Bandura's social cognitive theory posits that human learning occurs through observation and modeling of others' behaviors. Learning is influenced through attention, retention of symbolic representations, reproduction of behaviors, and motivation. Bandura also emphasizes triadic reciprocal causation, where personal factors, behaviors, and the environment interact bidirectionally to influence one another. Chance encounters and fortuitous events can impact lives, but humans exercise agency through intentionality, forethought, self-regulation, and self-reflection.

1. ALBERT BANDURA
SOCIAL-COGNITIVE
THEORY
Dan Andrei N. Bagao RPm

2. ALBERT BANDURA

3. Overview of Social Cognitive Theory
◦ Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory takes chance encounters and fortuitous events seriously, even
while recognizing that these meetings and events do not invariably alter one’s life path. How we react to an
expected meeting or event is usually more powerful than the event itself.
◦ First, the outstanding characteristic of humans is plasticity; that is, humans have the flexibility to
learn a variety of behaviors in diverse situations. Bandura agrees with Skinner that people can and do
learn through direct experience, but he places much more emphasis on vicarious learning, that is, learning
by observing others. Bandura also stresses the idea that reinforcement can be vicarious; people can be
reinforced by observing another person receive a reward. This indirect reinforcement accounts for a good
bit of human learning.
◦ Second, through a triadic reciprocal causation model that includes behavioral, environment, and
personal factors, people have the capacity to regulate their lives. Humans can transform transitory
events into relatively consistent ways of evaluating and regulating their social and cultural environments.
Without this capacity, people would merely react to sensory experiences and would lack the capacity to
anticipate events, create new ideas, or use internal standards to evaluate present experiences. Two
important environmental forces in the triadic model are chance encounters and fortuitous events.

4. Overview of Social Cognitive Theory
◦ Third, social cognitive theory takes an agentic perspective, meaning that humans have the
capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of their lives. People are the producers
as well as the products of social systems. An important component of the triadic reciprocal causation
model is self-efficacy. People’s performance is generally enhanced when they have high self-efficacy:
that is, the confidence that they can perform those behaviors that will produce desired behaviors in a
particular situation. In addition to self-efficacy, both proxy agency and collective efficacy can
predict performance. With proxy agency, people are able to rely on others for goods and
services, whereas collective efficacy refers to people’s shared beliefs that they can bring about
change.
◦ Fourth, people regulate their conduct through both external and internal factors. External factors
include people’s physical and social environments, whereas internal factors include self-
observation, judgmental process, and self-reaction.
◦ Fifth, when people find themselves in morally ambiguous situations, they typically attempt to regulate
their behavior through moral agency, which includes redefining the behavior, disregarding or
distorting the consequences of their behavior, dehumanizing or blaming the victims of their
behavior, and displacing or diffusing responsibility for their actions.

5. OBJECTIVES
• To correct behaviorism’s limited approach to psychology by emphasizing the importance of inner
causes of behavior, including thoughts, expectations, self-perceptions, and beliefs.
• To correct Skinner’s overemphasis on external influences by showing that we exert a reciprocal
influence on our environment.
• To correct Skinner’s overemphasis on external influences by showing that we set standards for
ourselves and reinforce ourselves for doing well, and that self-reinforced behavior tends to be
maintained more effectively than behavior that has been externally reinforced.
• To correct Skinner’s overemphasis on operant conditioning (and trial-and-error learning) by showing
that the majority of human learning takes place through observation, and does not necessarily involve
reinforcement.
• To argue that aggression and destructiveness are due primarily to observational learning (social
learning, modeling), with emphasis on violence in the media.
• To show that the extent to which we believe that we can perform the behaviors required by a particular
situation (perceived self-efficacy) has a significant effect on our behavior.
• To show that psychopathology can be caused by dysfunctional thoughts as well as by faulty learning.
• To advocate methods of psychotherapy that help patients increase their perceived self-efficacy and
believe that they can achieve their goals through their own efforts.

6. Learning
◦One of the earliest and most basic assumptions of Bandura’s social
cognitive theory is that humans are quite flexible and capable of
learning a multitude of attitudes, skills, and behaviors and that
a good bit of those learnings are a result of vicarious
experiences. Although people can and do learn from direct
experience, much of what they learn is acquired through observing
others. Bandura (1986) stated that “if knowledge could be acquired
only through the effects of one’s own actions, the process of
cognitive and social development would be greatly retarded, not to
mention exceedingly tedious” (p. 47).

