Theories of Personality
Bandura
Chapter 16
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© 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Outline
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Overview of Social Cognitive Theory
Biography of Albert Bandura
Learning
Triadic Reciprocal Causation
Human Agency
Self-Regulation
Cont’d
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Outline
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Dysfunctional Behavior
Therapy
Related Research
Critique of Bandura
Concept of Humanity
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Overview of Social Cognitive Theory
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Chance Encounters and Fortuitous Events Are Important
Central Human Characteristic Is Plasticity
Emphasis on Vicarious Learning
Rely on Behavioral, Environmental, and Personal Factors
People have Capacity to Regulate Nature and Their Lives
People Regulate through Internal and External Factors
In Morally Ambiguous Situations, People Regulate Selves
through Moral Agency
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Biography of Bandura
• Born in Alberta, Canada in 1925
• Earned his PhD in clinical psychology in
1951 at the University of Iowa
• Published Adolescent Aggression in 1959
• President of American Psychological
Association in 1974
• Professor at Stanford for over 50 years
• Investigates hypotheses generated by his
social cognitive theory
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Learning
• Observational Learning
– Modeling
– Processes governing observational learning
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Attention
Representation
Behavioral Production
Motivation
• Enactive Learning
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Triadic Reciprocal Determinism
• Human Action Is Result of Interaction Among Three
Variables:
– Environment
– Behavior
– Person
• Differential Contributions
– The relative influence of behavior, environment, and person
depends on which of the triadic factors is strongest at the moment
• Chance Encounters and Fortuitous Events
– Unintended meeting of persons unfamiliar to each other or
environmental experience that is unexpected or unintended
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Human Agency
• Core Features of Human Agency:
1. Intentionality
2. Forethought
3. Self-Reactiveness
4. Self-Reflectiveness
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Self-Efficacy
• Self-Efficacy
– What is self-efficacy?
– What contributes to self-efficacy?
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Mastery experiences
Social modeling
Social persuasion
Physical and emotional states
– Does self-efficacy predict behavior?
• Proxy Agency
• Collective Efficacy
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Self-Regulation
• Self-Regulation
– External factors in self-regulation
– Internal factors in self-regulation
• Self-Observation
• Judgmental Process
• Self-Reaction
– Self-regulation through moral agency
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Redefine the Behavior
Disregard or Distort the Consequences of Behavior
Dehumanize or Blame the Victims
Displace or Diffuse Responsibility
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Dysfunctional Behavior
• Depression
– Occurs in any of three self-regulatory subfunctions:
• Self-observation
• Judgmental processes
• Self-reactions
• Phobias
– Fears that have severe debilitating effects on one’s daily life
– Learned in three ways:
• Direct contact
• Inappropriate generalization
• Observational experiences
• Aggression
– Learned through:
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Observation of others
Direct experiences with positive and negative reinforcements
Training or instruction
Bizarre beliefs
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Therapy
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Deviant behaviors are socially learned and then
maintained because they serve a function
The ultimate goal of social cognitive therapy is
self-regulation
Three steps in successful therapy:
1. Instigate some change in behavior
2. Covert or cognitive modeling
3. Enactive mastery
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Systematic desensitization
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Related Research
• Self-Efficacy and Terrorism
– Fischer et al. (2009)
• Religion, self-efficacy, and coping with threats of terrorism
• When threat is salient only, self-efficacy and intrinsic religiosity
are crucial in lessening the detrimental impact of the threat
• Self-Efficacy and Diabetes
– Sacco et al. (2007)
• In diabetic patients, greater self-efficacy increases adherence to
doctors’ orders and sense of control over disease, lowers BMI,
decreases depression and number and severity of diabetes
symptoms
• The relationships between self-efficacy and adherence, BMI,
diabetes symptoms, and depression are reciprocal
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Critique of Bandura
• Bandura’s Theory Is:
– Very High on Generating Research,
Internal Consistency, and Parsimony
– High on Falsifiability, Organizing
Knowledge, and Practicality
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Concept of Humanity
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Free Choice over Determinism
Optimism over Pessimism
Equal Emphasis on Teleology and Causality
Conscious over Unconscious
Social Factors over Biology
Uniqueness over Similarity
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