Social Cognitive Theory Paper

Social learning theory, developed by Bandura, discusses how people learn from one another through observation, modeling, and imitation bridging an individual’s attention, memory and motivation. Social learning theory identifies the importance of cognition, observable behavior, individual self-efficacy, and the extent of how the events surrounding an individual affect them; their locus of control. Social learning theory also looks at individual problem behavior being influenced by positive or negative reinforcement (Ashford & LeCroy, 2012).

The theory used throughout this intervention was the Social Cognitive Theory, which is based on the Social Learning Theory to differentiate learning as a

2. Behavior is regulated by its consequences, but only as those consequences are interpreted and understood by the client.

Everyday people use social cognition as a tool to help them thrive in social world. There are many important aspects of social cognition that are helpful to us in making decisions and help us to interpret the world around us. An important aspect that is linked to social cognition is that of thought suppression. Thought suppression is when a person tries to force particular thoughts, memories or feelings out of their minds that may be unpleasant or may cause a great deal of stress for the individual. Many people are unaware how often we use thought suppression in our daily lives, but the truth is we use it in almost every aspect of our day.

Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory explains psychological functioning in terms of triadic reciprocal causation. Triadic reciprocal causation is a system assuming human action as a result of an interaction with the environment, behavior, and a person. Bandura explains "person" as being a cognitive factor such as memory, anticipation, and planning. It is because of these cognitive capacities that some people can select or restructure their environment.

The topic I have the most interest in from the textbook is Chapter 14: Social Psychology. I have chosen this topic because I believe that psychology cannot be thoroughly researched without knowing the social trends and influence it has on people. Without knowing what to expect from people, it becomes more difficult to know what to hypothesize or what you want to happen. I hope to learn more about social norms and the ability it has to influence our instinctive thoughts and actions before we realize and analyze what it is we should do. For example, the most common and relevant discovery of social psychology is the Bystander effect. This is when an audience does not feel the need or feel as guilty when someone is in dire need of help or assistance. Our first reaction is to help them, as it is instinct for most people to help. However if there is a crowd of people that just stand around waiting for something to happen, you are more likely not to help and just allow more time to pass before someone actually does help that person. This effect throws out our instinctive reaction to help and not do anything.

Think back to high school and the number of different groups that there were. Now think of the way that you would classify people back then and how you classify people today. You make these judgements about people without even knowing anything about them. This is known as social cognition. It is the way your brain processes and understands intergroup and interpersonal processes and actions. Social cognition covers things such as attitudes, prejudices, identities, and other things we use to classify people. Overall people will make attributions one of two ways. The first was is by being a naïve scientist. If you are a naïve scientist, you are more likely to put thought and effort when figuring out social inferences. The use information

There are many theories that attempt to explain the cause of crime. Two theories for the cause of crime are the Psychological and Social Process Theory. According to Schmalleger (2015), psychological theorist believe “crime is the result of inappropriate behavioral conditioning or a diseased mind” (p. 78). Social Process Theory claims “crime results from failure of self-direction, from inadequate social roles, or from associating with others who are already criminals” (Schmalleger, 2015, p. 103). Another theory is Conflict theory, Schmalleger (2015) states that according to conflict theory “crime is a natural consequence of social, political, and economic inequities” (p. 77). Another approach to crime causation is the Sociological theories which argue “the individual is a product of his or her environment” (Schmalleger, 2015, p. 103).

Another example of in connection to the social cognitive theory of morality was when Molly lied to the volunteers about hitting her sister when they were in an argument. In this instance, there was not a distinct reward for hitting her sister (other than hurting her sister), but she did know that hitting her sister was wrong and would result in getting punished. She also lied about the whole event, which led me to believe she knew she would indeed get into trouble for her behavior, so she tried to hide it. Because she knew that hitting her sister was not good moral behavior, she was morally competent in this situation. However, in the moment, she did not see that hitting her sister would result in a large enough punishment to mentally stop

According to Heider and Skowronski (2007), human beings have a tendency of behaving in certain ways under certain conditions and, more importantly, in the presence of others. To explain the phenomenon, psychologists explore the science of social psychology which was traditionally designed to address the gap between sociology and psychology. It follows, therefore, that social psychology is a discipline that employs empirical investigations towards understanding and explaining the way the implied, actual or imagined presence of other humans influences the behavior, emotions and thoughts of other individuals (Simmons, Nelson & Simonsohn, 2011). Socially, psychologists opine that humans tend to behave in a manner designed

The Cognitive-Behavior Practice theory has two components: behaviors and thoughts. The assumptions of the theory is that irrational and problematic thoughts can be changed because people construct their own reality. The cognitive aspect of the theory focuses on thoughts and beliefs and the behavior aspect focuses on the human action and reactions. They both together give emphasis on behavioral learning and the cognitive processes. “Cognitive-learning and cognitive behavioral

Cognitive theory is one of the five developmental theories in developmental psychology. Found within cognitive theory is social cognitive theory. Social cognitive theory suggests that children and adults can learn novel responses merely by observing the behavior of a model, and make mental notes as they observe these responses. They use these mental representations to reproduce the observed model’s behavior. This theory belongs to psychologist, Alfred Bandura. Bandura thought humans to be cognitive beings and that the information they processed played huge role in their learning and development. One of his known study’s is the Bobo doll study. This study demonstrated that children can display aggressive behaviors through observing aggressive responses without using classical or operant conditioning. In Bandura’s experiment, he had children watch a short clip that included an adult model hitting an inflatable doll with a mallet as well as throwing balls at the doll while shouting random words. Some children saw the adult model being praised and others saw the adult model being punished. In addition, others saw the model receive no consequences for their aggressive actions. After this, children were brought into a playroom filled with the inflatable bobo dolls. Children who saw a rewarded or no-consequence model, acted aggressively. From this scenario, there is also latent learning where there is learning that occurs, but is not evident in the person’s behavior. The children

I’ve had my moments questioning my existence; do I not exist as anything more than

Social-cognitive learning theory is the process in which someone learns, through observation. It's the process that the brain takes to learn to complete an objective through either experience or demonstration. (Ciccarelli & White, 2015, p.205)

Social cognition is the zone of social brain science that inspects how individuals see and consider their social world. Research on negative deduction and emotional wellness has been censured as concentrating solely on attribute like individual contracts and overlooking potential social impacts. In any case, little advance has been made in concentrating on social impacts. Pessimistic musings are created by imbued designs identified with our own convictions: about self-regard, security, cash, individuals, life, and everything else. Negative considerations, words, and demeanor make negative and troubled sentiments, dispositions and conduct. At the point when the psyche is negative, toxic substances are discharged