7. Observational Learning
◦ Bandura believes that observation allows people to learn without performing any behavior.
People observe natural phenomena, plants, animals, waterfalls, and so forth; but especially
important to social cognitive theory is the assumption that they learn through observing the
behavior of other people. In this respect, Bandura differs from Skinner, who held that
enactive behavior is the basic datum of psychological science. He also departs from Skinner in
his belief that reinforcement is not essential to learning. Although reinforcement
facilitates learning, Bandura says that it is not a necessary condition for it. People can learn,
for example, by observing models being reinforced.
◦ Bandura (1986, 2003) believes that observational learning is much more efficient than
learning through direct experience. By observing other people, humans are spared
countless responses that might be followed by punishment or by no reinforcement. Children
observe characters on television, for example, and repeat what they hear or see; they need not
enact random behaviors, hoping that some of them will be rewarded.

8. Modeling
◦The core of observational learning is modeling. Learning
through modeling involves adding and subtracting from the
observed behavior and generalizing from one observation to
another. In other words, modeling involves cognitive
processes and is not simply mimicry or imitation. It is
more than matching the actions of another; it involves
symbolically representing information and storing it for use at
a future time (Bandura, 1986, 1994). Several factors determine
whether a person will learn from a model in any particular
situation.

9. Modeling
◦ First, the characteristics of the model are important. People are more likely to
model high-status people rather than those of low status, competent
individuals rather than unskilled or incompetent ones, and powerful
people rather than impotent ones.

10. Modeling
◦ Second, the characteristics of the observer affect the likelihood of modeling.
People who lack status, skill, or power are most likely to model. Children
model more than older people, and novices are more likely than experts
to model.

11. Modeling
◦ Third, the consequences of the behavior being modeled may have an effect on the
observer. The greater the value an observer places on a behavior, the more likely the
observer will acquire that behavior. Also, learning may be facilitated when the
observer views a model receiving severe punishment; for example, seeing another
person receive a severe shock from touching an electric wire teaches the observer a
valuable lesson.

14. Processes Governing Observational Learning
◦Bandura (1986) recognizes four processes that govern
observational learning: attention, representation, behavioral
production, and motivation.

15. Attention
◦Before we can model another person, we must attend to that person.
What factors regulate attention?
◦First, because we have more opportunities to observe individuals with
whom we frequently associate, we are most likely to attend to these
people.
◦Second, attractive models are more likely to be observed than
unattractive ones are—popular figures on television, in sports, or in
movies are often closely attended. Also, the nature of the behavior
being modeled affects our attention—we observe behavior that we
think is important or valuable to us.

16. Representation
◦In order for observation to lead to new response patterns, those patterns
must be symbolically represented in memory. Symbolic representation
need not be verbal, because some observations are retained in
imagery and can be summoned in the absence of the physical
model. This process is especially important in infancy when verbal skills
are not yet developed.
◦Verbal coding, however, greatly speeds the process of observational
learning. With language we can verbally evaluate our behaviors and decide
which ones we wish to discard and which ones we desire to try. Verbal
coding also helps us to rehearse the behavior symbolically: that is, to tell
ourselves over and over again how we will perform the behavior once
given the chance. Rehearsal can also entail the actual performance of
the modeled response, and this rehearsal aids the retention process.

17. Behavioral Production
◦ After attending to a model and retaining what we have observed, we then produce the
behavior. In converting cognitive representations into appropriate actions, we must
ask ourselves several questions about the behavior to be modeled.
◦ First we ask, “How can I do this?” After symbolically rehearsing the relevant
responses, we try out our new behavior.
◦ While performing, we monitor ourselves with the question “What am I doing?”
◦ Finally, we evaluate our performance by asking, “Am I doing this right?” This last
question is not always easy to answer, especially if it pertains to a motor skill, such as
ballet dancing or platform diving, in which we cannot actually see ourselves. For this
reason, some athletes use video cameras to help them acquire or improve their motor
skills.

18. Motivation
◦Observational learning is most effective when learners
are motivated to perform the modeled behavior.
Attention and representation can lead to the acquisition
of learning, but performance is facilitated by motivation
to enact that particular behavior. Even though
observation of others may teach us how to do
something, we may have no desire to perform the
necessary action.

19. Enactive Learning
◦Every response a person makes is followed by some consequence.
Some of these consequences are satisfying, some are dissatisfying,
and others are simply not cognitively attended and hence have little
effect. Bandura believes that complex human behavior can be
learned when people think about and evaluate the
consequences of their behaviors. The consequences of a
response serve at least three functions.
◦First, response consequences inform us of the effects of our
actions. We can retain this information and use it as a guide for
future actions.

20. Enactive Learning
◦Second, the consequences of our responses motivate our anticipatory
behavior; that is, we are capable of symbolically representing future
outcomes and acting accordingly. We not only possess insight but also are
capable of foresight.
◦Third, the consequences of responses serve to reinforce behavior, a
function that has been firmly documented by reinforcement theorists.
Bandura (1986), however, contends that, although reinforcement may at
times be unconscious and automatic, complex behavioral patterns are
greatly facilitated by cognitive intervention. He maintained that learning
occurs much more efficiently when the learner is cognitively involved in
the learning situation and understands what behaviors precede successful
responses.

