Social-Cognitive Theory

Eddie M. Clark

Albert Bandura's social-cognitive theory (SCT) is the result of a revision and expansion of his social learning theory and advocates a model of triadic reciprocal determinism to explain a person's behavior in a particular context. That is, (1) external environment, (2) behavior, and (3) cognitive/biological/other personal factors all influence each other bidirectionally. Bandura notes that this is a change from previous models that advocate unidirectional causation of behavior being influenced by internal dispositions and/or environmental variables and that SCT does not dictate that the different sources of influence are of equal strength nor does all the influence necessarily take place simultaneously. In summary, (1) internal dispositions (biology, cognition, emotion, etc.) may influence behavior, and behavior may influence internal dispositions; (2) internal dispositions may influence environmental events/reactions, and environmental events may influence internal dispositions; and (3) behavior may influence environmental events, and environmental events may influence behavior. SCT has been applied ...

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