Albert Bandura’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

This prospective study with 464 older adolescents (14 to 19 years at Time 1; 16 to 21 years at Time 2) tested the structural paths of influence through which perceived self-efficacy for affect regulation operates in concert with perceived behavioral efficacy in governing diverse spheres of psychosocial functioning. Self-efficacy to regulate positive and negative affect is accompanied by high efficacy to manage one's academic development, to resist social pressures for antisocial activities, and to engage oneself with empathy in others' emotional experiences. Perceived self-efficacy for affect regulation essentially operated mediationally through the latter behavioral forms of self-efficacy rather than directly on prosocial behavior, delinquent conduct, and depression. Perceived empathic self-efficacy functioned as a generalized contributor to psychosocial functioning. It was accompanied by prosocial behavior and low involvement in delinquency but increased vulnerability to depression in adolescent females.

The authors address the verification of the functional properties of self-efficacy beliefs and document how self-efficacy beliefs operate in concert with goal systems within a sociocognitive theory of self-regulation in contrast to the focus of control theory on discrepancy reduction. Social cognitive theory posits proactive discrepancy production by adoption of goal challenges working in concert with reactive discrepancy reduction in realizing them. Converging evidence from diverse methodological and analytic strategies verifies that perceived self-efficacy and personal goals enhance motivation and performance attainments. The large body of evidence, as evaluated by 9 meta-analyses for the effect sizes of self-efficacy beliefs and by the vast body of research on goal setting, contradicts findings (J. B. Vancouver, C. M. Thompson, & A. A. Williams, 2001; J. B. Vancouver, C. M. Thompson, E. C. Tischner, & D. J. Putka 2002) that belief in one's capabilities and personal goals is self-debilitating.

Psychological theories have traditionally emphasized learning from direct experi-ence. If knowledge, values, and competencies could be acquired only by trial and error, human development would be greatly retarded, not to mention exceedingly tedious and hazardous. Moreover, limited time, resources, and mobility impose se-vere limits on places and activities that people can directly explore to gain new so-cial perspectives and styles of thinking and behaving. However, humans have evolved an advanced cognitive capacity for observational learning that enables them to shape and structure their lives through the power of modeling. CAPACITY FOR SPIRITUALITY In the agentic perspective of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1999, 2001a), social modeling operates within a larger set of distinctly human attributes that provide the capacity for becoming a spiritual being. These supportive attributes are reviewed briefly before addressing the role of modeling in the development and practice of spirituality. They include the capacity for symbolization, abstract vicarious learn-ing, forethought, self-regulation, and self-reflection.

This article presents the basic tenets of social cognitive theory. It is founded on a causal model of triadic reciprocal causation in which personal factors in the form of cognitive, affective and biological events, behavioral patterns, and environmental events all operate as interacting determinants that influence one another bidirectionally. Within this theory, human agency is embedded in a self theory encompassing self-organizing, proactive, self-reflective and self-regulative mechanisms. Human agency can be exercised through direct personal agency; through proxy agency relying on the efforts of intermediaries; and by collective agency operating through shared beliefs of efficacy, pooled understandings, group aspirations and incentive systems, and collective action. Personal agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Growing transnational imbeddedness and interdependence of societies are creating new social realities in which global forces increasingly interact with national ones to shape the nature of cultural life.

Modeling Modeling is not merely a process of behavioral mimicry. Highly functional patterns of behavior, which constitute the proven skills and established customs of a culture, may be adopted in essentially the same form as they are exemplified. There is little leeway for 25 improvisation on how to drive automobiles or to perform arithmetic operations. However, in many activities, subskills must be improvised to suit varying circumstances. Modeling influences can convey rules for generative and innovative behavior as well. This higher-level learning is achieved through abstract modeling. Rule-governed behavior differs in specific content and other details but it contains the same underlying rule. For example, the modeled statements, "The dog is being petted," and "the window was opened" refer to different things but the linguistic rule-- the passive form--is the same. In abstract modeling, observers extract the rule embodied in the specific behavior exhibited by others. Once they lear...