21. Triadic Reciprocal Causation
◦Albert Bandura (1986, 1999b, 2001, 2002b) adopts quite
a different stance. His social cognitive theory explains
psychological functioning in terms of triadic reciprocal
causation. This system assumes that human action
is a result of an interaction among three
variables—environment, behavior, and person.

22. Triadic Reciprocal Causation
◦By “person” Bandura means largely, but not exclusively, such
cognitive factors as memory, anticipation, planning, and judging.
Because people possess and use these cognitive capacities, they have
some capacity to select or to restructure their environment: That is,
cognition at least partially determines which environmental events
people attend to, what value they place on these events, and how
they organize these events for future use. Although cognition can
have a strong causal effect on both environment and behavior, it is
not an autonomous entity, independent of those two variables.
Bandura (1986) criticized those theorists who attribute the cause of
human behavior to internal forces such as instincts, drives, needs, or
intentions.

23. Triadic Reciprocal Causation
◦Cognition itself is determined, being formed by both
behavior and environment. Triadic reciprocal causation is
represented schematically, where B signifies behavior; E is
the external environment; and P represents the person,
including that person’s gender, social position, size, and
physical attractiveness, but especially cognitive factors such
as thought, memory, judgment, foresight, and so on.
Bandura uses the term “reciprocal” to indicate a triadic
interaction of forces, not a similar or opposite counteraction.

25. Triadic Reciprocal Causation
◦The three reciprocal factors do not need to be of equal
strength or to make equal contributions. The relative potency
of the three varies with the individual and with the situation.
Although behavior and environment can at times be the
most powerful contributors to performance, cognition
(person) is usually the strongest contributor to performance.
The relative influence of behavior, environment, and person
depends on which of the triadic factors is strongest at a
particular moment (Bandura, 1997).

26. Chance Encounters and Fortuitous Events
◦Bandura (1998a) defined a chance encounter as “an
unintended meeting of persons unfamiliar to each other” (p.
95). A fortuitous event is an environmental experience that is
unexpected and unintended. The everyday lives of people are
affected to a greater or lesser extent by the people they chance
to meet and by random events they could not predict. One’s
marital partner, occupation, and place of residence may
largely be the result of a fortuitous meeting that was
unplanned and unexpected.

27. Chance Encounters and Fortuitous Events
◦Fortuity adds a separate dimension in any scheme used to predict
human behavior, and it makes accurate predictions practically
impossible. However, chance encounters influence people only by
entering the triadic reciprocal causation paradigm at point E
(environment) and adding to the mutual interaction of person,
behavior, and environment. In this sense, chance encounters
influence people in the same manner as do planned events. Once a
chance encounter occurs, people behave toward their new
acquaintance according to their attitudes, belief systems, and interests
as well as to the other person’s reaction to them.

28. Chance Encounters and Fortuitous Events
◦Thus, whereas many chance encounters and unplanned events have
little or no influence on people’s behavior, “others have more lasting
effects, and still others thrust people into new life trajectories”
(Bandura, 2001, p. 12).
◦Chance encounters and fortuitous events are not uncontrollable.
Indeed, people can make chance happen. Bandura (2001) quotes
Louis Pasteur: “Chance favors only the prepared mind” (p. 12).
Conversely, the prepared person is able to escape unpleasant chance
encounters and fortuitous events by anticipating their possibility and
taking steps to minimize any negative impact they may have on future
development.

29. Human Agency
◦Social cognitive theory takes an agentic view of personality,
meaning that humans have the capacity to exercise control over
their own lives (2002b). Indeed, human agency is the essence of
humanness.
◦Bandura (2001) believes that people are self-regulating,
proactive, self-reflective, and self-organizing and that they
have the power to influence their own actions to produce
desired consequences.
◦Human agency is not a thing but an active process of
exploring, manipulating, and influencing the environment in
order to attain desired outcomes.

30. Core Features of Human Agency
◦Bandura (2001, 2004) discusses four core features of human
agency: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-
reflectiveness.
◦Intentionality refers to acts a person performs intentionally. An
intention includes planning, but it also involves actions. “It is not
simply an expectation or prediction of future actions but a
proactive commitment to bringing them about” (2001, p. 6).
Intentionality does not mean that all of a person’s plans will be
brought to fruition. People continually change their plans as they
become aware of the consequences of their actions.

31. Core Features of Human Agency
◦People also possess forethought to set goals, to anticipate likely outcomes
of their actions, and to select behaviors that will produce desired
outcomes and avoid undesirable ones. Forethought enables people to
break free from the constraints of their environment. If behavior were
completely a function of the environment, then behavior would be more
variable and less consistent because we would constantly be reacting to the
great diversity of environmental stimuli. “If actions were determined
solely by external rewards and punishments, people would behave like
weathervanes” (Bandura, 1986, p. 335). But people do not behave like
weathervanes, “constantly shifting direction to conform to whatever
influence happened to impinge upon them at the moment” (Bandura,
2001, p. 7).

