Chapter 17 Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory 519Therapy
According to Bandura, deviant behaviors are initiated on the basis of social cogni-
tive learning principles, and they are maintained because, in some ways, they
continue to serve a purpose. Therapeutic change, therefore, is difficult because it
involves eliminating behaviors that are satisfying to the person. Smoking, overeat-
ing, and drinking alcoholic beverages, for example, generally have positive effects
initially, and their long-range aversive consequences are usually not sufficient to
produce avoidance behavior.
The ultimate goal of social cognitive therapy is self-regulation (Bandura,
1986). To achieve this end, the therapist introduces strategies designed to induce
specific behavioral changes, to generalize those changes to other situations, and to
maintain those changes by preventing relapse.
The first step in successful therapy is to instigate some change in behavior.
For example, if a therapist is able to extinguish fear of height in a previously acro-
phobic person, then change has been induced and that person will have no fear of
climbing a 20-foot ladder. A more important level of therapy is to generalize spe-
cific changes. For example, the acrophobic person not only will be able to ascend
a ladder but also will be able to ride in airplanes or look out windows of tall build-
ings. Some therapies induce change and facilitate generalization, but in time, the
therapeutic effects are lost and the person reacquires the dysfunctional behavior.
This relapse is particularly likely when people are extinguishing maladaptive habits
such as smoking and overeating. The most effective therapy reaches the third level
of accomplishment, which is maintenance of newly acquired functional behaviors.
Bandura (1986) has suggested several basic treatment approaches. The first
includes overt or vicarious modeling. People who observe live or filmed models
performing threatening activities often feel less fear and anxiety and are then able
to perform those same activities.
In a second treatment mode, covert or cognitive modeling, the therapist trains
patients to visualize models performing fearsome behaviors. Overt and covert mod-
eling strategies are most effective, however, when combined with performance-
oriented approaches.
A third procedure, called enactive mastery, requires patients to perform those
behaviors that previously produced incapacitating fears. Enactment, however, is not
ordinarily the first step in treatment. Patients typically begin by observing models
or by having their emotional arousal lessened through systematic desensitization,
which involves the extinction of anxiety or fear through self-induced or therapist-
induced relaxation. With systematic desensitization, the therapist and patient work
together to place fearsome situations on a hierarchy from least to most threatening
(Wolpe, 1973). Patients, while relaxed, enact the least threatening behavior and then
gradually move through the hierarchy until they can perform the most threatening
activity, all the while remaining at a low state of emotional arousal.
Bandura has demonstrated that each of these strategies can be effective and
that they are most powerful when used in combination with one another. Bandura
(1989) believes that the reason for their effectiveness can be traced to a common
mechanism found in each of these approaches, namely, cognitive mediation. When
people use cognition to increase self-efficacy—that is, when they become convinced