ABSTRACT
Social Cognitive Theory (SCT, Bandura, 1989) is perhaps best known in the annals of communication research in its prior incarnation as Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977). Social Learning Theory was a seminal theory of the effects of the media, particularly the effects of television on children. The famous “Bobo doll studies” (Bandura, 1965), in which young children were taught to attack inflatable plastic clowns (“Bobo” dolls) by observing models punish the inflatable toys on film, are a staple in textbook accounts of mass media effects and continue to inform media effects studies (e.g., Anderson & Dill, 2000; Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski, & Eron, 2003). In particular, the process of observational learning was an important advance in our understanding of media effects, describing how visual media could teach, reinforce, and prompt behaviors portrayed on the screen. The present chapter examines how SCT can explain media selection behavior that determines what media consumers choose to see on their screens rather than the behavioral effects of those selections. SCT is described by reciprocal, causal relationships among the environment, individuals, and their behaviors (Bandura, 1989). Humans have emergent interactive agency, meaning that they are neither completely autonomous from their environment nor totally subservient to environmental influences. Rather, the triadic causal mechanism is mediated by the human capacity to transform sensory experiences into symbolic cognitive models, or schemas, that guide human actions. Cognitive schemas arise both from direct, first person experiences (enactive learning) and the vicarious experiences of others (observational learning). Both mechanisms impact behavior in the same basic way, by influencing judgments of the likely consequences of a behavior, or outcome expectations (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). The degree to which an outcome is contingent upon enacting a particular behavior is what endows expected outcome expectations with their motivational power. As such, SCT has been characterized (in Eccles & Wigfield, 2002) as an expectancy theory. In addition to expectations about outcomes, behavior is
also guided by expectations regarding one’s own personal capabilities to perform a behavior successfully to achieve those outcomes, the concept of self-efficacy. In contrast, other expectancy-value theories also consider the relative values of outcomes and the costs and trade-offs associated with the choices people make. Still, SCT’s self-regulatory mechanism incorporates many of the features of expectancy value theories, such as comparisons to values and long-term goals, even if they have not been the primary focus of SCT-inspired media research to date. Even while rejecting the radical behaviorist position (e.g., Skinner, 1938) that inner thought processes are irrelevant to understanding human behavior, SCT draws upon key tenets of behaviorism. For example, behaviors that are positively reinforced are more likely to be enacted than those that are punished. However, social cognitive theory adds subjective mental processes that behaviorists disdain. This distinction accounts for the possibility of forethought and planning. Key SCT mechanisms find support in behavioral neuroscience (Berridge, 2004; Poldrack, Sabb, Foerde, Tom, Asarnow, Bookheimer, et al., 2005; Yin & Knowlton, 2006). For example, humans (but also lab animals) respond to what the neuroscientists call anticipatory motivations or predictive cues and what SCT terms “forethought.” In addition to instrumental learning, modern behavioral neuroscience also recognizes cognitive inferences about goal directedness, goal expectation, affective responses to goal attainment, and cognitive expectancy, neurological processes that account for the motivational influence of outcome expectations. The SCT concept of outcome expectations shares with decision theory the assumption that people make choices based on the predicted consequences of their choices (Hsee & Hastie, 2006). However, the so-called “prediction biases” that interest decision analysts are of little consequence in SCT, since there is no underlying assumption of rational choice, only that the outcome expectations of the individual, whether accurate or inaccurate, are what determine behavior. Correction of these biases (e.g., the projection bias that leads shoppers to buy more food when shopping hungry) would presumably restore effective self-regulation as understood in SCT. Decision analysis recognizes impulsivity, which might be defined as deficient self-regulation in socio-cognitive terms. The “lay rationalism,” “medium maximization,” and other rule-based decision biases that consumers utilize to control impulsivity may be understood as personal standards (if sometimes defective ones) within the self-regulatory mechanism. Thus, decision analysis may be interpreted within the SCT mechanism of self-regulation.
