Personality Theories, Social Cognitive

Background

Social cognitive theory had its origins in the 1950s and 1960s with the paradigm shift from psychody-namic approaches to psychotherapy to psychothera-peutic interventions increasingly based on learning theories. In fact, Bandura was instrumental in moving psychotherapy from a predominantly intrapsychic, talk-based intervention toward more active, learning-based interventions that relied heavily on performance and mastery. A hallmark of learning approaches was the reliance on observable behavior and framing hypotheses that are open to refutation.

A landmark in this evolution toward learning-based interventions was Bandura and Richard H. Walters's seminal book Social Learning and Personality Development, which was published in 1963. It built upon John Dollard and Neal Miller's earlier social learning theory and argued for the importance of modeling and self-regulatory processes in behavior change. In his 1969 Principles of Behavior Modification, Bandura further developed this emerging social learning theory of human behavior. The word social as it is used here refers to observational learning and the attendant self-regulatory processes inherent in learning vicariously from models. Further empirical and theoretical work enhanced and expanded this social learning theory approach to behavior change throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

The range of learning theory-based therapies expanded dramatically at this time and included theorists and researchers whose work was characterized under the rubric of behavior modification. Although this work generally relied on Skinnerian principles and eschewed intrapsychic phenomena, Bandura's research and theoretical writings were based on broader conceptions of human functioning. Bandura's early approach to therapy encompassed Skinnerian learning by response consequences, but also emphasized learning through observation, cognitive control, and the reciprocal determination of behavior. In Bandura's theory, the origins of personal functioning lay in the complex, ongoing, and reciprocal interaction of behavioral, environmental, and personal determinants. “Personal” influences in this model include the role of cognitive and affective variables, including self-regulatory mechanisms that enable people to guide their own behavior.

The early empirical tests of social learning theory conducted by Bandura and his colleagues focused mainly on modeling interventions with phobic disorders. Guided mastery, the treatment approach studied and refined in this line of inquiry, has proven remarkably robust and effective when applied to a broad range of phobias and anxiety disorders. It is based on the assumption that people avoid what they fear, and that avoidance can instill higher levels of anxiety about the feared object. This technique consists of systematic and repeated exposure to the feared object or situation, planned carefully such that early exposures are mild, and more intense exposures are only introduced upon extinction of anxiety associated with milder levels of exposure. This is accomplished by having the therapist, in real time, “guide” the client through the different levels of exposure, using encouragement and modeling to promote a gradual approach to the feared object or situation.

...