Socio cognitive theory
- 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.