BEHAVIOR DEVELOPMENT

The social cognitive theory by Albert Bandura posits that the learning and knowledge acquisition process is related to observing other people in social interactions, experiences, and media contexts. A person observes a model performing a behavior and its consequences together with a series of events and uses them to guide their own behaviors (Nugent & Wallston, 2016). Learning behavior is, therefore, a replication of other people’s behaviors based on the punishments, rewards, and outcomes and not through trials, failures, and successes. These learned behaviors form an integral part of one’s personality. A person learns behaviors by observing other people and this behavior development is affected by such factors as cognition, environment, and behavior (Chen, Wang & Hung, 2015). Learning also occurs with the close identification of the observer and the model and self-efficacy. Through identification, the observer tries to develop similarity with the model which leads to a higher chance of following through the modeled action.

People in their early childhoods follow behaviors modeled by people they identify with, and in most cases, these people are of the same sex who the observes develop commonalities and emotional attachments with that form basis for learning and reenactment of the behaviors these people model. Girls more readily identify with female caregivers as boys do so with male caregivers and develop gender roles and problem-solving approaches as learned from the behaviors modeled by these people. Boys, for example, are more likely to develop aggressive problem-solving strategies than girls who will more likely develop self-protective strategies. Learning from same-sex adults increases the percentage of same-sex models displaying the same preferences impacting their personal growth and change and will be reflected in their behaviors later in their lives.

References

Chen, M. F., Wang, R. H., & Hung, S. L. (2015). Predicting health-promoting self-care behaviors in people with pre-diabetes by applying Bandura social learning theory. Applied Nursing Research, 28(4), 299–304.

Nugent, L. E., & Wallston, K. A. (2016). Modified social learning theory re-examined: correlates of self-management behaviors of persons with Type 2 diabetes. Journal of behavioral medicine, 39(6), 947–956.