Theories of Personality 9th Edition

Chapter 17 Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory 501

Triadic Reciprocal Causation

In Chapter 16, we saw that Skinner believed that behavior is a function of the
environment; that is, behavior ultimately can be traced to forces outside the person.
As environmental contingencies change, behavior changes. But what impetus
changes the environment? Skinner acknowledged that human behavior can exercise
some measure of countercontrol over the environment, but he insisted that, in the
final analysis, behavior is environmentally determined. Other theorists, such as
Gordon Allport (Chapter 12) and Hans Eysenck (Chapter 14) emphasized the
importance of traits or personal disposition in shaping behavior. In general, these
theorists held that personal factors interact with environmental conditions to
produce behavior.
Albert Bandura (1986, 1999b, 2001, 2002b) adopts quite a different stance.
His social cognitive theory explains psychological functioning in terms of triadic
reciprocal causation. This system assumes that human action is a result of an
interaction among three variables—environment, behavior, and person. By
“ person” Bandura means largely, but not exclusively, such cognitive factors as
memory, anticipation, planning, and judging. Because people possess and use
these cognitive capacities, they have some capacity to select or to restructure
their environment: That is, cognition at least partially determines which
environmental events people attend to, what value they place on these events,
and how they organize these events for future use. Although cognition can have
a strong causal effect on both environment and behavior, it is not an autonomous
entity, independent of those two variables. Bandura (1986) criticized those
theorists who attribute the cause of human behavior to internal forces such as
instincts, drives, needs, or intentions. Cognition itself is determined, being formed
by both behavior and environment.
Triadic reciprocal causation is represented schematically in Figure 17.1,
where B signifies behavior; E is the external environment; and P represents the
person, including that person’s gender, social position, size, and physical
attractiveness, but especially cognitive factors such as thought, memory, judgment,
foresight, and so on.

Behavior

Environmental

factors

Personal factors

(Cognitive, aective,

and biological events)

FIGURE 17.1 Bandura’s concept of reciprocal causation. Human functioning is a
product of the interaction of (B) behavior, (P) person variables, and (E) environment.
Source: Bandura, Albert, “Social Cognitive Theory and Mass Communication.” In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.),
Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1992, p. 62.