Chapter 17 Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory 521results for the importance of self-efficacy, the researchers further examined its role
in the management of diabetes. In other analyses, Sacco and his colleagues found
that BMI was positively related to depression and that adherence to doctors’ orders
was negatively related to depression.
But might self-efficacy play a role in these relationships? To answer this
question, the researchers conducted more complex analyses and what they found
only further highlighted how important it is to feel as though you have a sense of
control over your health when it comes to managing a disease like diabetes. Self-
efficacy was directly responsible for both the relationship between BMI and
depression and the relationship between adherence and depression. Specifically,
having a high BMI led people to feel less self-efficacy, which in turn led to
increased depression. Conversely, being able to adhere to the disease management
plan served to increase self-efficacy, and it was this increase in a sense of control
over the disease that was responsible for decreased depression.
Moral Disengagement and Bullying
When we do bad things we can convince ourselves that our behavior really was
not bad or immoral—that the normal standards of morality do not apply to us in
that situation. This is what social psychologists call “moral disengagement.” Ban-
dura (2016) has very recently published a book entitled Moral Disengagement:
How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves. In his book, Bandura reviews
decades of research, anecdotal evidence, and intervention efforts grounded in his
theory of self-regulation through moral agency.
One area of pressing social concern relevant to moral disengagement is that
of bullying among youth. We commonly think of “bad” or aggressive kids as lack-
ing in moral reasoning that enables them to understand right from wrong. But recall
that Bandura argued that self-regulation of our behavior involves more than reason-
ing; moral behavior is enacted through a series of self-regulatory mechanisms that
enable children to develop a sense of moral agency. This developed sense of moral
agency is not static within us, however, and there are many psychological and
social processes through which self-restraint or self-sanctions of “bad” behavior
can be disengaged. This is how bullies can treat others aggressively without ever
experiencing a sense of its moral “wrongness.” Bandura described mechanisms of
moral disengagement that fall under
a) redefining or cognitively restructuring one’s behavior in a positive light,
b) minimizing the consequences of one’s role in the harm,
c) disregarding or distorting the consequences of one’s harmful behavior, and finally
d) stripping the victims of human qualities or blaming them for the harm done
to them.
Bandura and colleagues have developed self-report scales to measure
proneness to moral disengagement that capture these mechanisms, and these
scales have been modified for use in a variety of populations (e.g., The Moral
Disengagement Scale, MDS; Bandura et al., 1996).
Gini, Pozzoli, and Hymel (2014) conducted an important meta-analysis
of 27 developmental research studies on the relationship between Bandura’s
predictors of moral disengagement and bullying in school-aged children and