Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory

One of the most influential ideas in psychology, Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory. It offers a comprehensive explanation of how people learn by observing others, imitating behaviors, and understanding the consequences of those behaviors.

Albert Bandura argued that humans actively watch, judge, think, and choose which behaviors they want to adopt, instead of seeing humans as passive learners.

In short, Humans learn from the world, but they also shape the world with their actions, beliefs, and expectations. This theory shaped our understanding towards psychology and how one understands learning, behavior, personality, and even motivation. Let's read the complete article in the simplest way and in simple words.

What Is Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory?

Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory states that learning happens through a continuous interaction between the person, their environment and their behavior. He also called this as reciprocal determinism and this means:

1. The environment has an influence on you.
2. You influence the environment in ways.
3. Your behavior influences both you and the environment.

Watching others is one of the most powerful ways humans learn new skills, habits, emotions, and social behaviors and is known as observational learning. Bandura’s theory on observational learning.

Key Components of Theory:

In this theory Bandura identified five main concepts:

1. Observational Learning:

Observational Learning the term itself suggests that we all learn by watching, we learn by observing people around us parents, teachers, friends, media, celebrities.

For example: If a child watches his parents or someone around tie their shoes, he later tries to tie shoes by copying it.

In the very famous Bobo Doll Experiment, Bandura showed, where children imitated aggressive behavior simply by watching adults do it.

2. Reciprocal Determinism

The core of Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory is Reciprocal Determinism. There are three things that constantly influence each other:

• Personal factors like thoughts, emotions and beliefs.
• Behavior or actions of a person.
• An environment that includes people, situations and culture.

For example: When an introvert or a shy person (personal factor) avoids parties (behavior), it reduces their chance to interact socially (environment), making them even more shy and introverted.

3. Self-Efficacy 

Bandura believed that believing in ourselves or self-efficacy is one of the most important factors in motivation.

This simply means: “I believe that I can do this.”

• High self-efficacy causes confidence, persistence and resilience.
• Low self-efficacy results in giving up easily, avoiding challenges and fear of failure

For example: An employee who believes that they can deliver better will try more, practice more, and eventually perform better.

4. Reinforcements

Reinforcement in simple words means, we learn not only from what happens to us, but also from what we see happening to others.

There are two types of reinforcement:

• Direct reinforcement learning via reward or punishment given to you
• Vicarious reinforcement by watching someone else get rewarded or punished.

For example:
When a student sees his friend being praised for answering extra questions during the class hours, they feel encouraged to do the same.

5. Behavioral Capability

This means your brain needs both knowledge and the skills to perform a behavior. You must know how to do a task and then practice the skill.

For example: Watching someone swim will not automatically make you a swimmer, it needs you to learn and practice.

Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory: Real-Life Examples

1. Learning Social Behavior:

Children usually tend to copy parents' manners, language, emotional reactions and problem-solving styles. Children do not learn these from textbooks, and they learn by watching.

2. Media Influence:

When teenagers see a celebrity promoting fitness, they may try to imitate healthy habits. They may become desensitized to aggression, if they see violent content repeatedly.

3. Classroom Learning

Students observe how teachers behave, how classmates respond, who gets praised and who gets punished. The behaviour of the student adjusts based on what they see.

4. Workplace Learning

New employees learn the workplace culture by observing how seniors speak, how leaders behave or how teams solve problems. Observation also gives the new employee an idea of what is acceptable and what is not.

5. Confidence & Self-Efficacy

When someone sees a person “like them” succeed, they believe they can also succeed, this is the reason why representation matters in media and leadership.

Why the Theory Is Important?

Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory shows us:

• Learning is social: No one learns in isolation.
• Thought matters: Our actions depend on what we believe.
• Behavior is not fixed: It can vary and change with environment, observation, and self-belief.
• We all are active learners: We all make active choices, evaluate the outcomes, and think before acting.
• Media and the environment: Both of them together shape behavior because what you consume influences what you become eventually.

Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment 

Bandura designed an experiment where he showed children a video of an adult hitting a toy called the Bobo doll and then he allowed the children to play.

Here is what followed next:

• The children who saw aggressive behavior tried to imitate it
• Some of the children became more aggressive than the adults shown.
• Children who had seen non-aggressive behavior were calmer. 
• Children learned behaviors even without punishments or rewards.

This experiment also proved: Seeing something or someone's behavior is enough to learn it. This proof just changed psychology forever.

Strengths of the theory:

• Better than behaviorism it explains real-world learning.
• Not just behavior the theory considers thought processes.
• Emphasizes more on self-belief or self-efficacy.
• Fits across different cultures and age groups
• The theory helps in therapy, education, coaching, leadership and media studies.

Criticisms of the Theory

• It focuses too much on the environment.
• It is difficult to measure internal thinking.
• It does not fully explain biological differences.
• It overemphasizes observation in some cases

Despite all the criticisms, it remains one of the most widely used learning theories.

Summary of Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory:

FAQs- Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory

1. What is Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory?

The theory states that we learn by watching others, thinking about what we see, and believing in our ability to act.

2. What are the main components of the theory?

The main components of the theory are - Observational learning, self-efficacy, reciprocal determinism, reinforcement, and behavioral capability.

3. Why is self-efficacy important?

It is important because people perform better when they believe they can succeed.

4. What does the Bobo Doll experiment show?

Children can imitate aggressive behavior simply by observing it and no reward is needed.

5. How is this theory used in today’s world?

It is used in therapy, schools, parenting, leadership, coaching, media analysis, and behavior change programs.

How the environment shapes thinking - Cognitive Echo Chamber Effect.

Improving learning and performance - Limitless Brain Lab.

How the brain manages beliefs and decisions - Neural Portfolio Theory.

Cognitive shortcuts and how we adjust decisions - Cognitive Arbitrage.

Also read more about brain and its creativity - Click Here

1. What Is a Cognitive Walkthrough?
2. What is Shallow Cognitive Processing?
3. Neural Tug-of-War Between Logic and Emotion
4. Why Some Languages Don’t Forgive Mispronunciations? 
5. Slow-Motion Effect: Why Time Slow Down During Accidents
6. How Do Thoughts Feel Without Words?