The social cognitive theory is an important perspective in psychology. The information presents the role that social cognitive theory plays in initiating, adopting, and maintaining human behavior (Schunk, 2012). It illustrates the basic constructs of the theory, like the perceived self-efficacy and outcome expectancies. Subsequent parts explain the implication of social cognitive for learning and teaching. Another philosophy is classical conditioning in learning. The covered data show the concept's role in the explanation of human behavior (Kirsch et al. 2004). This classical conditioning has been found to happen in simple organisms. The information provides an interpretation of classical conditioning and a basic example of the perspective. Additionally, a tridimensional of operant conditioning is explained that relates to the nature of reinforcements, cues, and the type of response demanded of the organism, the two sets of learning theory are important and operational.
What have you learned in psychology that has had a major impact on you? Explain this in detail.
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All topics in psychology have been exciting both in terms of behavioral and cognitive development. However, the most appealing topic for me was psychotherapy. The concept introduced a perspective that enabled me to recognize my good and bad feelings and consequently understand situational factors that can prompt a person to feel optimistic, nervous, or anxious. The knowledge has enabled me to know how to live and survive under difficult situations in a more meaningful way. The knowledge from the concept helps a person deal with various forms of personality challenges, such as mental disorders, low self-esteem, death, and family wrangles (Wampold, 2007). Any person that feels burdened with life issues and an inability to function well can get a solution by seeking psychotherapy services. Moreover, I was able to understand the different types of psychotherapy that exist. These entail cognitive therapy, psychodynamic therapy, behavior therapy, interpersonal therapy, and person-centered therapy.
The relevance of Behavioral therapy in psychotherapy is how it shows people that alterations in one’s behavior can make them develop either positive or negative feelings (Wamplold, 2007). This theory is based on developing an individual’s relationships with positive activities. It is important as it helps learners understand how to remove undesirable and replace them with acceptable behaviors. On the other hand, cognitive therapy is founded on the concept of how people reason impacts their feelings. Understanding this therapy allows people to deal with conditions like depression - a mental state that often comes from negative self-talk thoughts. Learning Cognitive therapy is relevant in managing disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder.
Additionally, when handling therapy using interpersonal therapy, the focus is on the patient’s interpersonal relationships. Learning the concept helps improve communication patterns that help people manage and deal with their past events that may cause depression. For instance, understanding the concept has enabled me to learn how to express my thoughts and anxiety calmly to other people. My relationships have changed because of the ability to restructure the way I deal with interpersonal issues. It has enabled me to understand the problems and managing them efficiently.
In family therapy, I have realized that there are conditions that require treatment of the whole family. The concept was useful in knowing family patterns that lead to behavioral challenges or mental illness that can initiate family members to behave negatively (Fong, 2005). The therapy is significant in maintaining better communication between family members. It is useful in acquiring more meaningful listening skills and learn how to prevent negative defensive reactions during interaction or arguments. Another type is psychodynamic therapy, which is founded on the internal causes of behavior change. For instance, behaviors developed in an individual’s childhood or early experiences that continuously impact present-day behavior. Studying this topic enabled me to learn and embrace my awareness as well as realize how past events can affect current behavior (Fong, 2005). Moreover, it is useful in realizing emotional stressors, usually by elaborating motives, defenses, and needs that people are not aware of.
By learning psychotherapy, I was able to attend different psychotherapy sessions. By this, I was able to get someone to talk to. This helped me to find new ways of looking at issues. I was able to gain a clear insight into myself, my values, and ambitions, and helped me to acquire skills that enhance relationships. Moreover, I have been able to overcome certain problems like having a phobia. I enjoyed the topic because it provided relevant information that is important in handling emotions from problems or less challenging triggers, even if when they are not traumatic or life-threatening.
What theoretical approaches make the most sense to you?
Social Cognitive Theory
Different psychological approaches have helped me to understand how people behave and what influences people's behaviors. One important theoretical approach learned was the theory of social cognition. This theoretical approach is a psychological theory on personality discovered by Bandura that is relevant in understanding behavior. This theory majorly explains that people learn by viewing others; as a result, they condition their behaviors after making the observations (Torre, 2015). The concept tries to emphasize mental processes and is thus referred to as a cognitive model. Albert based his view by focusing on the way people interact with the surroundings and the situations that they experience.
