However, Bandura wanted to take the study further. He began to look at personality as an interaction among three “things:” the environment, behaviour, and the person’s psychological processes. These psychological processes consist of our ability to entertain images in our minds, and language. At the point where he introduces imagery, in particular, he ceases to be a strict behaviourist, and begins to join the ranks of the cognitivists. Adding imagery and language to the mix allows Bandura to theorize much more effectively for example, B. F. Skinner’s research has illustrated, two effects that many people would consider the “strong suit” of the human species: observational learning (modeling) and self-regulation.
Bandura was responsible for, one group of study which stands out above the others: the bobo doll studies. He made a film of one of his students, a young woman; essentially beating up a bobo doll, a bobo doll is an inflatable, egg-shape balloon creature with a weight in the bottom that makes it bob back up when you knock him down.
The woman punched the clown, shouting “sockeroo” She kicked it, sat on it, hit with a little hammer and shouting various aggressive phrases. Bandura showed his film to groups of kindergardners who liked it a lot. They then were let out to play. In the play room, there were several observers with pens and clipboards in hand, a brand new bobo doll, and a few little hammers.
And you might predict as well what the observers recorded: little children beating the daylights out of the bobo doll. They punched it and shouted “sockeroo,” kicked it, sat on it, hit it with the little hammers; therefore they imitated the young lady in the film, and quite precisely at that.
This might seem like a real nothing of an experiment at first, but consider: These children changed their behaviour without first being rewarded for approximations to that behaviour. Whilst this may not seem extraordinary to the average parent, teacher, or casual observer of children, it didn’t fit so well with standard behaviorist learning theory. Bandura called the phenomenon observational learning or modeling, the theory is now called social learning theory. Bandura did a large number of variations on the study: the model was rewarded or punished in a variety of ways, the children were rewarded for their imitations, and the model was changed to be less attractive or less prestigious.
Some social cognitive psychologists are playing very important roles in behaviour can see ‘self’ as an important concept. What individual perceptions are about themselves i.e. what types of individual they are: what interests they have what they are good at, the type of situation they are in influences this and behaviours that they want to take place. i.e. Social learning (e.g. Bandura).
"Perceived self-efficacy occupies a private role in the casual structure of social cognitive theory because efficacy believes effect adaptation and change not only in their own right, but through their impact on other determinants."(Bandura 1997)
This is when individuals learn from the reinforcement and punishment experienced by others as well experienced by the individual themselves. The reinforcement behaviour will take place at a later time because the individual does not want to perform the behaviour at that particular time. It is delayed because the behaviour is self- administered. Individuals to see how well they can behave in a given situation could use self-efficacy; this is a good way to predict behaviour. For example how an employee will behave if they where given a task where if successful they would be rewarded.
The schema is another key concept in social cognition. It is a structure that individuals use to make sense to situations. Schemas are in effect, which a ready-made framework is therefore; an individual’s framework can be made to be placed with experience.
"Schemas which involve sequences of actions are termed scripts"(Arnold J, 1998 P. 35)
Scripts can be used to guide individual behaviour, it can also influence the behaviour of others as well as the expectations of others in particular situations, for example the way that an employee behaves in a workplace, the employee can use scripts to acknowledge how they will behave and also have expectations of other employees to behave in the same manner (e.g. formal).
The social cognitive theory does not reject the operant-based view of behaviour development, which is at the peak of behaviourism. The social cognitive theory does broaden the operant view and illustrates the importance of additional cognitive concepts. The whole concept of the social cognitive theory is to illustrate the role of the cognitive processes in determining behaviour and the importance of behaviour.
Social learning theory takes into accordance of the basic tenets of the behavioural approach such as reinforcement, contingency and contiguity and the implication of schedules of reinforcements. However it also adds further concepts. Some of these concepts include important different approaches to behaviour and behaviour.
