social cognitive theory social cognitive theory social cognitive theory (sct), used in psychology, education, and communication, holds that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences. this theory was advanced by albert bandura as an extension of his social learning theory. the theory states that when people observe a model performing a behavior and the consequences of that behavior, they remember the sequence of events and use this information to guide subsequent behaviors. observing a model can also prompt the viewer to engage in behavior they already learned. in other words, people do not learn new behaviors solely by trying them and either succeeding or failing, but rather, the survival of humanity is dependent upon the replication of the actions of others. depending on whether people are rewarded or punished for their behavior and the outcome of the behavior, the observer may choose to replicate behavior modeled. media provides models for a vast array of people in many different environmental settings. part of a series onpsychology outline history subfields basic types abnormal behavioral behavioral genetics biological cognitive/cognitivism comparative cross-cultural cultural developmental differential evolutionary experimental mathematical neuropsychology personality positive psychodynamic psychometrics quantitative social applied psychology applied behavior analysis clinical community consumer counseling critical educational environmental ergonomics food forensic health humanistic industrial and organizational legal medical military music occupational health political psychometrics religion school sport traffic lists disciplines organizations psychologists psychotherapies research methods theories timeline topics psychology portal history the conceptual roots for social cognitive theory come from edwin b. holt and harold chapman brown's 1931 book theorizing that all animal action is based on fulfilling the psychological needs of "feeling, emotion, and desire". the most notable component of this theory is that it predicted a person cannot learn to imitate until they are imitated. in 1941, neal e. miller and john dollard presented their book with a revision of holt's social learning and imitation theory. they argued four factors contribute to learning: drives, cues, responses, and rewards. one driver is social motivation, which includes imitativeness, the process of matching an act to an appropriate cue of where and when to perform the act. a behavior is imitated depending on whether the model receives a positive or negative response consequences. miller and dollard argued that if one were motivated to learn a particular behavior, then that particular behavior would be learned through clear observations. by imitating these observed actions the individual observer would solidify that learned action and would be rewarded with positive reinforcement. the proposition of social learning was expanded upon and theorized by canadian psychologist albert bandura. bandura, along with his students and colleagues conducted a series of studies, known as the bobo doll experiment, in 1961 and 1963 to find out why and when children display aggressive behaviors. these studies demonstrated the value of modeling for acquiring novel behaviors. these studies helped bandura publish his seminal article and book in 1977 that expanded on the idea of how behavior is acquired, and thus built from miller and dollard's research. in bandura's 1977 article, he claimed that social learning theory shows a direct correlation between a person's perceived self-efficacy and behavioral change. self-efficacy comes from four sources: "performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states". in 1986, bandura published his second book, which expanded and renamed his original theory. he called the new theory social cognitive theory. bandura changed the name to emphasize the major role cognition plays in encoding and performing behaviors. in this book, bandura argued that human behavior is caused by personal, behavioral, and environmental influences. in 2001, bandura brought sct to mass communication in his journal article that stated the theory could be used to analyze how "symbolic communication influences human thought, affect and action". the theory shows how new behavior diffuses through society by psychosocial factors governing acquisition and adoption of the behavior. in 2011, bandura published a book chapter — the social and policy impact of social cognitive theory — to extend sct's application in health promotion and urgent global issues, which provides insight into addressing global problems through a macro social lens, aiming at improving equality of individuals' lives under the umbrellas of sct. sct has been applied to many areas of human functioning such as career choice and organizational behavior as well as in understanding classroom motivation, learning, and achievement. current status social cognitive theory originated in psychology, but based on an unofficial november 2013 google scholar search, only 2 percent of articles published on sct are in the pure psychology field. about 20 percent of articles are from education and 16 percent from business. the majority of publications using sct, 56 percent, come from the field of applied health psychology. the majority of current research in health psychology focuses on testing sct in behavioral change campaigns as opposed to expanding on the theory. campaign topics include: increasing fruit and vegetable intake, increasing physical activity, hiv education, and breastfeeding. born in 1925, bandura spent his life influencing the world with expansions of sct. his recent work, published may 2011, focuses on how sct impacts areas of both health and population in relation to climate change. he proposes that these problems could be solved through television serial dramas that show models similar to viewers performing the desired behavior. on health, bandura writes that currently there is little incentive for doctors to write prescriptions for healthy behavior, but he believes the cost of fixing health problems start to outweigh the benefits of being healthy. bandura argues that we are on the cusp of moving from a disease model (focusing on people with problems) to a health model (focusing on people being healthy) and sct is the theory that should be used to further a healthy society. specifically on population, bandura states that population growth is a global crisis because of its correlation with depletion and degradation of our planet's resources. bandura argues that sct should be used to increase birth control use, reduce gender inequality through education, and to model environmental conservation to improve the state of the planet. overview social cognitive theory is a learning theory based gists agree that the environment one grows up in contributes to behavior, the individual person (and therefore cognition) is just as important. people