Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory By Mary Quinn And Kym Malone

Who is Albert Bandura? Albert Bandura was born on December 4, 1925 in Mundare, Canada He was the youngest child and only boy of six children born to Ukraine immigrants After graduating from the only high school in his town, Albert enrolled in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He received his PhD from The University of Iowa in He met his wife, Virginia Varns, in They had two daughters, Mary and Carol. In 1953, he began to work at Stanford University. He still teaches there today.

3 Bandura’s studying while at Stanford was centered around the idea of social modeling in the motivation of human thought and action. Before his research, psychology had focused on the “learning through the consequences of one’s actions.”

What is the Social Cognitive Theory? According to Bandura, people are not just beings that go along whichever ways their environment takes them. He actually believes humans are “agents” in their experiences. Bandura’s theory includes four components: Attentional Processes Retention Processes Motor Reproduction Processes Reinforcement and Motivational Processes

5 Attentional Process Refers to the idea that people pay attention to models that are successful or stand out as a model.  Ex: Television Stars, or older kids

6 Retention Processes • Is the idea that because we often imitate a behavior we have seen in the past, we remember the actions through “stimuli that occur together.” Such as verbal codes, or directions.  Ex: sitting in a car, and hearing a person say take exit 5 and turn left. 6

7 Motor Reproduction Processes Is the necessity of the imitator to have the motor skills that allows him to imitate the model correctly.  Ex: Watching someone paint a picture, but not necessarily being able to paint one yourself.

8 Reinforcement and Motivational Processes Seeing a model, and being able to imitate them, but choosing not to.  For example: seeing someone hit another person, and being able to do the same, but choosing not to because we saw the repercussions that came about after. According to Bandura (1986) “People construct outcome expectations from observed conditional relations between environmental events in the world around them, and the outcomes given.”

9 Our Focus We focused our research study on the reinforcement and motivational process aspect of Bandura’s theory to examine whether children follow the example of a model.

10 Our Experiment We worked with 13 second graders, 11 girls and 2 boys. We broke the children into three groups and showed two videos 2 times:  Group A- The control group, no video  Group B- Shown the positive reinforcement video  Group C- Shown the indifferent reinforcement video We then had them draw a picture, while some students had less materials than their group members. After they colored for a little bit, we showed them the video again. We then asked them questions about the activity.

Our Questions Did you share with your group? Did the video make you want to share more? 11

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14 Our Hypothesis We believe that the kids that saw the positive video will share their materials more than the kids that saw the indifferent video, and the kids that saw no video at all. We also believe that the kids that saw the indifferent reaction video will share their materials more than the kids that saw no video at all.

15 Seen Sharing (2)Video Had an influence (2) Answered Truthfully (2), Answered False (0) Total Points=6 Girl A10-00 Boy A20-00 Boy A32-24 Girl B12002 Girl B22226 Girl B32026 Girl B41214 Girl B52226 Girl C12226 Girl C22226 Girl C30101 Girl C42024 Girl C50101 Percentages69.2%60%61.5%38.4%

16 Our Hypothesis was Correct The kids in the Positive Reaction Video Group shared their materials more willingly than those in the control group, and those in the indifferent video group. The kids in the Indifferent Reaction Video Group shared more than those in the control group.

17 Limitations Small number of kids (13) One kid didn’t participate Teacher distracted the kids from the activity. All the groups were in the same room. The only two boys were in the control group. The finished kids distracted the kids that were still working by doing another project.

18 Citations your-kids-what-to-watch-on-tv/ your-kids-what-to-watch-on-tv/ signs-left-turn-arrow html signs-left-turn-arrow html cles/how-to-paint-with-small-children-mess- free/ cles/how-to-paint-with-small-children-mess- free/