Therefore, observational learning is an important element of social cognitive theory. Individuals learn by copying others. It reinforces that people do not simply imitate the conducts they see portrayed by other people; they use their observations to analyze and understand how specific behaviors might be useful or harmful to them in regards to achieving a future goal. (Torre and Durning, 2015). In his view, Albert didn’t believe necessarily that rewards and punishment were relevant for a person to change behavior. He argued that one could make changes by viewing and making his/her judgment based on the situation. An important aspect of the social cognitive theory is that it believes that peoples’ personalities are established by reciprocal factors, the interacting influencer of behavior, that impacts cognition and social context. Meaning that how individuals feel about something impacts the way they act in that specific situation. Our behaviors reflect what comes from our environments, influences, and thoughts. Therefore, all these key attributes affect individuals’ personalities.
In this approach, Albert used the term Self-efficacy to elaborate on people’s belief that gives them the ability to, behaviorally, carry themselves in a certain situation. It is ultimately self-confidence in a person’s ability to attain an outcome or undertake a duty. Also, how an individual had performed previously in a situation, whether positively or negatively, are the most relevant determinants of self-efficacy (Sawitri et al, 2015). There are also instances where people use other individual’s achievements and failures in given situations as a comparative method to determine their abilities in the mentioned situations. The condition is known as vicarious experience. Another element of self-efficacy is verbal persuasion (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998). The element explains that when other people express their views on one’s capability of performing a behavior, it can affect the person’s self-efficacy. An illustration is where, if one were to mention another that he/she did not believe they can score the limit they had set, this utterance would likely reduce that person’s self-efficacy. Hence, people’s emotional arousal during a behavior could determine the level of a person’s self-efficacy.
Another influential psychologist who expounded on the social cognitive theory was Julian Rotter. He believed that their interaction with the relevant environments mainly determines people’s behaviors. He argued that, although personalities can change, it is difficult to change them based on minor experiences (Cash, 2012). He also added that persons carefully select the behaviors and actions to push them towards fulfilling their targets. The two psychologists' explanations perceive people as goal-directed, cognitive beings whose perceptions of the situation are quite important compared to events themselves.
The Social Cognitive approach made sense to me because it is valid. It focuses on experimental research that is based on scientific findings that can predict future behavior. For example, a person having heightened self-efficacy is more likely to get a new job after losing the one that he/she had before. Despite a few limitations that the theory has, such as failure to incorporate complex, external factors that are not present in the situations and lacks attention on the biological or hormonal process, the theory is still relevant. I believe that the socio-cognitive theory provides a lot of sense. In most circumstances, people take an assessment of the environment and those close to them. This assessment has an impact on how people react. The Social Cognitive Theory does not lack applied value, making it a significant contribution to psychology and behaviorism today. It is the basis in research, and clearly defined terms make it easy to apply to other research studies.
Behavioral theory
This is another topic that made sense to me during the course work. Behaviorism theory simplifies the study of human or animal psychology by understanding their observable actions instead of focusing on their thoughts and feelings that are difficult to interpret (Baum, 2017). This theory's influential figures are Ivan Pavlov and Skinner, who explained behavior through operant conditioning and classical conditioning.
Classical conditioning holds that human beings and animals learn to associate two stimuli with one another. The learning takes place through unconditioned responses, like the emotional and biological responses. The concept explains how an organism is conditioned to produce a response to a previously neutral stimulus in a given way. There must be a developed association between environmental stimuli and naturally occurring stimuli (Goldman, 2012). The concept of classical conditioning is relevant in almost daily lives. I have experienced it in school, where both teachers and learners apply it to cope with phobia and anxiety-related problems (Huitt and Hummel, 2016). For instance, instructors use it to reduce or eliminate anxiety from the learners. They achieve this by provoking situations with pleasant surroundings to help learners acquire new behavior and associations. As a result, learners tend to remain calm and stress-free instead of having anxiety feelings.
Whereas operant conditioning views believe that organisms learn behavior by interacting a particular behavior with their outcomes. The associations are successfully done through reward, punishment, and reinforcement (Pavlov, 2018). This means that people are rewarded or punished, depending on their behavior. As a result, for every behavior, there must be a consequence. The theory is useful as it attempts to change behavior by using both types of reinforcement. The application of operant conditioning is relevant in our daily lives. A personal example is how I continuously increase my performance at my place of work to receive more bonuses in the future.
