Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 16. Bandura: Social
Cognitive Theory© The McGraw−Hill^505
Companies, 2009ences with reinforcement. Dysfunctional behavior is no exception. Bandura’s con-
cept of dysfunctional behavior lends itself most readily to depressive reactions, pho-
bias, and aggressive behaviors.
Depression
High personal standards and goals can lead to achievement and self-satisfaction.
However, when people set their goals too high, they are likely to fail. Failure fre-
quently leads to depression, and depressed people often undervalue their own ac-
complishments. The result is chronic misery, feelings of worthlessness, lack of pur-
posefulness, and pervasive depression. Bandura (1986, 1997) believes that
dysfunctional depression can occur in any of the three self-regulatory subfunctions:
(1) self-observation, (2) judgmental processes, and (3) self-reactions.
First, during self-observation, people can misjudge their own performance or
distort their memory of past accomplishments. Depressed people tend to exaggerate
their past mistakes and minimize their prior accomplishments, a tendency that per-
petuates their depression.
Second, depressed people are likely to make faulty judgments. They set
their standards unrealistically high so that any personal accomplishment will be
judged as a failure. Even when they achieve success in the eyes of others, they con-
tinue to berate their own performance. Depression is especially likely when people
set goals and personal standards much higher than their perceived efficacy to attain
them.
Finally, the self-reactions of depressed individuals are quite different from
those of nondepressed persons. Depressed people not only judge themselves harshly,
but they are also inclined to treat themselves badly for their shortcomings.
Phobias
Phobias are fears that are strong enough and pervasive enough to have severe debil-
itating effects on one’s daily life. For example, snake phobias prevent people from
holding a variety of jobs and from enjoying many kinds of recreational activities.
Phobias and fears are learned by direct contact, inappropriate generalization, and es-
pecially by observational experiences (Bandura, 1986). They are difficult to extin-
guish because the phobic person simply avoids the threatening object. Unless the
fearsome object is somehow encountered, the phobia will endure indefinitely.
Bandura (1986) credits television and other news media for generating many
of our fears. Well-publicized rapes, armed robberies, or murders can terrorize a com-
munity, causing people to live more confined lives behind locked doors. Most peo-
ple have never been raped, robbed, or intentionally injured; yet many live in fear of
being criminally assaulted. Violent criminal acts that seem random and unpre-
dictable are most likely to instigate phobic reactions.
Once established, phobias are maintained by consequent determinants: that is,
the negative reinforcement the phobic person receives for avoiding the fear-producing
situation. For example, if people expect to receive aversive experiences (being mugged)
while walking through the city park, they will reduce their feeling of threat by not
entering the park or even going near it. In this example, dysfunctional (avoidance)
Chapter 16 Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory 499