32. Core Features of Human Agency
◦People do more than plan and contemplate future behaviors.
They are also capable of self-reactiveness in the process of
motivating and regulating their own actions. People not only
make choices but they monitor their progress toward
fulfilling those choices. Bandura (2001) recognizes that
setting goals is not sufficient to attaining desired
consequences. Goals must be specific, be within a person’s
ability to achieve, and reflect potential accomplishments that
are not too far in the future.

33. Core Features of Human Agency
◦Finally, people have self-reflectiveness. They are examiners
of their own functioning; they can think about and evaluate
their motivations, values, and the meanings of their life
goals, and they can think about the adequacy of their own
thinking. They can also evaluate the effect that other
people’s actions have on them. People’s most crucial self-
reflective mechanism is self-efficacy: that is, their beliefs that
they are capable of performing actions that will produce a
desired effect.

34. Self-Efficacy
◦How people act in a particular situation depends on the
reciprocity of behavioral, environmental, and cognitive
conditions, especially those cognitive factors that relate
to their beliefs that they can or cannot execute the
behavior necessary to produce desired outcomes in any
particular situation. Bandura (1997) calls these
expectations self-efficacy.

35. Self-Efficacy
◦According to Bandura (1994), “people’s beliefs in their personal
efficacy influence what courses of action they choose to pursue,
how much effort they will invest in activities, how long they will
persevere in the face of obstacles and failure experiences, and their
resiliency following setbacks” (p. 65). Although self-efficacy has a
powerful causal influence on people’s actions, it is not the sole
determinant. Rather, self-efficacy combines with environment, prior
behavior, and other personal variables, especially outcome
expectations, to produce behavior. In the triadic reciprocal causal
model, which postulates that the environment, behavior, and
person have an interactive influence on one another, self-efficacy
refers to the P (person) factor.

36. What Is Self-Efficacy?
◦Bandura (2001) defined self-efficacy as “people’s
beliefs in their capability to exercise some measure of
control over their own functioning and over
environmental events” (p. 10).
◦Bandura contends that “efficacy beliefs are the
foundation of human agency” (p. 10). People who
believe that they can do something that has the
potential to alter environmental events are more likely
to act and more likely to be successful than those
people with low self-efficacy.

37. What Is Self-Efficacy?
◦Self-efficacy is not the expectation of our action’s outcomes.
Bandura (1986, 1997) distinguished between efficacy
expectations and outcome expectations.
◦ Efficacy refers to people’s confidence that they have the
ability to perform certain behaviors, whereas an outcome
expectancy refers to one’s prediction of the likely
consequences of that behavior. Outcome must not be
confused with successful accomplishment of an act; it refers
to the consequences of behavior, not the completion of the
act itself.

39. What Is Self-Efficacy?
◦First, efficacy does not refer to the ability to execute basic motor
skills such as walking, reaching, or grasping.
◦Also, efficacy does not imply that we can perform designated
behaviors without anxiety, stress, or fear; it is merely our judgment,
accurate or faulty, about whether or not we can execute the required
actions.
◦Finally, judgments of efficacy are not the same as levels of
aspiration. Heroin addicts, for example, often aspire to be drug free
but may have little confidence in their ability to successfully break
the habit (Bandura, 1997).

40. What Is Self-Efficacy?
◦Self-efficacy is not a global or generalized concept, such as self-
esteem or self-confidence. People can have high self-efficacy in one
situation and low self-efficacy in another. Self-efficacy varies from
situation to situation depending on the competencies required for
different activities; the presence or absence of other people; the
perceived competence of these other people, especially if they are
competitors; the person’s predisposition to attend to failure of
performance rather than to success; and the accompanying
physiological states, particularly the presence of fatigue, anxiety,
apathy, or despondency.

41. What Is Self-Efficacy?
◦ High and low efficacy combine with responsive and unresponsive environments to produce four possible
predictive variables (Bandura, 1997).
◦ When efficacy is high and the environment is responsive, outcomes are most likely to be successful.
◦ When low efficacy is combined with a responsive environment, people may become depressed when they
observe that others are successful at tasks that seem too difficult for them.
◦ When people with high efficacy encounter unresponsive environmental situations, they usually intensify their
efforts to change the environment. They may use protest, social activism, or even force to instigate change; but
if all efforts fail, Bandura hypothesizes, either they will give up that course and take on a new one or they will
seek a more responsive environment.
◦ Finally, when low self-efficacy combines with an unresponsive environment, people are likely to feel apathy,
resignation, and helplessness. For example, a junior executive with low self-efficacy who realizes the difficulties
of becoming company president will develop feelings of discouragement, give up, and fail to transfer
productive efforts toward a similar but lesser goal.