learn by observing others, with the environment, behavior, and cognition acting as primary factors that influence development in a reciprocal triadic relationship. each behavior witnessed can change a person's way of thinking (cognition). similarly, the environment one is raised in may influence later behaviors. for example, a caregiver's mindset (also cognition) determines the environment in which their children are raised. the core concepts of this theory are explained by bandura through a schematization of triadic reciprocal causation. the schema shows how the reproduction of an observed behavior is influenced by getting the learner to believe in his or her personal abilities to correctly complete a behavior. behavioral: the response an individual receives after they perform a behavior (i.e. provide chances for the learner to experience successful learning as a result of performing the behavior correctly). environmental: aspects of the environment or setting that influence the individual's ability to successfully complete a behavior (i.e. make environmental conditions conducive for improved self-efficacy by providing appropriate support and materials). it is important to note that learning can occur without a change in behavior. according to j.e. ormrod's general principles of social learning, while a visible change in behavior is the most common proof of learning, it is not absolutely necessary. social learning theorists believe that because people can learn through observation alone, their learning may not necessarily be shown in their performance. these are interdependent on each other and its influence can be directly linked with individual or group psychological behavior. according to alex stajkovic and fred luthans it is critically important to recognize that the relative influences exerted by one, two, or three interacting factors on motivated behavior will vary depending on different activities, different individuals and different circumstances. theoretical foundations human agency social cognitive theory is proposed in an agentic perspective, which suggests that, instead of being just shaped by environments or inner forces, individuals are self-developing, self-regulating, self-reflecting and proactive. specifically, human agency operates within three modes: individual agency: a person’s own influence on the environment; proxy agency: another person’s effort on securing the individual’s interests; collective agency: a group of people work together to achieve the common benefits. human agency has four core properties: intentionality: individuals’ active decision on engaging in certain activities; forethought: individuals’ ability to anticipate the outcome of certain actions; self-reactiveness: individuals’ ability to construct and regulate appropriate behaviors; self-reflectiveness: individuals’ ability to reflect and evaluate the soundness of their cognitions and behaviors. human capability evolving over time, human beings are featured with advanced neural systems, which enable individuals to acquire knowledge and skills by both direct and symbolic terms. four primary capabilities are addressed as important foundations of social cognitive theory: symbolizing capability, self-regulation capability, self-reflective capability, and vicarious capability. symbolizing capability: people are affected not only by direct experience but also indirect events. instead of merely learning through laborious trial-and-error process, human beings are able to symbolically perceive events conveyed in messages, construct possible solutions, and evaluate the anticipated outcomes. self-regulation capability: individuals can regulate their own intentions and behaviors by themselves. self-regulation lies on both negative and positive feedback systems, in which discrepancy reduction and discrepancy production are involved. that is, individuals proactively motivate and guide their actions by setting challenging goals and then making effort to fulfill them. in doing so, individuals gain skills, resources, self-efficacy and beyond. self-reflective capability: human beings can evaluate their thoughts and actions by themselves, which is identified as another distinct feature of human beings. by verifying the adequacy and soundness of their thoughts through enactive, various, social, or logical manner, individuals can generate new ideas, adjust their thoughts, and take actions accordingly. vicarious capability: one critical ability human beings feature is the ability to adopt skills and knowledge from information communicated through a wide array of mediums. by vicariously observing others’ actions and their consequences, individuals can gain insights into their own activities. vicarious capability is of great value to human beings’ cognitive development in nowadays, in which most of our information encountered in our lives derives from the mass media than trial-and-error processes. theoretical components modeling social cognitive theory revolves around the process of knowledge acquisition or learning directly correlated to the observation of models. the models can be those of an interpersonal imitation or media sources. effective modeling teaches general rules and strategies for dealing with different situations. to illustrate that people learn from watching others, albert bandura and his colleagues constructed a series of experiments using a bobo doll. in the first experiment, children were exposed to either an aggressive or non-aggressive model of either the same sex or opposite sex as the child. there was also a control group. the aggressive models played with the bobo doll in an aggressive manner, while the non-aggressive models played with other toys. they found that children who were exposed to the aggressive models performed more aggressive actions toward the bobo doll afterward, and that boys were more likely to do so than girls. following that study, albert bandura tested whether the same was true for models presented through media by constructing an experiment he called bobo doll behavior: a study of aggression. in this experiment bandura exposed a group of children to a video featuring violent and aggressive actions. after the video he then placed the children in a room with a bobo doll to see how they behaved with it. through this experiment, bandura discovered that children who had watched the violent video subjected the dolls to more aggressive and violent behavior, while children not exposed to the video did not. this experiment displays the social cognitive theory because it depicts how people reenact behaviors they see in the media. in this case, the children in this experiment reenacted the model of violence they directly learned from the video. observations should include: attention observers selectively give attention to specific social behavior depending on accessibility, relevance, complexity, functional value of the behavior or some observer's personal attributes such as