Social Cognitive Theory

Social Cognitive theory

Aspects that describe factors that influence individual experiences, actions and environmental effects on people’s health behaviors aimed at producing desired results are based on social cognitive theory which provides ways for social support through inputting efficacy, expectations and learning through observations and various methods that help one to adjust to changes in behaviors. Seeking healthcare dissertation help can further illuminate the understanding of these factors and their implications in healthcare practices.

People and the society at large need to work together to come up with various strategies of securing what they cannot complete and fulfill on their own. In this aspect, social behavior is determined by focus aspects such as goals which are in depth viewed as plans to act and can therefore be seen as intentions to perform certain behaviors, outcome expectations which are what the society desires to see from an individuals changed behavior and can be split into either social, physical and self-evaluate depending on the nature of the expected outcomes.

Putting in consideration some key components that deals with individual behavioral changes such as social-efficacy which enables the society to believe that individuals have control over certain behaviors and that they can be able to do away with those behaviors when they want to. Based on the provided example, a person might believe that he or she can do away with the drinking of alcohol even if he or she is being offered a drink by a friend. When individuals operates on collective efficacy then it will be easier for them to work on influencing the goals that people have to achieve at a desired periods and ways in which they will be able to use and utilize their available resources not forgetting the amount of effort they will need to put in their undertaken task and also putting in consideration the power to sustain themselves in case of failure in their work or in case they fail to produce quick results and their level of vulnerability to disappointments that may result to people taking irrelevant decisions.

In most cases, self-efficacy is the most powerful determinant of individual behaviors. Therefore, persons with strong sense of self efficacy are believed to obtain stronger intentions to expand their efforts greatly in order to achieve their goals and they are perceived to have longer persistence in the face of any barriers thus being believed to play a very huge role in the determination of individual health behavior.

According to (Bandura,1986,1997), behavior is directly influenced by goals and expectations of self-efficacy and indirectly by outcome expectations such as self-efficacy and social cultural factors. On a different perspective, goals determine the number of efforts that individuals put in place to help in changing their behaviors and also serve as a controller to their actions. Similarly, outcome expectations are what people perceive to as being the consequences which can either be positive or negative that are incurred while performing a certain behavior. In other ways, social outcome expectations may include expected approval or disapproval from one’s partner whereas self-evaluate expected outcome may refer to anticipated feelings that results or arises from someone’s inner standards such as pride in having achieved a change in someone’s behavior. This theory also incorporates perceived opportunities and barriers which are believed to influence goals.

Never the less, the ability to have certain skills that helps in performing a certain behavior whereby the society always holds high expectations on determining the results obtained from an individual changed behaviors. The society also contains the role of monitoring and evaluating the change in behavior and issuing incentives and gifts that may encourage individual’s behavioral change.

Social cognitive theory basically lays more emphasis on how learning of children occurs within families and their influences from the environment. Parent’s languages and the physical characteristic of a home depicts how children education is influenced. On the hand, parents are found of believing that educationally, relevant behaviors include how quick a child perceives to the level of competencies, expectations, casual attributions, values and stereotypes. In respect to this, children tend to learn faster from instructions given and by observing the behaviors portrayed by their parents and siblings. Learning on the other hand is also shaped by involvement of parents in children school matters and the selection of children out of home activities. Therefor for learning to take place, several cognitive and affective measures must take place for effective interaction between a teacher and a student. These elements are therefore attention paid to learning, retention of what has been learned and the ability to remember what has been taught without forgetting the student’s intention to participate in learning activities (Bandura, 2001).

Furthermore, due to Vygotsky’s view of dynamic interaction, Bandura believed in reciprocal determinism which assumes that a person’s behavior is as a result of his or her social world and that the world is as a result of that person’s behavior and action. Therefore, when we view learning in the context of Bandura then we see it as consequence of one’s attention to what is being taught the intention to remember what has been taught thus from this point it is therefore a person’s intention and motivation to learn and ability to apply what has been learnt.

Similarly, social cognitive theory is there for meant to influence behaviors and environments and in turn be affected by them. (Bandura, 1986,1997, Schunk,2012). Students who have high desire to learn are therefore supposed to engage in self-regulatory measures such as setting their goals as well as monitoring their learning progress and using effective learning strategies and somehow create a conducive learning environment for themselves for example, finding ways to eliminate or do away with things that might destruct them and looking for desired colleagues that they might study with. Behavior outcomes can as well result to self-efficacy influence and environmental inputs such as social comparisons with peers and feedbacks provided by teachers.

In respect to this, individuals may as well obtain much information concerning their abilities of what they can do through knowledge based on how others perform. Regardless of this, observing others performances and success can easily motivate them to try out the task because they might believe that if others can do it then they can as well do it. On the other way, a person who observes while his or her peer fails then may as well believe that he or she has no competence to succeed which in return may discourage her from attempting the task. Despite all this, people can also develop self-efficacy from others social persuasions in a way that they receive compliments about their ability to perform something. (Bandura 1997)

On the other hand, individuals are made in a way that they obtain self-efficacy information based on psychological and emotional states such as stress and anxiety (Bandura,1997) whereby a strong emotional reaction to a task provides reactions based on either success or failures hence when students experience negative thoughts and fears about what they can undertake then their self-efficacy can easily be lowered and trigger stress that can as well result to the poor performances.

Although self-efficacy is relevant, it is not the only influencer on behavior. As a result of this scenario, the theory therefore suggests that no amount of efficacy can produce the desired results when the required skills to succeed are not available. Therefor outcome expectations tend to make people engage in activities that they only believe will result into the desired and positive outcomes and do away with those that might result into negative outcomes.

In conclusion, social cognitive theory lays in a person’s insight in that they believe that performing a certain behavior will therefore automatically generate a desired outcome. For example, passing exams is not sufficient to producing a behavior rather, a person must also exercise sufficient level of self-efficacy in a way that there must be the believe that he or she has the capabilities not to engage in activities that may result to exam failures. In respect to this, there is also a huge variation in levels of self-efficacy resulting to many common health related behaviors which are obviously difficult to be carried out and exercised. Therefore, high self-efficacy for performing a behavior own its own is not likely to produce a behavior where a person holds low outcome expectation for example when a person fails to believe that performing a certain behavior will generally bring out a particular outcome and if a behavior contributes to a goal that is not valued by that person, then the level of self-efficacy will be considered irrelevant.

Bibliography

Bandura A, and Wessels, S., 1994.Self efficacy.

Bandura, A., 2005. The evolution of social cognitive theory. Great minds in management, pp.9-3

Bandura, A.,1998. Health promotion from the perspective of social cognitive theory.

Psychology Wood, Robert, and Albert Bandura. “Social cognitive theory of organizational management. “Academy of management Review,” 14(3), pp.361-384.

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