42. What Contributes to Self-Efficacy?
◦Personal efficacy is acquired, enhanced, or decreased
through any one or combination of four sources:
◦ (1) mastery experiences,
◦(2) social modeling,
◦(3) social persuasion, and
◦(4) physical and emotional states (Bandura, 1997).
◦With each method, information about oneself and the
environment is cognitively processed and, together with
recollections of previous experiences, alters perceived self-
efficacy.

46. Mastery Experiences
◦The most influential sources of self-efficacy are mastery experiences,
that is, past performances (Bandura, 1997). In general, successful
performance raises efficacy expectancies; failure tends to lower them.
This general statement has six corollaries.
◦First, successful performance raises self-efficacy in proportion to the
difficulty of the task.
◦Second, tasks successfully accomplished by oneself are more
efficacious than those completed with the help of others. In sports,
team accomplishments do not increase personal efficacy as much as
do individual achievements.

47. Mastery Experiences
◦Third, failure is most likely to decrease efficacy when we know that
we put forth our best effort. To fail when only half-trying is not as
inefficacious as to fall short in spite of our best efforts.
◦Fourth, failure under conditions of high emotional arousal or
distress are not as self-debilitating as failure under maximal
conditions.
◦Fifth, failure prior to establishing a sense of mastery is more
detrimental to feelings of personal efficacy than later failure.
◦A sixth and related corollary is that occasional failure has little effect
on efficacy, especially for people with a generally high expectancy
of success.

49. Social Modeling
◦A second source of efficacy is social modeling: that is,
vicarious experiences provided by other people. Our self-
efficacy is raised when we observe the accomplishments of
another person of equal competence, but is lowered when
we see a peer fail. When the other person is dissimilar to us,
social modeling will have little effect on our self-efficacy. In
general, the effects of social modeling are not as strong as
those of personal performance in raising levels of efficacy,
but they can have powerful effects where inefficacy is
concerned. The effects of this vicarious experience may
even last a lifetime.

50. Social Persuasion
◦Self-efficacy can also be acquired or weakened through social
persuasion (Bandura, 1997). The effects of this source are
limited, but under proper conditions, persuasion from
others can raise or lower self-efficacy.
◦The first condition is that a person must believe the persuader.
Exhortations or criticisms from a credible source have more
efficacious power than do those from a noncredible person.
Boosting self-efficacy through social persuasion will be
effective only if the activity one is being encouraged to try is
within one’s repertoire of behavior.

51. Social Persuasion
◦Bandura (1986) hypothesizes that the efficacious power of
suggestion is directly related to the perceived status and
authority of the persuader.
◦Status and authority, of course, are not identical.
◦Also, social persuasion is most effective when combined with
successful performance. Persuasion may convince someone to
attempt an activity, and if performance is successful, both the
accomplishment and the subsequent verbal rewards will
increase future efficacy.

52. Physical and Emotional States
◦The final source of efficacy is people’s physiological
and emotional states (Bandura, 1997). Strong emotion
ordinarily lowers performance; when people experience
intense fear, acute anxiety, or high levels of stress, they
are likely to have lower efficacy expectancies.
Incidentally, for some situations, emotional arousal, if
not too intense, is associated with increased
performance, so that moderate anxiety felt by may raise
the efficacy expectancies.

53. Physical and Emotional States
◦ Arousal information is related to several variables.
◦ First, of course, is the level of arousal—ordinarily, the higher the arousal, the
lower the self-efficacy.
◦ The second variable is the perceived realism of the arousal.
◦ Finally, the nature of the task is an added variable.
◦ Emotional arousal may facilitate the successful completion of simple tasks, but
it is likely to interfere with performance of complex activities. Although self-
efficacy is “the foundation of human agency” (Bandura, 2001, p. 10), it is not
the only mode of human agency. People can also exercise control over their
lives through proxy and through collective efficacy.

54. Proxy Agency
◦Proxy involves 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” (p. 13). In modern
American society, people would be nearly helpless if they relied
solely on personal accomplishments to regulate their lives. Most
people do not have the personal capability to repair an air
conditioner, a camera, or an automobile. Through proxy agency,
however, they can accomplish their goal by relying on other people
to repair these objects.

55. Proxy Agency
◦People attempt to change their daily lives by contacting their
congressional representative or another potentially influential
person. Proxy, however, has a downside. By relying too much
on the competence and power of others, people may weaken
their sense of personal and collective efficacy. One spouse
may become dependent on the other to care for the
household; late adolescent or early adult-age children may
expect parents to take care of them; and citizens may learn to
rely on their government to provide for the necessities of life.

