>> Good day and welcome IB psychologists to another video tutorial with me, Travis Dixon.
Today, we're going to look at social cognitive theory.
We're going to do a full summary.
It's probably going to take about 27 minutes I think
because I made this video yesterday, but my mic was turned off.
So, anyway, it'll take about 30 minutes.
We're going do a full summary here so you've got everything you need
for your IB psychology exams.
By the end of this video, you're going to be able to do a full summary
of Bandura's social cognitive theory.
This is a core part of the IB psychology curriculum,
so you must know about social cognitive theory.
And you'll be able to evaluate SCT using the D.E.A.L. structure.
I've used this in my other videos about schema theory and social identity theory,
and it's a pretty good framework to remember how to evaluate theories.
First of all, we're going to describe it, what is the theory, how does it explain behavior.
Then, we'll look at some studies that support it, applications, followed by limitations.
Your studies and your applications are really the strengths of the theory
and your limitations there, so you've got the full evaluation.
Just a note, this is also covered in my revision guide.
Where is my copy?
It's buried down here somewhere.
So, if you've got the revision guide, then this is all in there, but if you don't have it
and maybe it's too close to your exams to get it, everything's in this video for you.
So, first of all, the description of social cognitive theory.
So, this is Albert Bandura.
This was his theory.
We're going to look at it in four major parts really.
First, we'll have a little bit of background.
And then, there's three major concepts that you should know about.
At least the first two are really key, observational learning
and triadic reciprocal determinism.
These are the two most important factors I think of SCT, and there's also the concept
of self-efficacy, which we'll look at as well.
So, a little bit of background on the theory.
So, this is as I said proposed by Bandura.
The original theory was called social learning theory,
and this was first proposed in the 1960s.
The core claim of social learning theory was that we can learn behavior,
behavior can be explained by looking at how we learn from others, we learn by observation.
And it's important I think whenever we look at a theory to look at the context.
So, what was that theory in relation to?
The theory of evolution was in contrast to the theory of creation.
Social learning theory was in contrast to behaviorism saying that we learn
by either being rewarded or punished for our behavior.
So, it's our direct actions, which we then get rewarded for, we'll keep doing it,
if we get punished, we'll stop doing it.
And Bandura said that's not actually the only way we can learn.
And also, this is Watson here for behaviorism.
And also, Freud's idea was that our behavior comes from these deep internal motivations,
maybe childhood experiences that would repressed and they're coming out in our behavior.
And again, Bandura was saying maybe that's not the only explanation for behavior.
That might not always be the case.
Anyway, we have Freud as well who we don't actually study much in IB psychology.
So, let's break down observational learning.
This is the core part of social learning theory.
Observational learning is one of the key concepts of social cognitive theory.
He renamed in social cognitive theory.
He renamed it to social cognitive theory in about the 1980s.
So, in the original SLT, Bandura said we can learn from two ways, direct experience.
I put my hand on a fire, that's hot, I learn not to do that.
But I can also learn by observing others.
And Bandura said we don't actually always have to have direct experience to learn something.
This going to be dangerous.
I don't always have to be putting my hand on hot fires to learn that they're hot.
I can see someone else put their hand on a hot fire and go, "Wow, they got burned from that.
Now I know not to do it."
It's the old monkey see, monkey do.
And so, observational learning we can break down.
There are four process is involved.
And this is the key part of this concept in social cognitive theory, that there's attention.
We're paying attention to the model.
So, there's the observer and there's the model.
The model is the person performing the action.
So, the learner has to pay attention.
If they don't, they're not going to remember it.
And they have to remember it.
They have to retain it.
This is what retention refers to.
Mode of reproduction, we have to physically be able to reproduce the skill.
If we can't physically do it, then the chances of us copying it and imitating it
and later learning it aren't going to be very high.
For example, this happens a lot in sports.
Many years ago as a basketball player, I learned how to dribble
and put the ball behind my back by watching someone else do it.
And I was like, "Man, that's cool."
And so, then I went off and tried and tried and tried until I could do it.
Now, I also watched someone put the ball between their legs and slam dunk it.
I couldn't do that.
I never learned how to do that.
I don't have the motor skills.
Reinforcement and motivation, the final process involved here, and this can be broken
down a little bit further as well.
But reinforcement, if we are watching someone and they are getting rewarded or punished
for their behavior, we're more likely to copy it.
And if we identify with their model, if we find some sort of similarity,
we're probably more likely to be motivated to copy their learning.
And this becomes really important when we look at --
it's not just in-person modeling that we're looking at.
We're also looking at media and the effects of how we can see models
and imitate behavior we see on TV and other places.
