Implications Of Social Discognicy Theory And Self-Cognitive Theory

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This part will firstly present the development, the meaning, and the main assumptions about social cognitive theory, because it is the more general framework behind the self-efficacy theory (Pajares, 2002). With the understanding of social cognitive theory, we can have a better understanding about self-efficacy in the following sections.
The roots of social cognitive theory were set by Holt and Brown (1931), they studied animal action and predicted that people could learn to imitate after they were imitated. Then Miller and Dollard (1941) proposed the revision of the previous study and presented a theory of social learning and imitation. In the following decades, the Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura made further proposition and improvement …show more content…

Moreover, the assumptions also include people’s symbolizing capabilities, goal-directed behaviour guided by forethought, various learning by observation and so on. Among all these assumptions, the triadic reciprocal causation is perhaps the most important one (Maddux, 1995, p.5). As shown in the multi-directional model below (Figure 2.1), inner personal factors, behaviour, and external environment mutually interact with each other. To be more specific, human functioning can be considered as the product of a dynamic interaction of personal, behavioural, and environmental facts. (Pajares, 2002). Individuals are proactively involved in their development as human agents, they are not just the products of their life circumstance but also the contributors (Bandura, 2006, p. 164). The beliefs that people have about themselves will have influence on their action. Just like as Bandura (1986, p.25) said, “what people think, believe, and feel affects how they behave”. Moreover, since human beings are not isolated, the environment they are in, and even the people around them, will exert effect on them. Although environment factors, personal factors and behaviour factor interact with each other, they still have different strength …show more content…

Self-concept is individuals’ view about themselves which is supposed to be built by their own experience and other significant people’s evaluation about them (Bandura, 1997, p.10). Moreover, self-concept is usually measured generally and is mostly concerned with global self-images. However, self-efficacy beliefs vary depending on domains of activities, different levels of difficulty within the same activity, and even the same activity under different circumstances (Bandura, 1997, p.11). For instance, a person who has low self-efficacy in swimming may have high self-efficacy in singing, while the general self-concept may fail to explain this specificity. In conclusion, self-efficacy is different from global constructs of self-esteem and self-concept as it is specific to certain activity, certain difficulty level and certain

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