Social cognitive theory is a psychological theory that emphasizes how people learn by observing others, a process known as observational learning. It posits that behavior is shaped by a dynamic and reciprocal interaction between an individual’s personal factors (like beliefs and self-efficacy), their behavior, and their environment. Key concepts include self-efficacy, observational learning, and the idea that individuals have agency and can self-regulate their actions.
Key Takeaways
- Learning through observation: People acquire new behaviors and skills by watching others and noting the consequences of their actions. This process shows that learning doesn’t always require direct experience or reinforcement.
- Interaction of influences: Behavior, personal factors, and the environment constantly shape one another – a principle called reciprocal determinism. This means change in one area can influence the others.
- Role of self-efficacy: Confidence in one’s ability to succeed strongly affects motivation, effort, and persistence. Higher self-efficacy leads to greater achievement and resilience.
- Cognitive involvement: Thinking, attention, and memory play an active role in learning, not just external rewards or punishments. People interpret and plan their actions based on internal thought processes.
- Wide applications: Social Cognitive Theory is used in education, therapy, and health promotion to encourage positive behavior change. Its principles help explain how media, modeling, and social influence shape everyday behavior.
Reciprocal Determinism
Reciprocal determinism is defined by the idea that cognitive processes (or personal factors), behaviour, and the context (environment) all interact with each other, with each factor simultaneously influencing and being influenced by the others.
The theoretical foundation for reciprocal determinism is triadic reciprocality. This core concept, developed by Albert Bandura, describes a dynamic model where human behavior is the result of a continuous, mutual interaction among three primary elements:
- Environmental Influences (Context): The external surroundings, social context, and stimuli (rewarding or punishing) where the behavior occurs.
- Personal Factors (Cognition): Internal characteristics like beliefs, expectations (especially outcome expectancies), and personality.
- Behavior: The specific actions or conduct performed by the individual.
The Dynamic Interaction
Individuals are active agents, not just passive recipients of their environment.
Rather than being a one-way path (e.g., environment → behavior), reciprocal determinism emphasizes continuous, bidirectional feedback loops among these three elements.
Not only does the environment shape an individual’s behavior and internal processes (e.g., thoughts, emotions, beliefs), but individuals also influence and reshape their environment through their behavior.
They interpret their surroundings and make choices that, in turn, adjust their behavior and modify the environment itself.
- Central Role of Cognition: Personal factors, such as self-efficacy (one’s confidence in their own abilities), are crucial. High self-efficacy influences which behaviors a person chooses to attempt (often learned through observational learning), and how successfully they perform them.
- The Continuous Loop: Your beliefs influence your actions, your actions alter your environment, and your environment, in turn, modifies your beliefs and future behavior.
While these three factors constantly operate interactively, their influence is not necessarily equal or static.
The relative weight of influence from one factor may be stronger than the others depending on the specific situation and may also vary over time.
Example 1. Bungee Jumping
A helpful example illustrating the simultaneous influence of these three factors is considering whether a person decides to bungee jump at a festival:
- Behavior (Bungee Jumping): The actual decision and action of jumping.
- Cognitive Factors: These influence the behaviour, perhaps including personal beliefs and values (e.g., “I am adventurous”) and past experiences with similar challenging behaviours (e.g., prior success climbing mountains).
- Context: This refers to the specific environment and the reward structure for the behaviour (e.g., the thrilling atmosphere of the festival, the encouragement of friends, or the feeling of accomplishment associated with the jump).
According to reciprocal determinism, the interaction is continuous: the festive context might activate the cognitive factor of “adventurous beliefs,” which increases the likelihood of the behavior (jumping).
Completing the jump (the behavior) then strongly reinforces the cognitive factor (“I am capable”), potentially altering the individual’s future context choices toward more thrilling environments.
Example 2. High School Basketball Student
- Personal Factors: A student believes they are good at basketball (high self-efficacy).
- Behavior: Because they’re confident, they practice regularly and volunteer for extra drills.
- Environment: Coaches notice their dedication and give them more playing time. Teammates give positive feedback.
- Cycle of Influence: The student’s confidence (personal) drives more practice (behavior), which earns praise from peers and coaches (environment). That praise, in turn, raises the student’s self-efficacy further, and they practice even more diligently.
