Social Cognitive Theory: Bandura, Self-Efficacy and Agency

Social cognitive theory is the idea that what a learner believes, what they do and the setting around them keep changing one another. Albert Bandura called this three-way loop reciprocal determinism. The theory's best-known idea is self-efficacy: a person's judgement of whether they can do a particular task (Bandura, 1986).

The theory goes beyond learning by watching. It links self-efficacy, self-regulation and agency to action and context. This helps explain why the same lesson can lead to different choices and levels of effort.

For teachers, the theory is one part of a wider set of learning theories. It does not offer a recipe or prove that confidence causes marks to rise. It prompts better questions about skill, action, feedback, access and the social setting around a task.

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Social Cognitive Theory Explained

Social cognitive theory explains human functioning through reciprocal relations between personal factors, behaviour and environment. Personal factors include cognitive, affective and biological events. Behaviour includes choices and actions. Environment includes physical settings, other people, social expectations, resources and consequences.

Bandura called this link triadic reciprocal causation. The term rejects two simple claims. People are not only pushed by their setting. Nor are they minds that act with no social limits.

People both shape their lives and are shaped by them (Bandura, 1989).

Consider a learner who rarely answers in science. They may doubt their skill at explaining a result. Staying silent gives the teacher fewer signs of their thought.

The teacher may then ask them fewer follow-up questions. That class response can strengthen the learner's view that public speech is not for them.

This example does not prove the cause. Silence could reflect doubt, deep thought, language needs, sensory load or choice. The teacher should check the linked pattern rather than label the learner. A private response and a change to the task can give better proof.

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How Bandura's Theory Developed

Bandura's ideas changed across several decades. His early work dealt with models and copied acts. His 1977 account drew learning, thought and results together before his later work grew into a wider theory.

In 1986, he set out the wider theory. Later work gave more depth to self-rule, moral acts and human agency.

• Early 1960s: Bandura and colleagues studied modelling and children's reproduction of observed aggressive acts.
• 1965: Bandura separated acquisition of an observed response from its later performance under different consequences.
• 1977: Social Learning Theory set out a cognitive account of modelling, behaviour and reinforcement. Bandura also published his major paper on self-efficacy.
• 1986: Social Foundations of Thought and Action presented the broader social cognitive theory.
• 1990s onward: Bandura developed self-regulation, moral agency, moral disengagement and an explicitly agentic account of human action.

The 1977 and 1986 labels are linked but not the same. Social learning theory gives more depth to learning from models. The later theory places that work in a wider account of beliefs, self-rule and agency. The table sets the two side by side.

This page covers that wider system. For the 1961 live-model study, the 1963 filmed-model research and the 1965 consequence study, use our guide to Bandura's social learning theory.

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Reciprocal Determinism: The Three-Way Model

Reciprocal determinism is Bandura's name for the idea that personal factors, behaviour and environment each influence the other two. He set it out in full in 1978 and later called it triadic reciprocal causation (Bandura, 1978, 1986). No corner is the single cause. A belief can shape an action, the action can change the setting, and the setting can feed back into the belief.

The model is often drawn as a triangle. The picture can suggest that all three influences are equal and act at the same moment. Bandura did not claim that. One influence may be stronger in a given situation, and effects can unfold over different timescales.

The three corners each need a closer look, because each one gives the teacher a different place to act.

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Personal Factors

Personal factors include knowledge, expectations, goals, beliefs, emotions and biological events. They are not fixed personality traits. A learner's expectation can change after success, feedback or a new interpretation of the task.

For example, a learner may expect a hard reading text to expose mistakes. That belief can affect focus and the choice to begin. It does not reveal a fixed lack of drive.

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Behaviour

Behaviour includes what the learner does, avoids and keeps doing. An act can change the setting, while a question can bring new facts or support.

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Environment

Environment includes more than room layout. It covers instructions, relationships, models, resources, curriculum access, social norms and the consequences attached to action. It can support or restrict agency.

This is close to what sociocultural theory calls the social setting of learning. The difference is the focus. Vygotsky's theory puts language and cultural tools at the centre, while Bandura puts the learner's beliefs about their own capability there.

A teacher can use the triad as a simple frame. Record the learner's response, the task and signs of what they believe. Change one part, then check again. This is sounder than claiming that a good class always builds confidence or that confidence alone leads to success.

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The Key Constructs of Social Cognitive Theory

Textbooks and health courses often list the theory as a set of named constructs. The list below uses the terms you will meet most often. Each row adds what the idea looks like in a classroom.