56. Collective Efficacy
◦The third mode of human agency is collective efficacy. Bandura (2000)
defined collective efficacy as “people’s shared beliefs in their collective
power to produce desired results” (p. 75). In other words, collective
efficacy is the confidence people have that their combined efforts will
bring about group accomplishments.
◦Bandura (2000) suggested two techniques for measuring collective efficacy.
◦The first is to combine individual members’ evaluations of their personal
capabilities to enact behaviors that benefit the group.
◦The second approach proposed by Bandura is to measure the confidence
each person has in the group’s ability to bring about a desired outcome.

57. Collective Efficacy
◦ These two slightly different approaches to collective efficacy call for separate
measuring techniques. Collective efficacy does not spring from a collective
“mind” but rather from the personal efficacy of many individuals working
together. A group’s collective efficacy, however, depends not only on the
knowledge and skills of its individual members but also on their beliefs that they
can work together in a coordinated and interactive fashion (Bandura, 2000).
People may have high self-efficacy but low collective efficacy. Bandura (1998b)
pointed out that different cultures have different levels of collective efficacy and
work more productively under different systems. Bandura (1997, 1998b, 2001)
lists several factors that can undermine collective efficacy.

58. Collective Efficacy
◦First, humans live in a transnational world; what
happens in one part of the globe can affect people in
other countries, giving them a sense of helplessness.
◦Second, recent technology that people neither
understand nor believe that they can control may lower
their sense of collective efficacy.

59. Collective Efficacy
◦A third condition undermining collective efficacy is the
complex social machinery, with layers of bureaucracy that
prevent social change. People who attempt to change
bureaucratic structures are often discouraged by failure or by
the long lapse of time between their actions and any
noticeable change. Having become discouraged, many
people, “rather than developing the means for shaping their
own future, . . . grudgingly relinquish control to technical
specialists and to public officials” (Bandura, 1995, p. 37).

61. Collective Efficacy
◦Fourth, the tremendous scope and magnitude of human problems
can undermine collective efficacy. Wars, famine, overpopulation,
crime, and natural disasters are but a few of the global problems
that can leave people with a sense of powerlessness. Despite these
huge transnational problems, Bandura believes that positive changes
are possible if people will persevere with their collective efforts and
not become discouraged. Taking a worldwide view, Bandura (2000)
concluded that “as globalization reaches ever deeper into people’s
lives, a resilient sense of shared efficacy becomes critical to
furthering their common interests” (p. 78).

62. 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 (1994)
believes that people use both reactive and proactive strategies for self-
regulation. That is, they reactively attempt to reduce the discrepancies
between their accomplishments and their goal; but after they close those
discrepancies, they proactively set newer and higher goals for themselves.
“People motivate and guide their actions through proactive control by
setting themselves valued goals that create a state of disequilibrium and
then mobilizing their abilities and effort based on anticipatory estimation
of what is required to reach the goals” (p. 63).

63. Self-Regulation
◦What processes contribute to this self-regulation?
◦First, people possess limited ability to manipulate the
external factors that feed into the reciprocal interactive
paradigm.
◦Second, people are capable of monitoring their own
behavior and evaluating it in terms of both proximate and
distant goals. Behavior, then, stems from a reciprocal
influence of both external and internal factors.

64. External Factors in Self-Regulation
◦External factors affect self-regulation in at least two ways.
◦First, they provide us with a standard for evaluating our own
behavior. Standards do not stem solely from internal forces.
Environmental factors, interacting with personal influences, shape
individual standards for evaluation.
◦Second, 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.
◦When performance does not meet self-standards, we tend to
withhold rewards from ourselves.

65. Internal Factors in Self-Regulation
◦External factors interact with internal or personal factors in
self-regulation. Bandura (1986, 1996) recognizes three internal
requirements in the ongoing exercise of self-influence: (1)
self-observation, (2) judgmental processes, and (3) self-
reaction.

66. Self-Observation
◦The first internal factor in self-regulation is self-
observation of performance. We must be able to
monitor our own performance, even though the
attention we give to it need not be complete or even
accurate. We attend selectively to some aspects of our
behavior and ignore others altogether. What we observe
depends on interests and other preexisting self-
conceptions.

67. Judgmental Process
◦Self-observation alone does not provide a sufficient basis for regulating
behavior. We must also evaluate our performance. This second process,
judgmental process, helps us regulate our behavior through the process of
cognitive mediation. We are capable not only of reflective self-awareness
but also of judging the worth of our actions on the basis of goals we have
set for ourselves. More specifically, the judgmental process depends on
personal standards, referential performances, valuation of activity, and
performance attribution. Personal standards allow us to evaluate our
performances without comparing them to the conduct of others. Personal
standards, however, are a limited source of evaluation. For most of our
activities, we evaluate our performances by comparing them to a standard
of reference.