Example 3. Office Presentation Anxiety
- Personal Factors: An employee feels nervous about speaking in front of groups (low self-efficacy for public speaking).
- Behavior: Because of their anxiety, they avoid volunteering for presentations or may deliver them with shaky confidence when forced.
- Environment: Coworkers and supervisors observe this hesitance, and the employee is rarely asked to present important information.
- Cycle of Influence: The environment (lack of opportunities to present) inadvertently reinforces the employee’s fear. Limited practice opportunities mean the individual’s anxiety (personal factor) never improves, which then continues to shape their avoidance behavior.
Example 4. Healthy Eating at Home
- Personal Factors: A parent values good nutrition and believes they can prepare healthy meals (high self-efficacy in cooking).
- Behavior: They spend time planning meals, shopping for fresh ingredients, and cooking balanced dinners.
- Environment: The family’s kitchen is stocked with healthy foods, and family members offer positive feedback about the meals. Children may begin to request more nutritious options at school or with friends.
- Cycle of Influence: The positive feedback from the environment (family enjoyment, requests for more healthy dishes) further encourages the parent to keep cooking healthy meals, reinforcing their confidence and interest in healthy eating.
Observational Learning
Bandura emphasized that people often learn new behaviors by watching others rather than by direct experience alone.
Observational learning underscores the importance of role models, whether they be parents, teachers, peers, or media figures, in transmitting knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.
This concept became especially famous through Bandura’s Bobo doll experiments, in which children imitated aggressive behaviors displayed by adult models.
Origins: The Bobo Doll Experiments
Social cognitive theory can trace its origins to Bandura and his colleagues, in particular, a series of well-known studies on observational learning known as the Bobo Doll experiments.
In these experiments, researchers exposed young, preschool-aged children to videos of an adult acting violently toward a large, inflatable doll.
This aggressive behavior included verbal insults and physical violence, such as slapping and punching. At the end of the video, the children either witnessed the aggressor being rewarded, or punished or received no consequences for his behavior (Schunk, 2012).
After being exposed to this model, the children were placed in a room where they were given the same inflatable Bobo doll.
The researchers found that those who had watched the model either received positive reinforcement or no consequences for attacking the doll were more likely to show aggressive behavior toward the doll (Schunk, 2012).
This experiment was notable for being one that introduced the concept of observational learning to humans.
Bandura’s ideas about observational learning were in stark contrast to those of previous behaviorists, such as B.F. Skinner.
According to Skinner (1950), learning can only be achieved through individual action.
However, Bandura claimed that people and animals can also learn by watching and imitating the models they encounter in their environment, enabling them to acquire information more quickly.
The Role of Cognitive Processes
Bandura identified four cognitive processes that must occur for observational learning to take place:
These processes highlight how learning is not automatic but rather depends on the learner’s capacity and incentive to engage with observed behaviors.
These include attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation (Bandura & Walters, 1963).
Attention
The individual needs to pay attention to the behavior and its consequences and form a mental representation of the behavior. Some of the things that influence attention involve characteristics of the model.
This means that the model must be salient or noticeable. If the model is attractive, prestigious, or appears to be particularly competent, you will pay more attention.
And if the model seems more like yourself, you pay more attention.
Retention
Storing the observed behavior in LTM where it can stay for a long period of time. Imitation is not always immediate. This process is often mediated by symbols. Symbols are “anything that stands for something else” (Bandura, 1998).
They can be words, pictures, or even gestures. For symbols to be effective, they must be related to the behavior being learned and must be understood by the observer.
Motor Reproduction
The individual must be able (have the ability and skills) to physically reproduce the observed behavior. This means that the behavior must be within their capability. If it is not, they will not be able to learn it (Bandura, 1998).
Motivation
The observer must be motivated to perform the behavior. This motivation can come from a variety of sources, such as a desire to achieve a goal or avoid punishment.
Bandura (1977) proposed that motivation has three main components: expectancy, value, and affective reaction. Firstly, expectancy refers to the belief that one can successfully perform the behavior.
Secondly, value refers to the importance of the goal that the behavior is meant to achieve.
The last of these, Affective reaction, refers to the emotions associated with the behavior.
If behavior is associated with positive emotions, it is more likely to be learned than a behavior associated with negative emotions. Reinforcement and punishment each play an important role in motivation.
