Bandura's Social-Cognitive Theory and Vicarious Learning

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Bandura's Social-Cognitive Theory and Vicarious Learning

Psychology of Personality · Chapter 9: Cognitive Theories of PersonalitySection 9.4 · lesson 56 of 838 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Neither the environment nor the inner self is in charge - and that is the point, not a hedge.

  • Explain reciprocal determinism using its three components
  • Define self-efficacy and name its four sources
  • Describe what vicarious learning demonstrates
  • Say why this theory bridges learning and cognition

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Everything said in the video, section by section (1,046 words). Read along, or search it.

Cognitive Theories of Personality

Social-Cognitive Theory

Personality theory has spent decades arguing over one question. Is a person shaped by their environment, or driven from within? Albert Bandura's answer was that the question is badly formed. Both, continuously, and in both directions at once. That sounds like a diplomatic hedge. It is not. It is a specific, testable claim about how the three components interact. This section covers reciprocal determinism, self-efficacy, and vicarious learning. And it shows why this framework became the bridge to the cognitive revolution.

The Problem

Two Explanations That Both Fail

Start with the two positions the theory refuses. The first is pure environmental control. The person is shaped by contingencies. That account cannot explain why people select and alter their own environments. The second is pure inner determination. The person acts out what is inside them. That account cannot explain why the same person behaves differently in different settings. Bandura's social-cognitive theory rejects both. It integrates cognitive, behavioral and social influences into a single framework. And its organising principle is that none of the three is the cause of the others.

The Principle

Reciprocal Determinism

That principle is called reciprocal determinism. Three things continuously influence one another. Personal factors, meaning beliefs, expectations and goals. Behavior, meaning what the person actually does. And the environment, meaning the setting, the people, and the contingencies in it. None of the three is simply the cause of the others. They form a dynamic triangle, in which a change in one element reshapes the rest. The influence runs in every direction, all of the time. This view rejects both pure environmental control and pure inner determination. Which is a stronger position than it first sounds.

The Model

A Triangle That Never Settles

Picture the three sitting at the corners of a triangle. Personal factors influence behavior. That much is uncontroversial. But behavior also changes personal factors. Doing something successfully changes what you believe you can do. Behavior changes the environment. You act, and people respond differently to you. And the environment changes personal factors, by supplying models and consequences. So influence runs in both directions along every side of that triangle. Which means there is no starting point, and no resting state. The system is always in motion, and any intervention can enter at any corner.

Agency

People Are Not Only Acted Upon

Within this system, Bandura insisted that humans are agentic. Four capacities carry that claim. People set goals. They anticipate outcomes before those outcomes occur. They self-reflect, examining their own thinking. And they self-regulate, adjusting their behavior against a standard. Human agency, in his vocabulary, is the capacity to act intentionally and influence one's own life. So personality emerges from an interplay. Between these cognitive capacities, and the social environments people inhabit. Environments they both shape, and are shaped by.

The Construct

Self-Efficacy Is Not Self-Esteem

The central construct of the theory is self-efficacy. It is a person's belief in their capability to organize and carry out the actions a goal requires. It does three things, and they compound. It shapes which tasks people attempt at all. Low efficacy for a task quietly removes that task from consideration, often without deliberation. It shapes how much effort they invest. And it shapes how they persist in the face of setbacks. A setback can be read as information about the task, or as a verdict about the self. Now note the wording of the definition carefully. Self-efficacy is a belief about performing specific actions. It is not a general judgement of one's own worth. That specificity is exactly what makes it useful, as the last section of this chapter will show.

Sources

Where Self-Efficacy Comes From

Self-efficacy is built from four sources. Mastery experiences. Past success at the task itself, which strengthens the belief. Vicarious experience. Watching a model, particularly a comparable one, succeed. Social persuasion. Being told, credibly, that one is capable. And interpretation of one's own physiological states. That fourth source is the one people misread. It is about interpretation, not sensation. The same racing heart can be read as evidence of readiness, or of impending failure. The sensation is identical. What is doing the work is the reading.

The Loop

Why the Belief Tends to Confirm Itself

There is a loop here worth naming explicitly. High self-efficacy tends to be self-fulfilling. It fosters the very persistence that produces success. And that is reciprocal determinism running inside a single person. A personal factor changes behavior. The behavior changes the outcome. And the outcome feeds back as a mastery experience, changing the personal factor again. But keep the hedge in view. The claim says tends to be self-fulfilling. It describes a loop that usually runs. It is not a guarantee that believing something makes it happen.

Observation

Vicarious Learning

Bandura also demonstrated vicarious learning. Learning by observing others. Most famously in the Bobo doll studies. Children who watched an adult behave aggressively toward a doll were more likely to imitate it. Observational learning involves four processes. Attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. And what this shows is that people can acquire complex behaviors without direct reinforcement. Simply by watching models, and noting the consequences those models receive. This is the finding that made a purely behavioral account insufficient. It is also why self-efficacy has a vicarious source at all. If you can learn a behavior by watching, you can learn confidence the same way.

Reference

Five Constructs and Their Effects

Five constructs, and what each one does to personality. Reciprocal determinism means person, behavior and environment interact, producing mutual ongoing shaping. Self-efficacy is belief in one's capability, and it drives effort and persistence. Vicarious learning is learning by observing others, acquiring behavior without practice. Modeling is imitating an observed model, which transmits skills and attitudes. And self-regulation is guiding one's own behavior, which supports goal pursuit. Notice how many of these describe processes rather than quantities. That is characteristic of the cognitive turn this chapter is tracking.

Consolidate

The Loop in an Ordinary Week

Watch the whole model run inside one ordinary week at work. A new employee watches a respected colleague handle a difficult client calmly, and succeed. Through vicarious learning, and rising self-efficacy, the employee attempts the same approach. And their own success then further strengthens the belief. Trace what moved there. The environment supplied a model. The personal factor shifted. The behavior changed. And the outcome fed back into the personal factor again. Each element moved, and each moved the others. Which is why the practical advice is so specific. Build self-efficacy through small mastery experiences and credible role models. Because beliefs and models, not just rewards, drive what people attempt.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Bandura's Social-Cognitive Theory and Vicarious Learning

What is reciprocal determinism?
Reciprocal determinism is Albert Bandura's principle that personal factors, behavior, and the environment continuously influence one another. Personal factors include beliefs, expectations, and goals; behavior is what the person does; and the environment includes settings, people, and contingencies. None is simply the cause of the others. Succeeding at a task raises confidence, for example, and acting differently changes how people respond to you.
What is self-efficacy?
Self-efficacy is a person's belief in their capability to organize and carry out the actions a specific goal requires. It shapes which tasks people attempt, how much effort they invest, and how long they persist after setbacks. It differs from self-esteem because it concerns performing specific actions, not a general judgment of one's worth. High self-efficacy tends to be self-fulfilling because it fosters the persistence that produces success.
What are the four sources of self-efficacy?
Bandura named four sources of self-efficacy: mastery experiences, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and interpretation of physiological states. Past success at the task itself is generally the most powerful. Watching a comparable model succeed and being told credibly that one is capable also raise it. The fourth source depends on interpretation, since the same racing heart can be read as readiness or as a sign of coming failure.
What does human agency mean in Bandura's theory?
Human agency is the capacity to act intentionally and influence one's own life. Bandura linked it to four capacities: setting goals, anticipating outcomes before they occur, self-reflecting on one's own thinking, and self-regulating behavior against a standard. On this view, personality emerges from the interplay between these cognitive capacities and the social environments people both shape and are shaped by.

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