Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 16. Bandura: Social
Cognitive Theory(^502) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
up to their personal standards. That is, people create incentives for their own
actions through self-reinforcement or self-punishment. For example, a diligent stu-
dent who has completed a reading assignment may reward herself by watching her
favorite television program.
Self-reinforcement does not rest on the fact that it immediately follows a re-
sponse: Rather, it relies in large part on the use of our cognitive ability to mediate
the consequences of behavior. People set standards for performance that, when
met, tend to regulate behavior by such self-produced rewards as pride and self-
satisfaction. When people fail to meet their standards, their behavior is followed by
self-dissatisfaction or self-criticism.
This concept of self-mediated consequences is a sharp contrast to Skinner’s
notion that the consequences of behavior are environmentally determined. Bandura
hypothesizes that people work to attain rewards and to avoid punishments according
to self-erected standards. Even when rewards are tangible, they are often accompa-
nied by self-mediated intangible incentives such as a sense of accomplishment. The
Nobel Prize, for example, carries a substantial cash award, but its greater value to
most recipients must be the feeling of pride or self-satisfaction in performing the
tasks that led to the award.
Self-Regulation Through Moral Agency
People also regulate their actions through moral standards of conduct. Bandura
(1999a) sees moral agency as having two aspects: (1) doing no harm to people and
(2) proactively helping people. Our self-regulative mechanisms, however, do not af-
fect other people until we act on them. We have no automatic internal controlling
agent such as a conscience or superego that invariably directs our behavior toward
morally consistent values. Bandura (2002a) insists that moral precepts predict moral
behavior only when those precepts are converted to action. In other words, self-
regulatory influences are not automatic but operate only if they are activated, a con-
cept Bandura calls selective activation.
How can people with strong moral beliefs concerning the worth and dignity of
all humankind behave in an inhumane manner to other humans? Bandura’s (1994)
answer is that “people do not ordinarily engage in reprehensible conduct until they
have justified to themselves the morality of their actions” (p. 72). By justifying the
morality of their actions, they can separate or disengage themselves from the con-
sequences of their behavior, a concept Bandura calls disengagement of internal
control.
Disengagement techniques allow people, individually or working in concert
with others, to engage in inhumane behaviors while retaining their moral standards
(Bandura, 2002a). For example, politicians frequently convince their constituents of
the morality of war. Thus, wars are fought against “evil” people, people who deserve
to be defeated or even annihilated.
Selective activation and disengagement of internal control allow people with
the same moral standards to behave quite differently, just as they permit the same
person to behave differently in different situations. Figure 16.2 illustrates the various
mechanisms through which self-control is disengaged or selectively activated. First,
people can redefine or reconstruct the nature of the behavior itselfby such techniques
496 Part V Learning Theories