Two cautions apply. First, the list is a teaching summary, not Bandura's own chapter plan. Second, the constructs work together, so a change in one usually shows up in the others. The sections below take the most useful ones for teachers in turn.

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Self-Efficacy and Outcome Expectations

Self-efficacy is a person's judgement of their capability to organise and carry out the action needed for a particular performance. It concerns “can I do this?” rather than “am I a confident person?” The judgement can differ by subject, task, level of challenge and situation (Bandura, 1977, 1997).

A learner may judge that they can solve routine sums but not explain a proof. A broad label such as “low confidence” hides this task-specific gap. The distinction also links to wider theories of motivation.

Self-efficacy is also distinct from an outcome expectation. A learner may believe they can complete an assignment but doubt that it will lead to a valued result. In the reverse case, they may value the result but doubt that they can do the work. The teacher needs a different response in each case.

Self-efficacy can shape choice, effort and how long a person keeps going. It does not replace skill or access. Strong but poorly judged belief does not ensure sound work.

Low belief may be a fair view of weak skill or a task that cannot be reached. The goal is not the highest belief. It is sound skill, a fair self-check and access to what is needed.

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Four Sources of Efficacy Information

Bandura identified four broad sources of information from which efficacy judgements can develop. People interpret these sources rather than absorbing them automatically.

• Enactive mastery experiences: performing a task provides direct information about capability. Success can support efficacy, but the learner's interpretation of difficulty, support and progress matters.
• Vicarious experience: observing another person can provide comparative information. Perceived similarity, model competence, credibility and the task all affect the inference.
• Social persuasion: credible feedback can support a realistic judgement of capability. Empty praise is weak evidence and can be contradicted by later performance.
• Physiological and affective states: fatigue, tension, calm or excitement can inform efficacy judgements. Their effect depends partly on how the person interprets them.

A meta-analysis found an average effect size of 0.38 for the link between self-efficacy and academic performance. Results varied widely across studies (Multon et al., 1991). This does not show that belief alone caused the result. Skill, teaching, past work and context still count.

Which comes first, belief or success? Studies that follow learners over time find both directions, but not in equal measure. A pooled analysis of 11 such studies (2,688 people) found that earlier performance predicted later self-efficacy more strongly than the reverse. In children, only performance predicted later belief (Talsma et al., 2018). A five-year study of Korean secondary learners found the same imbalance (Hwang et al., 2016).

Across 61 studies of academic self-efficacy (8,965 people), mastery experience had by far the strongest link of the four sources (Byars-Winston et al., 2017). In one field study, learners aged 12 and 13 were quietly given easier puzzles and so outscored their classmates. Their self-efficacy rose and stayed higher for up to a year (Uchida et al., 2018). The lesson for teachers is plain. Build belief through real success on the task, not through talk about confidence.

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Self-Regulation in Social Cognitive Theory

The theory does not treat people as watchers who wait for rewards. Bandura said that people can guide their own drive and acts. His account grouped this work into three linked parts (Bandura, 1991).

• Self-monitoring: observing one's behaviour, its conditions and its effects.
• Judgement: comparing behaviour with personal standards, goals and features of the situation.
• Self-reaction: adjusting action, effort or the environment in response to that judgement.

A Year 8 learner who drafts an account can mark where each claim has proof. They can then check the work against set goals and revise one weak line. The learner is not just following a reward. They are making a record, judging it and acting on the result.

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Self-efficacy works within this process. A judgement of capability can affect the goals a learner accepts and the effort they sustain. Progress can then provide new efficacy information. The relation is reciprocal, not a one-way path from confidence to success.

Bandura's account provides the theoretical foundation. The detailed planning, monitoring and reflection routines used in education belong to our guide to self-regulated learning. Teachers should also consult subject-specific evidence before choosing a routine.

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Human Agency

Human agency is the power to shape one's acts and life through intent. It does not mean full freedom from social rules or limits. People help make social systems, but those systems also guide and limit their lives (Bandura, 2001).

His later account described four core features:

• Intentionality: forming intentions and plans for action.
• Forethought: anticipating likely outcomes and using them to guide present choices.
• Self-reactiveness: regulating action while carrying out a chosen course.
• Self-reflectiveness: examining one's thinking, values, capability and actions.

Agency can take more than one form. Personal agency means acting at first hand. Proxy agency means seeking help or asking someone to act.

Collective agency means a group acts as one. These forms show why working alone is not the only sign of agency.

In school, asking for a model may be proxy agency rather than passivity. A group planning a complex enquiry may exercise collective agency. The question is how deliberately and effectively learners influence the task, not whether they avoid support. Our guide to agency in the classroom turns this into routines.

