The process of modelling requires a number of cognitive factors to take place, but particularly important, according to Bandura, is motivation. This can take place by means of reinforcement or self-motivation, the latter having particular significance in personality development. Self-motivation covers a variety of self-evaluative cognitive processes, such as self-response (rewarding or punishing oneself for carrying out a behaviour) and self-efficacy (the perception of capability to carry out a behaviour). This holds particular imnportance in personality development as personality is, according to social learning theory, learnt as is any other behaviour, and traits such as social skills may be obtained by, for example, watching one's parents socialise. If self-efficacy is low, the child may not imitate the behaviour, and as a result will have poor social skills as an adult. Feltz provides support for the importance of self-efficacy, finding that Russian athletes' performance was improved when they saw videotapes of themselves that had been edited to make them seem better than they were. Further support is provided by Schunk, who found that American primary school children who were told that their peers had done well on a maths test proceeded to do better on it that those who were not told anything about their peers.
Social learning theory as an explanation of personality development has significant implications for the treatment of, for example, habit problems and addiction – if a personality trait can be learnt, social learning theory states that it can be unlearnt; for example, a potential treatment could involve creating a behavioural chart, on which behaviour and disruptions to it are recorded. Then, the cues causing the disruptions to the behaviour can be removed, and the desired behaviour can be reinforced by means of 'self-contracts' (rewards and punishments).
The theory can be commended for being able to explain how people may develop different personality traits in different situations as they grow older, for example an adolescent may act very differently in front of their parents that they would in front of their friends. This is echoed by situationalist approaches such as that of Mischel, and has research support from Harter & Monsour, who found that 16-year-olds describe themselves as acting in very different manners at school, with their parents and with their friends, yet younger children described their behaviour as being similar across all of these situations.
However, the theory is often criticised for not being developmental – it is only concerned with the acquisition and repetition of behaviour, so it cannot explain how children's personalities change in the course of their development. Additionally, much of the research evidence provided for social learning theory was conducted in an artificial laboratory setting, so it lacks mundane realism and hence its ecological validity is questionable. This means that the explanation may not actually be a suitable means of explaining personality development; although the methods of treatment derived from the theory have had relatively high success rates compared with those derived from psychodynamic theory, for example.
The theory lies at the 'nurture' side of the nature-nurture debate, and other theories claim that personality may be innate rather than learnt. An example of this is Eysenck's Type Theory, which suggests that personality has its roots in biological development; for example, extroverts have been found to operate on lower levels of cognitive arousal than introverts, and hence need less external stimulation than introverts, hence the more outgoing behaviour patterns. Thomas & Chess similarly believe that we are born with innate characteristic patterns such as temperament, which endure through life and affect our adult personality when combined with experience. Therefore, it may be that social learning theory is an incomplete explanation of personality development; there may be innate factors that, when combined with experience and a person's environment, create a person's personality.