Individuals must expect to receive the same positive reinforcement (vicarious reinforcement) for imitating the observed behavior that they have seen the model receiving.
Imitation is more likely to occur if the model (the person who performs the behavior) is positively reinforced. This is called vicarious reinforcement.
Imitation is also more likely if we identify with the model. We see them as sharing some characteristics with us, i.e., similar age, gender, and social status, as we identify with them.
Reinforcement & Expectations
Reinforcement
Reinforcement refers to the outcomes or consequences that follow a behavior — such as rewards, approval, or success — and how they affect future behavior.
Bandura argued that reinforcement doesn’t just strengthen behavior directly (as in Skinner’s behaviorism).
Instead, it works indirectly by influencing what people expect to happen if they act a certain way.
Seeing someone else rewarded for a behavior (called vicarious reinforcement) can motivate an observer to imitate that behavior. Conversely, seeing punishment can discourage imitation.
Reinforcement can be internal (feeling proud or satisfied) or external (receiving praise, money, or recognition).
Outcome Expectations
Expectations refer to a person’s anticipated consequences of engaging in a specific behavior.
More specifically, outcome expectations are the beliefs about what will happen if a certain action is performed.
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Behavioral Driver: Individuals typically anticipate the consequences of their actions before engaging in a behavior. These expectations play a central role in influencing the choice, initiation, and successful completion of a behavior (Bandura, 1989).
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Sources and Subjectivity: Expectations are largely formed from previous experience and observation. Crucially, they also incorporate the subjective value an individual places on the anticipated outcome.
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Example: A student who highly values academic success will place a higher value on the outcome of “achieving high grades” and is therefore more likely to develop positive outcome expectations related to studying diligently than a student who places a low value on high grades.
Self-Efficacy (Belief in One’s Capabilities)
Self-efficacy is a person’s belief in their ability to successfully perform a specific task or handle a particular situation.
In other words, it’s the confidence you have in your own skills to take action and achieve a desired outcome.
Albert Bandura introduced this concept as a core part of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) because it helps explain why people behave differently even when they have the same knowledge or opportunities.
Two people might both know how to do something, but only the one who believes they can succeed will actually try — and persist when it gets hard.
Self-efficacy is central to SCT for several reasons:
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Motivation and persistence: People with high self-efficacy are more likely to set challenging goals, stay motivated, and recover from setbacks.
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Behavioral choice: It influences which activities or situations a person chooses to engage in or avoid.
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Effort and performance: Strong self-belief improves focus, effort, and problem-solving under pressure.
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Feedback loop: Success increases self-efficacy, while repeated failure can lower it — showing the reciprocal interaction between personal beliefs, behavior, and environment.
In short, self-efficacy is what turns knowing into doing. It’s the psychological engine that drives learning, resilience, and growth in Social Cognitive Theory.
Self-efficacy can be developed through:
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Mastery experiences (succeeding in tasks),
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Vicarious experiences (watching others succeed),
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Verbal persuasion (encouragement from others),
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Emotional/physiological states (managing stress and building resilience).
Higher self-efficacy often leads to greater motivation, perseverance, and ultimately better performance outcomes.
Self-efficacy is often said to be task-specific, meaning that people can feel confident in their ability to perform one task but not another.
For example, a student may feel confident in their ability to do well on an exam but not feel as confident in their ability to make friends.
This is because self-efficacy is based on past experience and beliefs. If a student has never made friends before, they are less likely to believe that they will do so in the future.
Applications
Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory extends far beyond the realm of academic psychology, providing a flexible framework for understanding how people learn, adapt, and thrive in a wide variety of real-world settings.
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Education
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Fostering Self-Efficacy: In classrooms, teachers can boost students’ confidence in their abilities by setting manageable challenges, offering constructive feedback, and modeling effective learning strategies.
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Peer and Adult Role Models: When learners observe knowledgeable or skilled models, they become more motivated to acquire similar abilities. This can lead to improved academic achievement, greater persistence in difficult tasks, and a stronger sense of ownership over the learning process.
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Public Health
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Health Campaigns: From anti-smoking efforts to nutritional guidelines, public health initiatives frequently leverage Social Cognitive Theory by featuring relatable role models (e.g., celebrities, respected community figures) to demonstrate healthier behaviors.