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Collective Efficacy

Collective efficacy is a group's shared belief that it can organise and carry out joint action to reach a goal (Bandura, 2000). It matters because groups, like people, choose goals and keep going according to what they believe they can do together.

In schools the idea is best known as collective teacher efficacy: staff's shared belief that together they can raise learners' achievement. In a study of 47 primary schools, those with stronger collective teacher efficacy had higher reading and maths results, even after allowing for learners' backgrounds (Goddard et al., 2000). The design was correlational, so it cannot show that raising the belief raises results.

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Moral Agency and Moral Disengagement

Bandura also used the theory to explain moral acts. People form moral rules and judge their own deeds. They may expect self-respect after a kind act or self-blame after they cause harm (Bandura, 1999).

Moral disengagement occurs when these self-regulatory sanctions are selectively disconnected from harmful conduct. Bandura described several mechanisms. Harm may be reframed as serving a worthy purpose, softened through euphemistic language or made to look acceptable by comparison with something worse. Responsibility may be displaced onto an authority or diffused across a group (Bandura, 2016).

People may also minimise the consequences of an action, dehumanise those affected or blame victims for what happened. These mechanisms do not show that moral standards are absent. They explain how a person can act against those standards without activating the usual self-condemnation (Bandura et al., 1996; Bandura, 1999).

This work is a later part of the theory. It is not a fix for the limits of the Bobo doll tests. In school, it can aid calm talk about bullying, online acts and a group's role. Teachers should study the words and spread of blame without using the theory to label one learner.

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How Observational Learning Fits

Observational learning remains part of social cognitive theory, but it is not the whole theory. Bandura described attentional, retention, production and motivational processes that help explain whether an observed pattern is acquired and later performed. They are interacting component processes, not a fixed four-step staircase.

A learner may retain a method without using it in the first task. Goals, skill, results and social rules can affect its later use. This is the key gap between learning and what a person does.

The Bobo studies found short-term differences in imitative acts under laboratory conditions. They did not prove that people copy all they see. They also did not test self-efficacy, reciprocal causation or agency.

Keep the classroom inference bounded. A teacher model may provide useful information, but observation alone does not establish understanding. Ask learners to explain a decision, attempt a related task and use the method independently. The Bandura guide linked earlier covers the experimental record and reinforcement distinctions in detail.

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Using Social Cognitive Theory in the Classroom

Social cognitive theory helps teachers form testable hypotheses about learning. It does not show that every model, praise statement or classroom arrangement will improve results. Each application needs a clear learning goal and evidence from the task.

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Model Decisions and Check What Was Acquired

Show the key choice, not only the final answer. This kind of think-aloud model can expose a step that is hard to see. In history, a teacher can explain why one source backs a claim but still needs a check for motive. Learners can find the same choice in a second source before they write.

Direct attention to one or two features, allow a short attempt and inspect the response. Do not treat eye contact, stillness or quick imitation as proof of attention or learning. Observation should lead to evidence of what the learner can explain and do.

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Build Well-Founded Self-Efficacy

Choose a task that is challenging but accessible with the available support. Make success criteria clear. Give feedback that names what the learner did and what the next attempt requires.

For example, “Your answer now links the result to the heat change. Add the measure that backs that link” gives clear proof of skill. “Brilliant work” does not show what can be used again. Good formative feedback builds skill and helps learners read sound signs of their own progress.

Peer models can help when the model is right and trusted. A similar peer is not always more useful than a teacher. Schunk found that the model, learner and task all matter. Use a peer model for a clear aim, then check the work.

How the model handles difficulty also matters. In one study, children who watched a peer make errors and then work through them gained more self-efficacy and skill than children who watched a flawless peer (Schunk et al., 1987). In live modelling, show one realistic slip and how you fixed it.

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Connect Goals, Monitoring and Revision

Translate a broad aim into an observable action. “Improve my writing” is difficult to monitor. “Use evidence after each claim in the next paragraph” creates a standard against which the learner can judge a draft.

Ask the learner to mark each link to proof, check it against the goal and fix one gap. This cycle reflects a check, a judgement and a response. It also gives the teacher facts about the task and its scaffold, not just the learner.

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Change the Environment as Well as the Learner

If participation is low, do not begin by trying to fix confidence. Examine wait time, question design, prior knowledge, language demand, peer response and the cost of making an error publicly. Change one feature and observe whether behaviour changes.

The planner below turns this into one plan for one learner. Choose what you are seeing and it gives you a belief to check, a behaviour to record and one change to the setting.