So, that's observational learning.
So, a good summary of social cognitive theory would include saying
that behavior can be explained by how we learn it by observing others
and include these four processes in that summary.
Now, the key concept is triadic reciprocal determinism.
This is also called triadic reciprocal causation.
And what this simply means is -- this is a pretty fancy and complicated term
for I think a pretty straightforward concept that our environment,
our physical external environment influences our individual internal factors like our cognition
and our biology and that can affect our behavior.
And actually, all these three things can influence one another.
It's triadic.
There's three.
It's reciprocal meaning it goes both ways.
And they can determine one another.
They can cause one another.
So, that's essentially it.
So, if we think of one example of neuroplasticity, we know if we grow
up in a low socioeconomic environment,
we're going to have possibly smaller brain development.
There's correlational studies that showed this.
So, possibly growing up in poverty we're going to have a smaller hippocampus.
That's our internal factor.
That might affect another internal factor, our memory,
because hippocampus is part of our memory.
Now, that could affect our behavior.
If you don't have very good memory, it means you're going to be maybe not good at learning.
You might not do very well at school.
So, then, you'll start having behavior problems and behavior issues, acting out.
And this is what happens a lot.
But we can actually also reverse this trend.
You can do lots of things.
For example, playing some kinds of video games we've seen
in studies can help boost the development in your hippocampus.
And maybe that might make your classroom a better place.
I mean, going from the individual to the environment,
this link here is a little bit harder to make.
And going this direction and this direction is a bit tricky.
But anyway, you can see they can possibly influence one another.
Another example, we look at the warrior gene and aggression.
So, we know that adverse childhood experiences -- so, growing up if you're abused --
is one example that can influence the expression of your genes,
your biological development, and your brain development.
It might also influence the warrior gene, and that can affect our behavior.
It might make you more likely to be antisocial.
And this can be seen in Caspi, et al.'s study, which we'll look at a little bit later.
So, triadic reciprocal determinism I think is a key --
most students I think will write when they talk about social cognitive theory,
they'll focus on observational learning and they'll forget this key detail.
But if you add this core concept to a summary of social cognitive theory,
I really think it's going to separate your answer from the rest
and including this diagram here would be a very good idea as well.
Finally, we get to self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy means your belief in your ability to do something.
And so, it's kind of like self-confidence and how well you think you can do something.
And Bandura said that this is an important internal factor over here.
They can moderate this relationship.
Take one example, for example, your academic self-efficacy.
How well do you think that you can do well in school?
And this is often correlated with achievement.
Those students who have a high self-efficacy in terms of academics and think they are good
at learning and good at studying, they tend to do better at school.
And that makes sense.
You think about it with your IB psych exam.
How confident are you in your ability to learn social cognitive theory?
How well do you think you're going to be able to learn and remember this lecture and then
that my influence how well you can summarize it.
So, this is self-efficacy.
There's not a lot to say.
I didn't include it in my original book just because I think with the first two concepts,
triadic reciprocal determinism and observational learning, you've got more than enough
for social cognitive theory, but I thought I would edit it here
and I did also put it in the revision book as well.
It's pretty straightforward.
So, that's the description, those three concepts.
Now, the evidence, the supporting studies.
First of all, we can't go past the Bobo doll studies I don't think
because these are very famous and we'd be remiss if we went
through an introductory IB psych course and we didn't cover the Bobo doll studies.
And for observational learning, I think they work really well.
So, I'm not going to go into heaps of detail about the methodology because I'll put a link
in the description where you can find a summary on my blog of one of these studies.
And also, there's just so much out there and you've probably already seen the videos anyway.
But anyway, in the first study in 1961, they had two independent variables.
One was the gender of the model and the other was what type of observation the kids did.
So, I'm sure you know about it.
The kids came in.
They either watched an adult playing aggressively with the Bobo doll
or they watched them playing passively.
And the model was either the same gender or different gender.
And then, they were put in a room and there was a couple of researchers.
They stood behind the two-way mirror
and they counted every 5 seconds was the kid making an aggressive action or not,
and they recorded that, and then they compared their notes.
Just a couple of details here taken from the original.
If you can put some specific details in your exam answers,
it will show that you really know your stuff and it will separate your answers from the rest.
So, 36 boys, 36 girls.
So, what's that?
About 3 to 5 years old from Stanford University.
And two adults.
So, male, one female were in the male position.
I've never seen videos of the male.
I've only ever seen videos of the female.
But anyway, now, we have the original results here taken from the original study.
And we're just looking over here.
This is one of the important results.
So, this is physical aggression.
So, if we just compare this, the aggressive conditions over here we see quite high compared
to the non-aggressive and the control groups.
