Social Cognitive Theory

Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory (SCT) is a model of human functioning based on the complex reciprocal influences among the external environment, behavior, and internal dispositions such as biology, cognition, and emotion. It advocates for an integrative approach to human behavior that recognizes dynamic interactions in human development, adaptation, and change. The focus here is on the evolution of SCT and its principle components, with a brief overview of its applications.

Origins and Development of SCT

The origins of SCT can be traced to theoretical and experimental work in the 1940s on the role of imitation in learning. Behaviorism, with its emphasis on behavior being the result of passive shaping processes that link stimuli with responses through reinforcement contingencies, began to be expanded into a model ...

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