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Community Engagement: By understanding how beliefs, self-efficacy, and social norms influence behavior, policymakers and health educators can design interventions that remove environmental barriers, provide social support, and establish clear behavioral expectations.
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Organizational Behavior
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Training and Development: Employers use modeling, mentorship programs, and supportive feedback to encourage skill-building and cultivate a sense of efficacy among employees. With the right modeling and feedback, workers become more innovative and proactive.
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Leadership and Motivation: Managers who exemplify effective performance and resilience can profoundly influence employees’ attitudes and commitment, shaping an environment that supports both individual growth and collective success.
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Media Studies
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Role of Observational Learning: Audiences learn by watching characters on TV shows, movies, or social media. Whether modeling beneficial behaviors like resolving conflicts productively or counterproductive ones such as aggression, media can reinforce or reshape viewers’ attitudes and actions.
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Responsible Content Creation: Knowing that people often imitate what they see, content creators can harness social cognitive principles to produce messages that empower and educate—spreading positive behaviors at scale.
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Designing Interventions, Training, and Learning Strategies
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Multilevel Focus: Because Social Cognitive Theory involves the continuous interplay between personal beliefs (e.g., self-efficacy), observable actions (e.g., practicing a skill), and external conditions (e.g., accessibility of resources), its principles can guide a holistic approach when tackling real-world challenges.
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Customized Approaches: Interventions based on Social Cognitive Theory can be adapted to diverse populations. By first assessing people’s current self-efficacy levels, perceived barriers, and social supports, change-makers can introduce targeted feedback, skill-building opportunities, and environmental supports to sustain behavior change.
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Strengths
SCT offers a holistic view by introducing triadic reciprocal determinism, asserting that personal factors (e.g., beliefs, self-efficacy), environmental influences, and behavior are all interlinked.
Rather than seeing the environment as the only cause of human actions, SCT argues that a person’s internal cognitions (self-efficacy, outcome expectancies) both shape and are shaped by the behaviors performed and the social environment.
This feedback loop implies a dynamic process: each component influences the other two.
It goes beyond a linear “stimulus–response” approach and highlights human agency, people can be proactive in changing their environments to achieve desired outcomes.
Consequences
Because SCT addresses these reciprocal influences, it is especially useful for designing interventions that target multiple levels at once. For instance, to promote regular exercise, one can:
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Strengthen self-efficacy through small successes (personal factor).
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Use social or peer modeling (environment) to demonstrate positive routines.
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Encourage consistent behavioral practice (the action itself).
This integrated approach means SCT-based programs often show long-lasting results because they consider the person’s thoughts, the social climate, and the behavior simultaneously.
However, it can be more complex and time-consuming to implement interventions because multiple elements—environmental, behavioral, cognitive—must be addressed.
SCT places self-efficacy at the core of motivation and behavior change, making it a crucial predictor of whether someone will initiate and persist in a challenging action.
Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in their capacity to carry out a particular behavior successfully.
Bandura showed that people high in self-efficacy generally set higher goals, are more resilient to setbacks, and are likelier to sustain efforts toward achievement.
SCT thereby clarifies the cognitive underpinnings of motivation and highlights precisely why some learners or patients seem to progress faster than others, even when their abilities are ostensibly the same.
Consequences
Interventions that bolster self-efficacy (through mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion), often see improved outcomes, whether in mental health treatment, academic achievement, or lifestyle changes.
This makes SCT-based strategies appealing to teachers, clinicians, and coaches aiming to maintain participants’ engagement.
The flip side, however, is that measuring self-efficacy can be tricky (it is typically task-specific rather than a single global trait), and not all real-world contexts allow for easy direct manipulations of someone’s confidence in their abilities.
Yet, when done carefully, building self-efficacy is a powerful tool for sustained behavior change.
Weakness
Social cognitive theory can be criticized for being too broad, addressing a wide array of factors – personal, behavioral, and environmental – without always providing specific instructions on how to prioritize or measure them.
While SCT’s comprehensiveness is a strength, it also makes the theory challenging to operationalize in tightly controlled research.
The theory says that beliefs, environment, and behavior all interact, but does not always specify which variable is most important in a given context or how to isolate the strongest driver of change.
In some studies, researchers end up selectively measuring only certain aspects (like observational learning or self-efficacy), leaving others (like social norms, emotional states) less explored.