A science team can give each learner one minute to mark up a result before talk starts. More learners may then have a point ready to share. The change does not prove which belief mattered, but it alters the setting and gives better proof for the next choice.

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Recognise Personal, Proxy and Collective Agency

Offer legitimate ways to seek support and coordinate action. Learners can choose a prompt card, request an example or ask a partner to check a step. A group can agree roles and review whether each person has the information needed.

Agency should not become a demand that learners solve structural barriers alone. Access to teaching, time, safety and suitable resources remains an institutional responsibility. Social cognitive theory is strongest when personal action and social conditions stay in the same explanation.

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Social Cognitive Theory in a Year 4 and a Year 10 Lesson

The two examples below follow one learner each through the three corners. In both, the teacher changes the setting first, plans a real success, and then checks what the learner does without help.

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Year 4 Maths: Written Multiplication

A Year 4 learner says, "I'm rubbish at times tables." That is the personal factor. During practice they copy answers from their partner's whiteboard. That is the behaviour. Because the answers look right, the teacher moves on, and the setting never tests what the learner can do alone.

The teacher changes the setting first. Every learner gets their own whiteboard, and the worked example 24 × 3 = 72 stays on the board. The first question is 21 × 3, which has no exchange, so success is likely and real. The next is 26 × 3, where 18 ones means one ten is carried.

The feedback names the step: "You carried the ten into the tens column and added it after multiplying." That is social persuasion based on work the learner can see. The check comes the next day. Can the learner solve 37 × 4 = 148 alone, without the model on the board?

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Year 10 English: One Analytical Paragraph

A Year 10 learner writes two lines about a character in a set text and stops. They say, "I'm not an essay person." They also doubt that more effort will change their grade, which is an outcome expectation. The setting adds to it: long essays are set, and the feedback is a grade with no next step.

The teacher shrinks the task to one paragraph with three parts: a claim, a short quotation and the effect on the audience. Under the visualiser, the teacher writes a model and deletes a weak sentence aloud, so the learner sees a coping model rather than a finished product. A marked paragraph from the right grade band shows how one paragraph earns marks.

The learner writes one paragraph and ticks the three parts on their own work. That is self-regulation in action. The feedback names what worked and sets one next goal, such as adding a second reading of the quotation. The check comes two weeks later, when the learner starts a timed paragraph without being prompted.

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What Teachers Say About Self-Efficacy

Teachers on social media almost never say "Bandura" or "self-efficacy". They describe the same moves in plain words: a small success before a public answer, a worked step that keeps a quiet learner going, and a finish line that moves as learners reach it. The table sets three of those routines against the research.

The same conversation has a darker side. When learners never finish a task on their own, they stop expecting to, and teachers call the result learned helplessness.

Read these posts as teachers' accounts, not as evidence that a routine works. The research above explains why they might: each one gives learners a real success before they are asked to perform alone.

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Limitations and Critiques

Social cognitive theory connects areas that narrower accounts may separate: learning from models, beliefs about capability, goal-directed action, self-regulation and social context. Its concepts have generated research across education, health and organisational settings.

Its breadth is also a limit. A linked system is harder to test than a one-way claim. A study must state what it means by beliefs, acts and setting, then track when each one shifts. A class tale in which confidence, talk and help all rise does not show which one changed first.

Many self-efficacy studies use self-report. The best measures match the task and level of challenge. “Are you confident at maths?” is not the same as a claim about one type of sum. Links with marks can also run both ways or share the same cause.

Culture and social rank affect access, valued goals and the meaning of agency. Later work included group agency and did not split agency from social rules. Yet the theory can still be used badly. Telling learners to believe more can hide poor teaching, bias, poverty or lack of access.

The framework also sits beside, rather than replaces, other accounts. Cognitive load theory asks whether a model or task overloads working memory. A sound comparison with behaviourism must also avoid reducing all behaviourist work to reward and punishment. To see where Bandura sits among the other models, compare the eight approaches in our overview of learning theories.

Keep these common corrections in view:

• “Social cognitive theory is learning by watching.” Observation is one mechanism inside a wider theory of reciprocal influence and agency.
• “High self-efficacy guarantees success.” Efficacy can influence action, but skill, knowledge, conditions and accurate calibration matter.
• “The three factors always act equally.” Reciprocal influences can differ in strength and timing.
• “Self-regulation means willpower.” It includes checks, goals, judgement, response and support.
• “Agency means working alone.” Agency can be personal, proxy or collective.
• “Moral disengagement means having no morals.” It concerns selective disengagement of self-sanctions from conduct.

The question teachers ask most is whether higher self-efficacy leads to higher results. The evidence check below gathers the studies on that question and shows how far they agree.