It's much lower over here.
And you might want to get a pen and paper.
Excuse me.
I'm losing my voice.
You might want to get a pen and paper and just jot down a couple of these notes
so you've got some specifics to refer to.
But if we just look here, let's just look at the males to begin with.
Well, one interesting trend is generally speaking the boys were more aggressive
than the females.
And also, if we look here, this first result shows observational learning,
that if we view aggressive behavior, we're more likely to copy it.
Straightforward.
This is evidence to support observational learning.
There's also some evidence here to support the fact that we might be more motivated
to copy the learning if we identify with the model.
We see here especially with verbal aggression the females were far more likely
to copy the verbal aggression than if they watched a male,
when they watched a female, and opposite for the males.
If they watched a male, far more likely to copy it than if they watched a female.
So, there's some evidence.
This here is observational learning in general.
And then, this here we can see the identifying with the model we might be more motivated.
Now, second study in 1963.
This is one I have the full summary for on the blog,
and I'll work at getting the 1961 version up there as well.
They wanted to see does it have to be real life observation of aggression
or can it be by seeing a televised version?
And so, they used the same procedures as the first study, but it was a little bit different
in how the kids actually viewed the model.
So, they had one in-person live model, so the kids actually are in the same room watching.
They had one where they video recorded the model beating up the Bobo doll
and then they put that on the TV.
Or they had the televised fantasy model.
This was a really interesting one where they wanted to make it appear like a cartoon,
but I guess they probably couldn't afford to create a cartoon just for these purposes.
This is 50 or 60 years ago, so it would have been a bit expensive back then.
So, they had the researcher dress as a cat.
And then, they tried to make the scenery like with artificial grass and make it kind of appear
like a fantasy land and they had a control group that didn't watch anything.
Again, this is summarized on my blog there.
You can check it out and I'll put the link in the description.
So, what do we see?
Again, here are the original results taken from the first study.
The real life aggressive condition, so when they actually saw the real person,
this is the filmed, this is the cartoon,
although it wasn't really cartoon, and the control group.
What we can see again, the control group much lower than the other three.
More evidence to suggest and to support the idea of observational learning,
that we can learn aggressive behavior through observation.
And I just want to point out here that social cognitive theory can be used
to explain many behaviors.
I think using it to explain aggression can really help you write a good focused explanation
of this theory.
And that was one of its first applications.
So, when you're thinking about how to explain a theory, think about,
"What is this theory explaining?"
Aggression.
So, back to it.
So, again, observational learning here as well.
And what's interesting is generally speaking again, the boys more aggressive
than the females, which is an interesting trend and something we'll talk
about later when we get to the evaluation.
And so, they didn't actually notice that this was that much higher than, for example,
watching it in real life, but it does actually mean that it's comparable
and it's much higher watching the cartoon and the film version than the control group.
So, this is evidence to suggest that it's not just watching someone in real life,
but we can also be influenced and we can learn
by watching filmed televised models of aggression.
Now, this might seem just everyday knowledge to us, but this is 1963.
This is when TV was first becoming introduced to many households in America.
And so, that becomes a very important finding when we put it in that context,
that we don't actually have to go visit and see a boxing match, for example,
to copy that aggressive behavior, but we can be seeing it every day in our living rooms on TV.
And so, in terms of developmental psychology with kids and how much TV we watch,
this becomes a very important finding especially at this time.
So, those studies I think are really good to show the first concept, observational learning.
Now, we need some examples to show triadic reciprocal determinism.
Now, you're not going to find I don't think many studies that show all three interactions
and I think you can actually do a good job of just explaining it and giving some examples
like maybe with a couple of studies like I did with neuroplasticity
and showing the environment affecting the brain.
Like [inaudible] is a good one to show that and then links between the brain and behavior,
any study that shows links between hippocampus and memory like maybe HM.
But sometimes, you get a study like Caspi's study that we can use
to show those three interacting elements.
So, this was also called the Dunedin study.
It followed 1,000 people for 25 years, and they were looking at links between --
in this particular report, they looked at links between the type of warrior gene or the type
of MAOA gene that people had with antisocial behavior.
And they compared two groups of people.
One group had the low-expression variant, which means the gene,
this variant is not sending many signals from the cell.
This is what gene expression is.
And the other was the high-expression variant.
Now, what they found was that the having the MAOA-L variant or one of those variants --
and this is the type of the warrior gene that is most associated
with antisocial and aggressive behavior.
They found that that alone doesn't necessarily have an effect on antisocial behavior.
But if you combine that with childhood abuse, we can see the result here.
So, this is the low activity in black and high activity of the gene.