Consequences
Researchers and practitioners may find it difficult to design interventions or measure outcomes consistently.
This complexity can result in somewhat vague or diluted programs, where it’s unclear which elements of the approach produced success (or caused failure).
Moreover, when theories encompass everything, critics argue they can become less predictive or falsifiable, making it harder to refine or test them rigorously.
SCT can appear more like a guiding framework than a precise predictive model.
SCT places significant emphasis on conscious cognitive processes (e.g., self-efficacy, expected outcomes) and can underestimate subconscious, biological, or emotional influences on behavior.
Bandura does acknowledge affective and physiological factors, but the main focus is on how people deliberately process information about themselves and their environment.
Modern research, however, highlights the importance of automatic processes, genetics, and hormonal influences, factors often operating beneath conscious awareness.
For example, certain addictive behaviors or strong emotional responses might not fit neatly into self-efficacy and observational learning frameworks.
Habits formed through repeated automatic reinforcement might not be as easily changed by cognitively based interventions.
Consequences
Because of this focus on rational and conscious processes, SCT interventions may be less effective for deeply ingrained or biologically influenced conditions (such as some forms of addiction, anxiety disorders, or depression) if those conditions are significantly driven by automatic or unconscious processes.
Practitioners may need to supplement SCT-based strategies with other approaches (e.g., exposure therapy, medication) that address emotional regulation, biological predispositions, or unconscious triggers.
In real-life, structural or societal factors can overshadow personal cognitive determinants, meaning SCT might inadvertently place too much responsibility on the individual without adequately addressing external constraints.
Though SCT’s concept of environment is broad, it tends to focus on how people perceive and respond to their immediate social surroundings.
Some critics argue that deeper structural issues, like poverty, discrimination, lack of resources, cannot be sufficiently tackled only by boosting self-efficacy or providing good role models.
For example, if a person lives in a food desert, all the self-efficacy in the world will not help them eat a balanced diet if healthy foods are inaccessible.
Thus, the emphasis on individual agency can downplay systemic barriers to making healthy or adaptive choices.
Consequences
If an intervention is designed primarily around teaching individuals coping or observational learning strategies but ignores real socioeconomic or institutional obstacles, its success may be limited.
Furthermore, critics worry that focusing on personal factors can lead to “victim blaming”, assuming a person fails simply because they lacked motivation or self-efficacy, whereas larger external forces might be at fault.
When implementing SCT-based programs in low-resource settings, it’s crucial to consider how broader socio-political contexts intersect with personal and behavioral factors.
Social Learning vs. Social Cognitive Theory
Social learning theory and Social Cognitive Theory are both theories of learning that place an emphasis on the role of observational learning.
However, there are several key differences between the two theories. Social learning theory focuses on the idea of reinforcement, while Social Cognitive Theory emphasizes the role of cognitive processes.
Additionally, social learning theory posits that all behavior is learned through observation, while Social Cognitive Theory allows for the possibility of learning through other means, such as direct experience.
Finally, social learning theory focuses on individualistic learning, while Social Cognitive Theory takes a more holistic view, acknowledging the importance of environmental factors.
Though they are similar in many ways, the differences between social learning theory and Social Cognitive Theory are important to understand. These theories provide different frameworks for understanding how learning takes place.
As such, they have different implications in all facets of their applications (Reed et al., 2010).
References
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84 (2), 191.
Bandura, A. (1986). Fearful expectations and avoidant actions as coeffects of perceived self-inefficacy.
Bandura, A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American psychologist, 44 (9), 1175.
Bandura, A. (1998). Health promotion from the perspective of social cognitive theory. Psychology and health, 13 (4), 623-649.
Bandura, A. (2003). Social cognitive theory for personal and social change by enabling media. In Entertainment-education and social change (pp. 97-118). Routledge.
Bandura, A. Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through the imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-582.
LaMort, W. (2019). The Social Cognitive Theory. Boston University.
Reed, M. S., Evely, A. C., Cundill, G., Fazey, I., Glass, J., Laing, A., … & Stringer, L. C. (2010). What is social learning?. Ecology and society, 15 (4).
Schunk, D. H. (2012). Social cognitive theory.
Skinner, B. F. (1950). Are theories of learning necessary?. Psychological Review, 57 (4), 193.