68. Judgmental Process
◦ In addition, we use our own previous levels of accomplishment as a reference for
evaluating present performance: “Has my singing voice improved over the years?” “Is
my teaching ability better now than ever?”
◦ Also, we may judge our performance by comparing it to that of a single individual—a
brother, sister, parent, or even a hated rival—or we can compare it to a standard norm
such as par in golf or a perfect score in bowling.
◦ Besides personal and reference standards, the judgmental process is also dependent on
the overall value we place on an activity. If we place minor value on our ability to
wash dishes or dust furniture, then we will spend little time or effort in trying to
improve these abilities. On the other hand, if we place high value on getting ahead in
the business world or attaining a professional or graduate degree, then we will expend
much effort to achieve success in these areas.

69. Judgmental Process
◦Finally, self-regulation also depends on how we judge the causes of
our behavior, that is, performance attribution. If we believe that our
success is due to our own efforts, we will take pride in our
accomplishments and tend to work harder to attain our goals.
However, if we attribute our performance to external factors, we
will not derive as much self-satisfaction and will probably not put
forth strenuous effort to attain our goals. Conversely, if we believe
that we are responsible for our own failures or inadequate
performance, we will work more readily toward self-regulation than
if we are convinced that our shortcomings and our fears are due to
factors beyond our control (Bandura, 1986, 1996).

70. Self-Reaction
◦The third and final internal factor in self-regulation is self-
reaction. People respond positively or negatively to their
behaviors depending on how these behaviors measure up to
their personal standards. That is, people create incentives for
their own actions through self-reinforcement or self-
punishment. Self-reinforcement does not rest on the fact that
it immediately follows a response: Rather, it relies in large part
on the use of our cognitive ability to mediate the
consequences of behavior.

71. Self-Reaction
◦People set standards for performance that, when met, tend to regulate
behavior by such self-produced rewards as pride and self-satisfaction.
When people fail to meet their standards, their behavior is followed
by self-dissatisfaction or self-criticism. This concept of self-mediated
consequences is a sharp contrast to Skinner’s notion that the
consequences of behavior are environmentally determined. Bandura
hypothesizes that people work to attain rewards and to avoid
punishments according to self-erected standards. Even when rewards
are tangible, they are often accompanied by self-mediated intangible
incentives such as a sense of accomplishment.

72. Self-Regulation Through Moral Agency
◦People also regulate their actions through moral standards of conduct.
Bandura (1999a) sees moral agency as having two aspects: .
◦(1) doing no harm to people and
◦(2) proactively helping people.
◦Our self-regulative mechanisms, however, do not affect other people until
we act on them. We have no automatic internal controlling agent such as a
conscience or superego that invariably directs our behavior toward morally
consistent values. Bandura (2002a) insists that moral precepts predict
moral behavior only when those precepts are converted to action. In other
words, self-regulatory influences are not automatic but operate only if they
are activated, a concept Bandura calls selective activation. How can people
with strong moral beliefs concerning the worth and dignity of all
humankind behave in an inhumane manner to other humans?

73. Self-Regulation Through Moral Agency
◦Bandura’s (1994) answer is that “people do not ordinarily engage in
reprehensible conduct until they have justified to themselves the morality
of their actions” (p. 72). By justifying the morality of their actions, they
can separate or disengage themselves from the consequences of their
behavior, a concept Bandura calls disengagement of internal control.
Disengagement techniques allow people, individually or working in
concert with others, to engage in inhumane behaviors while retaining their
moral standards (Bandura, 2002a). Selective activation and disengagement
of internal control allow people with the same moral standards to behave
quite differently, just as they permit the same person to behave differently
in different situations.

74. Self-Regulation Through Moral Agency
◦First, people can redefine or reconstruct the nature of the
behavior itself by such techniques as morally justifying it,
making advantageous comparisons, or euphemistically
labeling their actions.
◦Second, they can minimize, ignore, or distort the detrimental
consequences of their behavior.
◦Third, they can blame or dehumanize the victim.
◦Fourth, they can displace or diffuse responsibility for their
behavior by obscuring the relationship between their actions
and the effects of those actions.

76. Redefine the Behavior
◦With redefinition of behavior, people justify otherwise
reprehensible actions by a cognitive restructuring that
allows them to minimize or escape responsibility. They
can relieve themselves of responsibility for their
behavior by at least three techniques:

77. Redefine the Behavior
◦. The first is moral justification, in which otherwise culpable
behavior is made to seem defensible or even noble.

78. Redefine the Behavior
◦ A second method of reducing responsibility through redefining wrongful behavior is to make
advantageous or palliative comparisons between that behavior and the even greater atrocities
committed by others.

79. Redefine the Behavior
◦A third technique in redefining behavior is the use of euphemistic
labels.

80. Disregard or Distort the Consequences
of Behavior
◦A second method of avoiding responsibility involves
distorting or obscuring the relationship between the
behavior and its detrimental consequences. Bandura
(1986, 1999a) recognized at least three techniques of
distorting or obscuring the detrimental consequences
of one’s actions.

