view of behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) & their social context

• the interaction of our traits w/ our situations

• incorporates behaviorism and cognitive psychology to explain personality development

Bandura

Reciprocal Determinism: the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment

• Bandura’s view of the person-situation interaction

  • His explanation of how the factors of environment, personal characteristics, and behavior interact to determine future behavior

→ Simple Example:

• You like psychology (internal factor: cognition)

• You spend time in the psychology department (an environment)

• You interact with psychology students & faculty (behavior)

Self-efficacy: individual’s expectancy of how effective his/her efforts to accomplish a goal will be in any particular circumstance

→ (another definition): refers to our personal beliefs of how capable we are in performing specific tasks and behaviors

• can be high or low depending on past experiences

• specific to a particular behavior

→ Impacts of Self-Efficacy:

Comparison of Self-Esteem & Self-Concept