Now, just as biological factor by itself, not much of a difference
if there's no childhood maltreatment.
But if we get severe childhood maltreatment, we'll see this low-expression variant,
the levels of antisocial behavior, which is over here, skyrockets.
And this is showing that that effect of the environment might be influencing the expression
of our genetics or some internal factors and then that's having a result in our behavior.
And we can talk about one area of uncertainty here is what is it actually doing to our brain
or our genetics or why is this difference occurring, but we can see here the effect
of environment is influencing internal factors in some way, which is resulting
in this massive increase in behavior.
So, finally, self-efficacy and GPA.
So, one basic study to look at the third concept, self-efficacy,
and this is often studied in correlational studies where you take two factors
like academics and you measure people's self-efficacy on their beliefs
and their abilities to do or to be good at academics and their achievement.
And then, you see how strongly they're correlated.
And this is what they did.
In this study, 60 students studying sports science in Malaysia and they took their GPAs
for the university scores and then they also measured their academic self-efficacy.
They found very high correlations here.
Males 0.67.
Females 0.85.
We think a plus one is a perfect correlation.
Zero is no correlation.
So, anything with a 0.6 or 0.7 is pretty strong.
So, 0.8, that's a really strong correlation seen here in females.
So, evidence to suggest that higher self-efficacy is going to influence behavior.
Again, this could be further evidence maybe for at least two of those interactions
in triadic reciprocal determinism.
So, there are studies.
Now, we get to the A and D.E.A.L. applications.
This can explain violence in the media.
There's been lots of studies that have shown the more aggressive violent media you watch
as a kid the more likely you are to act out and be aggressive
and end up in court yourself later in life.
And so, social cognitive theory can be used to explain that,
that the idea of observational learning we can learn through the media.
But with that, we can also apply this to learning in a couple of ways.
One is use of modeling as an instructional strategy.
You want to teach someone how to do something, you show them how to do it first.
I've got a son who's three years old.
We do this all the time.
I'm trying to teach him how to do something, tie his shoelaces, I'll do it,
he sees it, and then he tries to copy it.
He's not learning that yet, but I couldn't think of a better example off top of my head.
I'll think of one in a couple of minutes.
The other way, if we can use the idea of self-efficacy and if we know
that that might be linked to improved performance and achievement,
then maybe we can develop strategies and there have been strategies developed
to increase self-efficacy especially in the likes of academics.
Also, if we can use social cognitive theory and the idea of observational learning
to explain how we can learn negative behaviors through the media, we could also use that
and it has been used to help develop positive behaviors, and this is called the Sabido method
where there's been scripts and stories that are designed to teach some kind of life lessons.
This was done a lot in South and Central America with tackling social issues
by having it play out with the characters.
But also if you're familiar with, for example, Sesame Street,
nearly every episode they are teaching kids about sharing
or learning and using puppets to do that.
And so, we can actually apply these concepts of observation learning
to promote positive behavior as well in television shows.
So, there are some applications of social cognitive theory.
Remember, you wouldn't put this in a short answer response in your exams,
but you would put this in the essay.
Finally, we get to some limitations.
Evaluating theories is really, really tricky, so let's do our best here.
First of all, are there alternative explanations?
So, if we're applying social cognitive theory to explain aggression,
are there alternative explanations for aggression
or are there other factors that might be involved here?
Can we say that aggressive behavior is 100% learned or like I said are there other factors
like our hormones, our genetics, our culture, things like this?
Are there other factors that might influence --
actually, I'm just thinking of this off the top of my head now.
Observational learning, what other factors might influence?
Are some people more likely to copy than others?
Are there some internal factors that might make some people more likely
to replicate and copy other people?
But I guess he also covered that in his motivation like identifying with the model.
Anyway. Ecological validity of the Bobo doll studies.
Now, ideally, you want to evaluate the theory before you evaluate the studies,
but I think here because the Bobo studies are so prominent, I think it's okay to evaluate these.
And if we think about the Bobo doll studies, is it really the case in real life
where a kid's watching television and they're watching an adult play with or perform some sort
of aggressive violent act and then the kid turns off the TV and turns around and voila,
everything that they just saw on the television is there in front of them to copy?
That's what happened in the Bobo doll study.
There's a big inflatable doll they're watching with a hammer.
And then, they turn around and that same doll is there.
This is not what happens in real life.
We watch cartoons and there's big anvils, metal things drop on people's heads
or there's guns or there's cowboys and Indians.
But then, we turn around and they're not there.
So, that transfer, could this really explain that learning to be aggressive
and then transferring it in a different context?
Questionable.
