Download Social-Cognitive Theory

Social-Cognitive Theory
• Social Cognitive Theory stemmed out of work in the area of
social learning theory proposed by Miller and Dollard in 1941.
• Humans are motivated to learn particular behaviors that are
learned through clear observations.
• By imitating these observed actions the individual observer would
solidify that learned action and would be rewarded with positive
reinforcement.
• The proposition of social learning was expanded upon and
theorized by American psychologist Albert Bandura working in the
1960s.
• The theorists most commonly associated with social cognitive
theory are Albert Bandura and Walter Mischel.
Social cognitive theory
• A learning theory based on the ideas that people
learn by watching what others do and that human
thought processes are central to understanding
personality.
• While social cognitists agree that there is a fair
amount of influence on development generated by
learned behavior displayed in the environment in
which one grows up, they believe that the
individual person (and therefore cognition) is just
as important in determining moral development.
Morality and Personality
• Social cognitive theory emphasizes a large difference between
an individual's ability to be morally competent and morally
performing.
• Moral competence - the ability to perform a moral behavior.
• Moral performance - indicates actually following one's idea of
moral behavior in a specific situation.
• Moral competencies include:
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what an individual is capable of
what an individual knows
what an indivual's skills are
an individual's awareness of moral rules and regulations
an individual's cognitive ability to construct behaviors
Identification and Self-Efficacy
• Albert Bandura also stressed that the easiest way to display moral
development would be via the consideration of multiple factors, be they
social, cognitive, or enviornmental.
• The relationship between these three factors provides even more insight
into the complex concept that is morality.
• Identification between the observer and the model and if the observer also
has a good deal of self-efficacy.
• Self-efficacy beliefs function as an important set of proximal determinants
of human motivation, affect, and action [which] operate on action through
motivational, cognitive, and affective intervening processes.
• Identification allows the observer to feel a one-to-one connection with the
individual being imitated and will be more likely to achieve those
imitations if the observer feels that they have the ability to follow through
with the imitated action.