Moral agency has dual aspects manifested in both the power to refrain from behaving inhumanely and the proactive power to behave humanely. Moral agency is embedded in a broader socio-cognitive self-theory encompassing affective self-regulatory mechanisms rooted in personal standards linked to self-sanctions. Moral functioning is thus governed by self-reactive selfhood rather than by dispassionate abstract reasoning. The self-regulatory mechanisms governing moral conduct do not come into play unless they are activated and there are many psychosocial mechanisms by which moral self-sanctions are selectively disengaged from inhumane conduct. The moral disengagement may centre on the cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into a benign or worthy one by moral justification, sanitising language and exonerative social comparison; disavowal of personal agency in the harm one causes by diffusion or displacement of responsibility; disregarding or minimising the injurious effects of one's actions; and attribution of blame to, and dehumanisation of, those who are victimised. Social cognitive theory adopts an interactionist perspective to morality in which moral actions are the products of the reciprocal interplay of personal and social influences. Given the many mechanisms for disengaging moral control at both the individual and collective level, civilised life requires, in addition to humane personal standards, safeguards built into social systems that uphold compassionate behaviour and renounce cruelty.

This study tested a structural model regarding the impact of socioeconomic status on people's perceived individual efficacy and its link to their perceived collective efficacy. In sociodemographic analyses younger participants, compared to their older counterparts. judged themselves less efficacious to manage their worklife, intimate partnerships, and financial condition, but of higher efficacy in promoting social change. Men had a higher sense of efficacy than women to contribute to the solution of social problems. In accord with the posited structural model, socioeconomic status contributed to both perceived personal efficacy to manage one's life circumstances and individual efficacy to contribute to the betterment of societal conditions. Both forms of perceived individual efficacy. in turn, contributed substantially to a sense of collective efficacy to effect social change through unified action. An alternative model in which perceived Collective efficacy is assigned causal primacy affecting perceived individual efficacy provided a poorer fit to the data.

La théorie socio-cognitive adopte une perspective d’action pour ce qui est du développement, de l’adaptation et du changement humains. Cette théorie distingue trois types d’action: l’action personnelle exercée individuellement, l’action par procuration où l’on s’assure de bénéfices désirés en incitant autrui a intervenir en sa faveur, et l’action collective où les gens agissent ensemble pour construire leur avenir. Des dichotomies conflictuelles parsèment notre domaine, opposant l’autonomie et l’interdépendance, l’individualisme et le collectivisme. Les déterminants et les doses d’action individuelle, par procuration et collective varient culturellement. Mais tous les modes d’action sont nécessaires pour parvenir á ses fins quel que soit le contexte culturel. Les cultures sont diverses et dynamiques, ce ne sont pas des monolithes statiques. La diversité intraculturelle et les écarts dans les orientations psychosociales mettent en évidence la dynamique aux multiples facettes des cultures. La globalisation croissante, la pluralité des sociétés et l’immersion dans un monde virtuel qui se joue du temps, des distances, des lieux et des frontières incitent àélargir la portée des études interculturelles. Les préoccupations se focalisent sur la façon dont les forces nationales et globales interagissent dans la création de la vie culturelle.

The present study examined the longitudinal impact of perceived self-regulatory efficacy and parental communication on violent conduct. Adolescents' perceived efficacy to resist peer pressure for transgressive activities counteracted engagement in violent conduct both directly and by fostering open communication with parents. Parental communication was linked to violent conduct concurrently but not longitudinally. There were gender differences in level of engagement in violent activities, but the causal structures were the same. Perceived self-regulatory efficacy contributed to violent conduct both concurrently and longitudinally after controlling for prior level of violent conduct and openness of parental communication.

The extraordinary advances in electronic technologies and global human interconnectedness present novel adaptational challenges and expanded opportunities for people to shape their social future and national life. The present article analyzes these pervasive transformational changes from an agentic theoretical perspective rooted in the exercise of perceived personal and collective efficacy. By acting on their efficacy beliefs, people ply the enabling functions of electronic systems to promote their education, health, affective well-being, worklife, organizational innovativeness and productivity and to change social conditions that affect their lives. Technology influences, and is influenced by, the sociostructural nature of societies. The codetermining sociostructural factors affect whether electronic technologies and globalization serve as positive forces that benefit all or divisive ones in human lives.