MPhil 2016 Assignment : Submitted to: Dr. Iftikar Jafri

1. Social cognitive theory (SCT), holds that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition
can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions,
experiences, and outside media influences.
or
Social cognitive theory is the view that people learn by watching others. In psychology, it
explains personality in terms of how a person thinks about and responds to one's social
environment.
The theory states that when people observe a model performing a behavior and the
consequences of that behavior, they remember the sequence of events and use this
information to guide subsequent behaviors.

2. Q: WHO PROPOUNDED THE THEORY OF SOCIO-COGNITIVE LEARNING?
The proposition of social learning was expanded upon and theorized by Canadian
psychologist Albert Bandura. Bandura, along with his students and colleagues
conducted a series of studies; known as An experiment he called Bobo Doll
Behavior: A Study of Aggression
These studies demonstrated the value of modeling for acquiring novel behaviors.
People do not learn new behaviors solely by trying them and either succeeding or
failing, but rather, the survival of humanity is dependent upon the replication of the
actions of other
In Bandura's 1977 article, he claimed that Social Learning Theory shows a direct
correlation between a person's perceived self-efficacy and behavioral change.

3. Q: WHAT IS MEANT BY SELF- EFFICACY?
Social cognitive theory posits that learning most likely occurs if there is a close
identification between the observer and the model and if the observer also has a
good deal of self-efficacy. Self–efficacy is the extent to which an individual
believes that they have mastered a particular skill.
According to Bandura, self-efficacy is "the belief in one's capabilities to organize
and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations
Bandura and other researchers have found an individual's self-efficacy plays a
major role in how goals, tasks, and challenges are approached.
Therefore, self-efficacy plays a central role in behavior performance. Observers
who have high level of self-efficacy are more likely to adopt observational
learning behaviors.

4. Self-efficacy can be developed or increased by:
 Mastery experience, which is a process that helps an individual achieve simple
tasks that lead to more complex objectives.
Social modeling provides an identifiable model that shows the processes that
accomplish a behavior.
Improving physical and emotional states refers to ensuring a person is rested and
relaxed prior to attempting a new behavior. The less relaxed, the less patient, the more
likely they won't attain the goal behavior.
Verbal persuasion is providing encouragement for a person to complete a task or
achieve a certain behavior

5. Q: WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF SELF-EFFICACY?
Self-efficacy comes from four sources:
 performance accomplishments
 vicarious experience
 verbal persuasion
 Physiological states

6. Q: WHAT ROLE DOES MODELING HAVE IN SOCIO-COGNITIVE THEORY?
Social cognitive theory revolves around the process of knowledge acquisition or
learning directly correlated to the observation of models.
 The models can be those of an interpersonal imitation or media sources. Effective
modeling teaches general rules and strategies for dealing with different situations.
 Modeling does not limit to only live demonstrations but also verbal and written
behavior can act as indirect forms of modeling.
 Modeling not only allows students to learn behavior that they should repeat but
also to inhibit certain behaviors. For instance, if a teacher glares at one student who
is talking out of turn, other students may suppress this behavior to avoid a similar
reaction.

7. Q: WHAT ARE MEDIATIONAL/OBSERVATIONAL PROCESSES PROPOSED BY
BANDURA?
Observations should include:
 Attention: Observers selectively give attention to specific social behavior
depending on accessibility, relevance, complexity, functional value of the behavior
 Retention: Observe a behavior and subsequent consequences
 Production: refers to the symbolic representation of the original behavior being
translated into action through reproduction of the observed behavior in seemingly
appropriate contexts
 Motivational process: reenacts a behavior depending on responses and
consequences the observer receives when reenacting that behavior.

8. Q: WHAT ARE THE APPLICATIONS OF SOCIO-COGNITIVE THEORYAPPLICATIONS?
Social cognitive theory is applied today in many different areas—e.g., mass media, public health,
education, and marketing.
As far as an individual's development is concerned, moral competence is the growth of cognitive-
sensory processes; simply put, being aware of what is considered right and wrong. By comparison,
moral performance is influenced by the possible rewards and incentives to act a certain way.
For example, a person's moral competence might tell them that stealing is wrong and frowned upon
by society; however, if the reward for stealing is a substantial sum, their moral performance might
indicate a different line of thought. Therein lies the core of social cognitive theory.
For the most part, social cognitive theory remains the same for various cultures. Since the concepts
of moral behavior did not vary much between cultures (as crimes like murder, theft, and unwarranted
violence are illegal in virtually every society), there is not much room for people to have different
views on what is morally right or wrong.
The main reason that social cognitive theory applies to all nations is because it does not say what is
moral and immoral; it simply states that we can acknowledge these two concepts. Our actions in real-
life scenarios are based on whether we believe the action is moral and whether the reward for
violating our morals is significant enough, and nothing else

9. Q: WHAT WAS BOBO DOLL EXPERIMENT?
The Bobo doll experiment was the collective name of experiments conducted by Albert Bandura in
1961 and 1963 when he studied children's behavior after watching an adult model act aggressively
towards a Bobo doll, a toy that gets up by itself to a standing position when it is knocked down.
There are different variations of the experiment. The most notable experiment measured the
children's behavior after seeing the model get rewarded, get punished, or experience no consequence
for beating up the bobo doll.
The experiments are empirical approaches to test Bandura's social learning theory. The social learning
theory claims that people learn through observing, imitating, and modeling.
It shows that people not only learn by being rewarded or punished (behaviorism), but they can also
learn from watching somebody else being rewarded or punished (observational learning).
These experiments are important because they sparked many more studies on the effects of
observational learning. The studies not only give us new data, but this data has practical implications,
e.g. how children can be influenced from watching violent media.