PU505: Health Behavior Unit 8 Social Cognitive Theory Flashcards
What is the essence sentence of social cognitive theory or SCT?
Behavior, cognitive (intrapersonal) factors, and environmental factors interact with each other, and chaining one changes them all.
What are the constructs of social cognitive theory? (6)
Self-efficacy (Cognitive factor)
Outcome expectations and expectancies (Cognitive factor)
Self-regulation or self-control (Cognitive factor)
Observational learning (modeling) (Environmental factor)
Reinforcement (Environmental factor)
Behavioral capacity (Behavioral factor)
Who is responsible for creating the roots of this theory back in 1950?
Albert Bandura
This is back when behavior acquisition was thought to be rooted in behaviorism, or the view that behavior results from environmental stimuli, consequences, rewards, and punishments (Pajares, 2004)
How did Albert Bandura increase support for observational learning?
He explored the influence of observation and modeling on behavior acquisition by looking at boys and their aggression in school.
Even though these boys were from homes in which aggressive behavior was not condoned (not rewarded), they were aggressive at school. The behavior was unacceptable, however, the parents of these boys nonetheless expected their sons to be tough and settle disputes with other children physically (aggressively), if necessary.
He found the parents themselves were aggressive toward the school system and toward other children they felt were giving their sons a hard time. From this, Bandura included that boys learned aggressive behavior by copying or modeling from their parents–thus demonstrating the power of observational learning.
They also did this with the infamous BoBo doll experiment.
What factors are the foundation of SCT?
Environmental
What is SCT based on? This term is a triadic codetermination of causation, which explains human functioning as a product of intrapersonal (cognitive) influences, the person’s behavior, and the environmental forces imposed on them (Bandura, 2018).
Reciprocal determinism.
The way people interpret their environment and their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes (intrapersonal factors) affect their behavior; their behavior affects their intrapersonal factors, which can affect the environment, and so on.
What type of factors are all of the constructs within SCT related to?
They are related to the intrapersonal, environmental, and behavioral factors of reciprocal determinism.
What constructs of SCT belong to the intrapersonal factors?
What constructs of SCT belong to the behavioral factors?
What constructs of SCT belong to the environmental factors?
Intrapersonal factors or cognitive factors are the biological characteristics of people, what they think, believe, and feel that affect behavior. They are reflected in the constructs of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and outcome expectation and expectancies (Bandura, 1989).
Behavioral factors alter the environment, the altered environment influences the way people behave, with people becoming creatures of the environment their behavior creates (Bandura, 1989). These factors are reflected in the constructs of behavioral capability and self-efficacy.
Environmental factors include things in both the physical and social environments that influence personal factors. These are reflected in the constructs of observational learning (watching others) and reinforcement (verbal persuasion, reward and punishment, social support).
Why is self-efficacy probably the single most important determinant of behavior?
Because people will only do what they believe they can do.
What are the four sources that influences self-efficacy?
Mastery experiences
Vicarious learning (learning by watching others)
Verbal Persuasion
The physiological and emotional states
What do you call it when people behave in certain ways because they anticipate or expect a certain results from engaging in the behavior?
Outcome expectation and expectancies
People install fire detectors to expect to warned of a fire. People wear helmets because they expect to protected from brain injuries if they fall, and same thing for getting vaccinated.
However, not all expected outcomes trigger healthy behaviors. Drug use and getting high, crash diets expecting to lose weight, laying in the sun because they expect to look better tan.
Expectations of a behavior can also cause people to avoid a behavior.
Expectancies are different from expected outcomes. What are expectancies?
They are the values we place on outcomes; the expected outcomes.
What are expectancies typically referred to as to better understand the concept?
Think hypothesis building :)
They are referred to as “if-then” statements.
For example, see the following screen shot.
More on expected outcomes and expectancies (See attached)
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What intrapersonal construct refers to controlling our behavior based on our own adopted personal standards?
Self- regulation.
It is Bandura’s (1991) contention that if this internal mechanism of control didn’t exist, and people behaved solely as the result of external forces, they would be like weathervanes shifting constantly in an effort to conform to whatever social expectation they confronted.
Addage after attachment
They can easily be added to existing programs or built into new programs along with the other self-regulatory behaviors strongly associated with exercise: goal setting, self-reward, and time management (Heiss & Petosa, 2016).
Hayden, Joanna. Introduction to Health Behavior Theory (pp. 419-420). Jones & Bartlett Learning. Kindle Edition.
More on Self-regulation and Breast Cancer
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What determines the strength of observational learning?
It depends how much attention is given to the person modeling the behavior.
This degree of attention is influenced by a number of things, among them the power and attractiveness of the model, the circumstances or conditions under which the model is being observed, what is motivating the person to learn the behavior, how important it is that the behavior is learned, and the complexity of the behavior (Bandura, 1977, 1986; Grusec, 1992).
More on Observational Learning
More on Observational Learning
What is a construct that you may be familiar with because it is also the basis for operant conditioning and behavior modification; and is a system of rewards (positive and negative) in response to behaviors?
Reinforcement
People do things because they want an award and/or want to avoid punishment. Positive and negative reinforcement.
More on Reinforcement
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What construct tells us that before people can perform a certain behavior, they must have knowledge of the behavior and the skills to perform it?
Behavioral capacity
Simply put, before doing something, you have to know what it is you’re going to do and know how to do it.
SCT Model
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