rewards. Amateur runners push themselves in races, even though few expect
to win. The reward comes from the feelings of accomplishment and self-worth they get from setting a personal record or perhaps for just finishing
the race. Of course, self-regulation also includes self-punishment. When we
fail to maintain personal standards, we often degrade and feel bad about our-selves. You may have chastised yourself for being rude to a stranger or not
sticking to your diet, even when no one else seemed to notice.
Because much of our behavior is the result of self-regulation, Bandura
challenges the radical behaviorist assertion that people will perform just aboutany action if the environmental contingencies are altered appropriately.
“Anyone who attempted to change a pacifist into an aggressor or a devout reli-
gionist into an atheist, ”Bandura wrote, “would quickly come to appreciate the
existence of personal sources of behavioral control ”(1977a, pp. 128– 129).
Observational Learning
Perhaps social-cognitive theory ’s most important contribution to the understand-
ing of human behavior and personality is the concept of vicarious orobserva-
tional learning . In addition to classical and operant conditioning, we can learn
by observing or reading or just hearing about other people ’s actions. Many behav-
iors are too complex to be learned through the slow process of reinforcement andpunishment. We don ’t teach pilots to fly by putting them in the cockpit and rein-
forcing correct behaviors and punishing incorrect ones. Bandura maintains that
children would never learn to talk during their preschool years if they had to be
reinforced for every correct utterance. Instead, the pilots and the toddlers watchothers fly and talk, noting which behaviors work and which don’ t.
Bandura draws an important distinction between learning and perfor-
mance. Behaviors learned through observation need not be performed. This
idea again clashes with traditional behaviorists, who maintain that we cannot
learn something until we have actually engaged in that behavior. But think
for a moment of some of the behaviors you could perform if you wanted to,even though you never have. For example, although you have probably never
picked up a pistol and shot another human being, you ’ve observed this be-
havior in movies often enough for it to be part of your behavioral repertoire.
You might even know to stand with your feet apart and to hold the weapon
at eye level with both hands in front of you, just like the actors portraying
police do. Fortunately, most of us will never perform this behavior, but it isone we have probably learned through observation.
Why do we perform some of the behaviors we learn through observation
but not others? The answer lies in our expectations about the consequences.That is, do you believe the action will be rewarded or punished? In the case of
shooting another person, most of us expect this behavior will be punished —if
not in a legal sense, then through self-punishment in the form of guilt and low-
ered feelings of worth.
But if we have never performed the behavior, where do we get our expec-
tations about consequences? Again, from observing others. Specifically, wasyour model for the behavior rewarded or punished? For example, a high
school boy may watch an older friend ask someone for a date. He pays close356 CHAPTER 13 The Behavioral/Social Learning Approach