Views on Abnormal Behavior from Different Psychology Concepts
The knowledge from different psychology concepts has been useful in understanding different views about the cause of abnormal behavior in organisms. The approach of abnormal psychology deals with understanding the origins of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral challenges of human beings. These behaviors are considered to be socially unacceptable and are mainly caused by genetics and environmental factors. They are maladaptive, distressing, disturbing, and come from distorted cognitions (Sue et al., 2015). There are different psychological approaches, models, and perspectives that explain the origins of abnormal behavior. These psychological approaches include; behavioral, psychodynamic, cognitive, and socio-cognitive approaches.
Psychodynamic perspective, a concept suggested as an option to the medical model, was founded by Freudian psychoanalytic theorists. This view explains that abnormal behaviors result from anxiety produced by internal issues that are unresolved, like unconscious conflicts. The approach proposes treatments that focus on the identification and resolution of the unresolved issues. Whereas those believing in behavioral perspective argue come from irrelevant and or wrong reasoning and conditioning. They propose structured remedies to remodel the maladaptive conduct and, employing old learning strategies, to educate on new, relevant, or an adaptive response (Whitbourne, 2015). An illustration is where an analysis of the behavior of a case of child assault may propose that the abuser acted abnormally because he or she might have learned the unwanted conduct from his/her childhood and therefore must relearn more acceptable behavioral tactics.
Additionally, in the cognitive perspective, the viewers suggest that human beings practice unacceptable activities due to certain reasoning and behaviors which are always founded on their wrong assumptions. It argues that negative reasoning is a major factor that contributes to unwanted behaviors. Therefore, the elimination of such is disturbing behavior is inclined toward helping disturbed people create useful reasoning processes and new norms. Therapy can also be adopted in the healing process as it is unleashing unlearning maladaptive habits and redevelop them into more acceptable behavior. The final approach is the social‐cognitive perspective. In this concept, disturbing behavior is learned within a person’s social network. One’s social context may vary from the family, community to the culture of the society. Cultural changes, earned through learning and cognitive processes, are key in developing abnormal behavior. Examples Anorexia nervosa and bulimia behaviors are found mostly in Western cultures that came because of social interactions.
In conclusion, the knowledge from the study has been relevant in understanding why people behave the way they do. Essentially, the theoretical approaches have been important as they explain why individuals act the way they do. With insight, a person can help others establish key decisions concerning their lives and formulate workable stress management techniques. Moreover, philosophies help in predicting the future behavior of people based on understanding their past encounters. Therefore, the information adequately helps individuals develop a more successful relationship, uphold self-confidence, and establish meaningful communication patterns.
References
Baum, W. (2017). Understanding Behaviorism: Behavior, Culture, and Evolution , Third Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119143673
Cash, T. F. (2012). Cognitive Behavioral Perspective on Body Image. Encyclopedia of body image and human appearance. Elsevier Academic Press.
Goldman, J. G. (2012) What is classical conditioning? (And why does it matter?) Scientific American.
Huitt, W., Hummel, J. (2016). An Introduction to Classical Conditioning. Educational Psychology Interactive, Valdosta State University1997 .
Kirsch et al. (2004). The role of cognition in classical and operant condit ioning. Journal of clinical psychology, 60(4), 369-392. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.10251
Pavlov, I. (2018). Burrhus Skinner and Behaviorists. Learning Theories of Early Years Practice .
Sawitri, D, R. et al. (2015). Pro-environmental behavior from a social cognitive theory perspective . Procedia Environmental Sciences, 23, 27-33.
Schunk, D.H. (2012). Socio-cognitive theory.
Stajkovic, A. D., & Luthans, F. (1998). Social cognitive theory and self-efficacy: Going beyond traditional motivational and behavioral approaches. Organizational Dynamics, 26(4), 62-75.
Sue et al. (2015). Understanding Abnormal Behavior. Cengage Learning .
Torre, D., & Durning, S. J. (2015). 10 Social cognitive theories: thinking and learning in social settings. Researching medical education, 105. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118838983
Wampold, B.E. (2007). Psychotherapy: The humanistic (and effective) treatment. American Psychologists , 62(8), 857. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.62.8.857
Whitbourne, S. K., & Halgin, R. P. (2015 ). Abnormal psychology . McGraw-Hill.
