Updated on
September 2, 2026
Bandura's social cognitive theory explains how personal factors, behaviour and environment influence one another. Learn how self-efficacy, self-regulation, agency and modelling apply in classrooms.
What is social cognitive theory?
Social cognitive theory is Albert Bandura's account of how personal factors, behaviour and environment influence one another. People learn through direct experience and observation, form beliefs about what they can do, regulate their actions and help shape the settings that also shape them.
Social cognitive theory is a framework developed by Albert Bandura to explain how people's beliefs, actions and social settings shape one another. People learn by doing and watching others. They judge what they can do, guide their actions and help change the settings that influence them (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.
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.
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.
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.
This page owns 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. That separation gives each article one clear job.
The three parts of Bandura's model are often drawn as a triangle. The diagram can be useful, but it can also suggest that all three influences are equal and act at the same moment. Bandura did not require that. One influence may be stronger in a particular situation, and effects may unfold over different timescales.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bandura identified four broad sources of information from which efficacy judgements can develop. People interpret these sources rather than absorbing them automatically.
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.
Core account: In Bandura's 1986 and later theory, personal factors, behaviour and environment influence one another over time. Their effects need not be equal or simultaneous.
Self-efficacy and outcomes: Self-efficacy asks whether someone can organise and carry out the actions for a specific performance. An outcome expectation concerns what may happen if those actions are performed. They are related but distinct.
Sources of efficacy information: Enactive mastery, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and physiological or affective states can inform efficacy judgements. Their meaning depends on interpretation; they are not a guaranteed ranking or classroom recipe.
Self-regulation: Self-observation supports judgement against standards, followed by self-reaction through a change to goals, effort or strategy.
Agency: Intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflectiveness describe how people plan, anticipate, regulate and examine action.
Boundaries: Observational learning is an important bridge from the 1977 theory, but social cognitive theory is broader than imitation. Moral disengagement explains how moral self-sanctions may be selectively suspended; it is not a behaviour-management technique.
Teacher decision: Change the environment, support genuine mastery, then check independent action.
Sources shown: Bandura (1986, 1991, 1997, 2001, 2016).
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).
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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 linked Bandura guide covers the experimental record and reinforcement distinctions in detail.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Keep these common corrections in view:
These short answers draw the main lines around Bandura's later theory. They define the triad, self-efficacy and self-rule. They also show how this page differs from the social learning article. Use the full sections above when a claim needs its source or limit.
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.
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.
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.
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
Bandura, A. (1977). Psychological Review, 84, 191-215.
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.
Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities
Bandura, A. (1999). Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 193-209.
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.
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.
Self-efficacy: An essential motive to learn
Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 82-91.
Make Learners' Thinking Visible
Use Structural Learning tools to model choices, sort ideas and help learners reflect on progress.