Try the three-corner check with one learner this week. Note what they believe about the task, what they do and what the setting asks of them. Then change one corner, usually the setting, and look again.

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Frequently Asked Questions

These short answers cover the questions people ask most about Bandura's later theory. Use the full sections above when a claim needs its source or limit.

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What is social cognitive theory?

Personal factors, behaviour and environment influence one another. People learn through experience and observation, form efficacy beliefs, regulate action and exercise agency within social conditions.

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What is reciprocal determinism?

It is Bandura's term for the way a person's thoughts and feelings, their behaviour and their environment each influence the other two. None of the three is the single cause, and one link can be stronger than the others at a given time.

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What is self-efficacy in social cognitive theory?

Self-efficacy is a judgement of capability to organise and carry out action for a particular task or domain. It is not the same as self-esteem, general confidence or the expectation that an action will produce a valued outcome.

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What is the difference between social learning theory and social cognitive theory?

Social learning theory (1977) centres on learning from models through attention, retention, production and motivation. Social cognitive theory (1986) keeps that work but adds self-efficacy, self-regulation and agency. The learner becomes an agent as well as a watcher.

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How is social cognitive theory used in the classroom?

Teachers can examine capability beliefs, actions and task conditions together. They can model key decisions, create accessible mastery opportunities, use specific feedback and help learners monitor progress. Each method still needs its own classroom evidence.

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What are the criticisms of social cognitive theory?

It is broad and hard to test as a whole. Much of the self-efficacy evidence rests on self-report and correlation. It can also be misused to blame learners for low belief when the real barrier is teaching, access or poverty.

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Further Reading

These five papers give the strongest next steps. They cover self-efficacy, self-rule, moral choice, agency and peer models. Each link leads to a journal or DOI record rather than a search page.

• Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change
• Social cognitive theory of self-regulation
• Mechanisms of moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency
• Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective
• Peer models and children's behavioral change

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References

• Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change
  Bandura, A. (1977). Psychological Review, 84, 191-215.

• The self system in reciprocal determinism
  Bandura, A. (1978). American Psychologist, 33(4), 344-358.

• Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Prentice Hall.
• Bandura, A. (1989). Social cognitive theory. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Annals of Child Development: Volume 6. Six Theories of Child Development (pp. 1-60). JAI Press.

• Social cognitive theory of self-regulation
  Bandura, A. (1991). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 248-287.

• Mechanisms of moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency
  Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G. V., and Pastorelli, C. (1996). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 364-374.

• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W. H. Freeman.

• Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities
  Bandura, A. (1999). Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 193-209.

• Exercise of human agency through collective efficacy
  Bandura, A. (2000). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(3), 75-78.

• Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective
  Bandura, A. (2001). Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 1-26.

• Toward a psychology of human agency
  Bandura, A. (2006). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 164-180.

• Bandura, A. (2016). Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves. Worth Publishers.

• Unique effects and moderators of effects of sources on self-efficacy: A model-based meta-analysis
  Byars-Winston, A., Diestelmann, J., Savoy, J. N., and Hoyt, W. T. (2017). Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(6), 645-658.

• Collective teacher efficacy: Its meaning, measure, and impact on student achievement
  Goddard, R. D., Hoy, W. K., and Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2000). American Educational Research Journal, 37(2), 479-507.

• The relationship between self-efficacy and academic achievement: A 5-year panel analysis
  Hwang, M. H., Choi, H. C., Lee, A., Culver, J. D., and Hutchison, B. (2016). The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 25(1), 89-98.

• Relation of self-efficacy beliefs to academic outcomes: A meta-analytic investigation
  Multon, K. D., Brown, S. D., and Lent, R. W. (1991). Journal of Counseling Psychology, 38, 30-38.

• Peer models and children's behavioral change
  Schunk, D. H. (1987). Review of Educational Research, 57, 149-174.

• Peer-model attributes and children's achievement behaviors
  Schunk, D. H., Hanson, A. R., and Cox, P. D. (1987). Journal of Educational Psychology, 79(1), 54-61.

• I believe, therefore I achieve (and vice versa): A meta-analytic cross-lagged panel analysis of self-efficacy and academic performance
  Talsma, K., Schüz, B., Schwarzer, R., and Norris, K. (2018). Learning and Individual Differences, 61, 136-150.

• An induced successful performance enhances student self-efficacy and boosts academic achievement
  Uchida, A., Michael, R. B., and Mori, K. (2018). AERA Open, 4(4).

• Self-efficacy: An essential motive to learn
  Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 82-91.