“The overall framework within which these concepts are developed involves the concept of 'reciprocal determination" (Arnold J, 1998, P.236)
Bandura found this very simplistic for the phenomena he was observing, aggression in adolescents and so decided to add something to the formula: He suggested that environment causes behavior, which was true; however, behaviour causes environment. Bandura called this concept reciprocal determinism: The world and individual behaviour motive each other.
Social learning theory accentuate that the communication of situations and individual points may be a more understandable basis for organisational behaviour rather than the situational view based on operant conditioning specifically. The social learning theory is different in many ways from the traditional operant approach. The major difference is that the acknowledgement that the internal cognitive processes are important determination factors of behaviour. For instance traditional reinforcement theory has argued that behaviour is an action that is immediate and an external factor.
Social learning theorist (e.g. Bandura) has argued that not only the reaction to the influence of reinforcement in the environment, but reinforcement is controlled by self-reinforcement. Social theorists have argued that internal psychological events and processes such as self-reinforcement and expectations help establish behaviour. The behaviour will determine the situation surroundings to the individual for some degree, for example the behaviour of others and help to establish expectations and other internal cognitive factors.
"Another important aspect of social theory is the proposal that people often develop their own patterns of behaviour by observing and then copying or modelling the behaviour of others" (Arnold J,1998 P.237)
The concept of observational learning or modelling is difficult for those holding the traditional, operant behavioural view to explain. For example if an employee copies another employee there is no direct reinforcement in itself. Social learning theorists have argued this type of action can be explained if the modelling occurred because the individual i.e. the learner had expectations about the outcome and the consequences. For example an employee of an organisation may imitate behaviour of a senior member of the organisation based on expectations, personal goals, plans and eventual consequences of the behaviour. Luthans and krietner (1975) have illustrated an outline in the concepts of 'organisational behavioural model (OBH)': which has been linked with the concepts of the social cognitive theory. Critical behaviour may represent the activities of the personnel within the organisation that are being influenced by the organisations performance and are to be overcome weaknesses or view modification in a way. This is when observational or tracing the cause of defects in performance and products. However particular observable behaviour is used. For example for management to state 'have positive attitude', would not be applicable and behaviours that illustrates such qualities such as high rates of absenteeism, issues as such needed to be established. When such issues have been established an outline measuring the frequency of i.e. absenteeism has to be achieved: it can be achieved either by direct observation or by reviewing organisation records. The purpose of this is for two main reasons, it provides an objective view of the current situation, for example recognition of any problems, that where much more bigger than first thought and it provides a basis for examining the implement of change that may take place.
More recent theories of behavioural and cognitive theories have been studied, it has been found out that behavioural intervention within a cognitive framework. For example a study by Pritchard et al. (1988), illustrated how a mixture of goals, feedback and incentives where used, the study conducted a period of nine months, followed by an extra five months for feedback, with an extra five months of goals that where being set and eventually five months of incentives. The results showed there was an improvement in productivity an outline of 50 % for feedback, 75 % for group goal setting and 75% for incentives. The study did not provide conclusive proof of the different effects of the various interventions; the authors felt that incentives added little to improvements brought about feedback and goal setting. However what was found out by this particular study did not back the study which was undertaken by Guzza (1985), their study illustrated that incentives do improve performance, however it is dependent on the way it is applied and the consequences.
The implication that social cognition has on work psychology has not been immense, however it is increasing. Work psychology is slow to integrate new theoretical perspectives (e.g. Webster and Starbuck), this is particularly because it takes time and effort to identify how new theories can be applied to the social cognitive theory. The social cognitive theory, therefore they are few problems including its relative complication limits and its ability to generate straightforward techniques that can be applied across a range of situations.
However, ideas from social cognition are certainly highly relevant to the world
of work. Social cognition is becoming more important in work psychology, especially when correlated with social learning.
Bibliography
-
Arnold, J. et al, 1998, Work Psychology 3rd edition, Published by Pitman London 1998
- Bandura Albert, 1997. Self-efficacy: the exercise of control. New York. Freeman Publications.
-
Gross, Richard D, 1993. Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour, 2nd edition, published by Hodder and Stoughton