81. Disregard or Distort the Consequences
of Behavior
◦First, people can minimize the consequences of their behavior.

82. Disregard or Distort the Consequences
of Behavior
◦ Second, people can disregard or ignore the consequences of their actions, as
when they do not see firsthand the harmful effects of their behavior.

83. Disregard or Distort the Consequences
of Behavior
◦ Finally, people can distort or misconstrue the consequences of their actions.

84. Dehumanize or Blame the Victims
◦ Third, people can obscure responsibility for their actions by either dehumanizing
their victims or attributing blame to them. In time of war, people often see the
enemy as subhuman, so they need not feel guilty for killing enemy soldiers.
Otherwise kind, considerate, and gentle people have perpetrated acts of violence,
insult, or other forms of mistreatment against these groups in order to avoid
responsibility for their own behavior.

85. Dehumanize or Blame the Victims
◦When victims are not dehumanized, they are sometimes blamed for
the perpetrator’s culpable conduct. A rapist may blame his victim for
his crime, citing her provocative dress or behavior.

86. Displace or Diffuse Responsibility
◦The fourth method of dissociating actions from their consequences
is to displace or diffuse responsibility. With displacement, people
minimize the consequences of their actions by placing
responsibility on an outside source.

87. Displace or Diffuse Responsibility
◦A related procedure is to diffuse responsibility—to spread it so thin
that no one person is responsible. A civil servant may diffuse
responsibility for her actions throughout the entire bureaucracy
with such comments as “That’s the way things are done around
here” or “That’s just policy.”

88. Dysfunctional Behavior
◦Bandura’s concept of triadic reciprocal causation assumes that
behavior is learned as a result of a mutual interaction of
◦ (1) the person, including cognition and neurophysiological
processes;
◦ (2) the environment, including interpersonal relations and
socioeconomic conditions;
◦and (3) behavioral factors, including previous experiences with
reinforcement.
◦Dysfunctional behavior is no exception. Bandura’s concept of
dysfunctional behavior lends itself most readily to depressive
reactions, phobias, and aggressive behaviors.

89. Depression
◦High personal standards and goals can lead to achievement and
self-satisfaction. However, when people set their goals too high,
they are likely to fail. Failure frequently leads to depression, and
depressed people often undervalue their own accomplishments.
The result is chronic misery, feelings of worthlessness, lack of
purposefulness, and pervasive depression. Bandura (1986, 1997)
believes that dysfunctional depression can occur in any of the
three self-regulatory subfunctions:
◦(1) self-observation,
◦(2) judgmental processes, and
◦(3) self-reactions.

90. Depression
◦ First, during self-observation, people can misjudge their own performance or
distort their memory of past accomplishments. Depressed people tend to
exaggerate their past mistakes and minimize their prior accomplishments, a
tendency that perpetuates their depression.

91. ◦ Second, depressed people are likely to make faulty judgments. They set their
standards unrealistically high so that any personal accomplishment will be
judged as a failure. Even when they achieve success in the eyes of others, they
continue to berate their own performance. Depression is especially likely when
people set goals and personal standards much higher than their perceived
efficacy to attain them.

92. Depression
◦ Finally, the self-reactions of depressed individuals are quite different from those
of nondepressed persons. Depressed people not only judge themselves harshly,
but they are also inclined to treat themselves badly for their shortcomings.

93. Phobias
◦Phobias are fears that are strong enough and pervasive
enough to have severe debilitating effects on one’s daily life.
Phobias and fears are learned by direct contact, inappropriate
generalization, and especially by observational experiences
(Bandura, 1986). They are difficult to extinguish because the
phobic person simply avoids the threatening object. Unless
the fearsome object is somehow encountered, the phobia will
endure indefinitely. Bandura (1986) credits television and
other news media for generating many of our fears.

94. Aggression
◦ Aggressive behaviors, when carried to extremes, can also be dysfunctional. Bandura (1986) contended
that aggressive behavior is acquired through observation of others, direct experiences with positive
and negative reinforcements, training, or instruction, and bizarre beliefs. Once established, people
continue to aggress for at least five reasons:
◦ (1) They enjoy inflicting injury on the victim (positive reinforcement);
◦ (2) they avoid or counter the aversive consequences of aggression by others (negative reinforcement);
◦ (3) they receive injury or harm for not behaving aggressively (punishment);
◦ (4) they live up to their personal standards of conduct by their aggressive behavior (self-
reinforcement); and
◦ (5) they observe others receiving rewards for aggressive acts or punishment for nonaggressive
behavior.
◦ Bandura believes that aggressive actions ordinarily lead to further aggression. This belief is based on
the now classic study of Bandura, Dorrie Ross, and Sheila Ross (1963), which found that children who
observed others behaving aggressively displayed more aggression than a control group of children
who did not view aggressive acts.

96. Thank You!
Dan Andrei Navarro Bagao RPm
Phone
09985573898
Email
andreibagao@gmail.com