We saw throughout that there was a higher increase from the boys in aggression
and can social cognitive theory explain this?
Is this just because maybe boys are taught more to be aggressive
or is there some biological factors?
It's the old nature versus nurture here.
Why are men generally more aggressive?
And then, we come back to, for example, maybe testosterone.
Is this a factor or is this just because boys are raised to be more aggressive?
Evaluating the concept of TRD, isn't this just common knowledge?
We now just know in psychology after years --
I mean, in the 1980s when this idea was first added into social cognitive theory,
it might have been groundbreaking, like the idea that our environment can affect our genes.
But now, we just know that.
We know from epigenetic studies and we know that environment affects our brain.
It seems like a redundant point in this day and age I think at least because it's just
so well known that the nature or nurture debate is largely dead
and we know that it's nature or nurture.
Sometimes, it's nature via nurture and vice versa.
So, I think that's one limitation of that idea.
Self-efficacy.
Now, maybe I'm showing my ignorance on this,
but I'm wondering how we could really genuinely test this experimentally.
I think mostly it's going to be correlational studies
because I mean how can we ethically manipulate people's levels
of self-efficacy unless we did it in their self-efficacy
in a field that doesn't really matter?
But then, why would we care about that?
So, for example, do you want to take one group and reduce yourself in academics
and see if it has an effect or maybe we could take one group and improve it
and boost your self-efficacy and see if that has an effect as well,
but there's maybe an ethical -- possibly it could be done.
Anyway. For self-efficacy, you could I think evaluate the studies that show
that this is correlational and it might be tricky to study experimentally.
But if you know of any experiments on self-efficacy,
true experiments where you manipulate levels of self-efficacy, post it in the comments.
I'd love to learn about them.
That's it.
Full on. I reckon I've probably gone over 30 minutes.
I don't have a timer.
So, hopefully, you can describe social cognitive theory,
you can provide the studies as evidence to support it.
Remember, a short answer response you would just summarize the theory and have one study.
If you are going into an essay, you'd want to have two or three studies.
And hopefully, you can explain at least one or two of those applications.
I think it's a pretty easy one to explain,
especially things like Sesame Street observation learning on television.
And then, at least a couple of limitations as well.
So, a couple of exam tips before we leave.
Short answer questions, describe social cognitive theory
as a possible question you might get, and it's one that's been asked before.
In order to do this and answer this properly, explain at least two of those core claims,
maybe all three, but you want to give as much detail as possible.
A common mistake students make is they'll have one sentence or two sentences about the theory.
Any question about a theory whether it's a model of memory or if it's social identity theory,
schema theory, a really, really common mistake that students make is they'll spend one
or two sentences mentioning the theory and then the rest of the answer is about the study.
You'll never get full marks doing that.
You have to have a full description, a full summary of the theory.
Make it nice and concise.
It should be about 150 words of a summary using all the right terminology
and then get into the study.
Use one study in depth.
And most importantly, show how that study supports an aspect of the theory.
So, if you're using the Bobo doll study, you'll take a couple of specific results
and explain how that demonstrates observational learning.
If you're talking about Caspi's study, you'll look at those specific results
and how that supports the idea of triadic reciprocal determinism.
So, it's important that you link the specific result to one of the claims of the theory,
and that's another common thing that's missing in student answers.
If you're writing an essay, discuss equals evaluate.
I haven't yet been convinced that this means otherwise.
So, if you're asked to discuss social cognitive theory, it means to evaluate.
Follow the D.E.A.L. structure.
Describe it.
Give the studies, the applications, the limitations,
and the evaluation is the same thing.
Evaluate social cognitive theory, discuss social cognitive theory,
exact same answers would both get excellent marks.
Now, again, just a reminder, try to have limitations of the theory to begin with,
at least one or two, and then if you've got more time evaluate the studies.
But be careful with how you evaluate the studies.
Methodology of the studies, yes.
But ethics, like if you're going to evaluate social cognitive theory and you talk
about ethical limitations of the Bobo doll studies with teaching kids to be aggressive,
it's a pretty loose point to make.
So, you really want to be evaluating the theory first
and then maybe the validity of the studies.
Ethicality is not so relevant.
So, hopefully, you can use social cognitive theory to explain behavior like aggression,
you can use at least one key study that supports it,
and you can explain strengths and limitations.
I really hope that was helpful.
Leave comments if it was or if it wasn't if you got ways I can improve.
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That might help.
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Everything is in the description that you need including our books.
So, good luck.
If you've made it this far, well done.
And if you're a student and you made it this far, I can tell that you've very motivated
to do well in your exams, so best of luck and let me know
if there's anything I can do to help you out.
Cheers.