Deck 17: Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory

Question 1

Discuss Bandura's concept of collective efficacy.

Answer 1

A.Collective efficacy refers to the level of confidence people have that their combined effort will produce social change.It is the result of the personal efficacy of many individuals working together to bring about social,political,or environmental change.
B.People can have high personal efficacy but low collective efficacy.However,personal and collective efficacy can complement one another to change one's lifestyle.
C.Several factors can undermine collective efficacy.First,in our modern transnational world,events in one part of the globe can affect people in other parts of the world.Second,recent technology that we neither understand nor control can lower collective efficacy.Third,entrenched bureaucracies discourage social change and reduce collective efficacy.Fourth,the scope and magnitude of problems such as war,famine,overpopulation,crime,and natural disasters may leave one with a sense of helplessness.

Question 2

Discuss specific ways in which Bandura's social cognitive theory differs from Skinner's behavioral analysis.

Answer 2

A.Bandura holds that personality is molded by an interaction of behavior,personal factors (especially cognition),and the environment.In contrast,Skinner believed that the environment ultimately shaped behavior.
B.Bandura believes that responses can be learned even in the absence of their occurrence,whereas Skinner contended that responses must occur in order to be reinforced.
C.A fundamental difference between Bandura and Skinner is Bandura's emphasis on cognition.Bandura believes that people have the capacity for symbolization,and this allows them to understand their environment and to regulate it partially,without having had direct experience with every important aspect of that environment.
D.Similarly,Bandura places more emphasis on vicarious experiences and vicarious reinforcement.
E.Bandura holds that,in order for an event to be reinforcing,people must be aware of the connection between actions and outcomes.In other words,conditioning is cognitively mediated and not an inevitable consequence of the environment,as Skinner contended.

Question 3

According to Bandura,the four core features of human agency are intentionality,_____,self-reactiveness,and self-reflectiveness.

A)forethought
B)self-efficacy
C)positive reinforcement
D)locus of control

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Self-efficacy enters Bandura's reciprocal determinism paradigm at the point of

A)behavior.
B)person.
C)environment.
D)self-system.

Question 5

Bandura reasons that if behavior were completely a function of the environment,

A)the capacity for self-consciousness would not exist.
B)behavior would be totally consistent and unchanging.
C)reciprocal determinism would control behavior.
D)behavior would be more varied and less consistent.

Question 6

In Bandura's theory,chance encounters enter at which point in the triadic reciprocal cauastion paradigm?

A)person
B)self-system
C)behavior
D)environment

Question 7

Bandura's P,or person,factor includes

A)thought.
B)memory.
C)physical characteristics,such as size and social role.
D)none of these is correct.
E)all of these are correct.

Question 8

According to Bandura,______ is a person's expectations that he or she can or cannot execute the behavior necessary to effect a successful change in a particular situation.

A)self-efficacy
B)self-regulation
C)locus of control
D)disengagement of internal control

Question 9

Unlike Skinner's behavioral analysis,Bandura's social cognitive theory

A)rejects the notion of goal-directed behavior.
B)discounts the importance of reinforcement.
C)recognizes the influence of chance encounters.
D)downplays the effects of higher mental processes.

Question 10

Bandura calls the capacity to exercise control over our lives

A)internal locus of control.
B)free will.
C)human agency.
D)external locus of control.

Question 11

Albert Bandura is a native of _______,but has lived most of his life in _______.

A)Austria; the United States
B)Japan; Germany
C)the United States; Great Britain
D)Canada; the United States

Question 12

Bandura views human agency as

A)an autonomous agent in control of behavior.
B)the capacity to exercise control over our own lives.
C)a function of the interaction between environment and early experience.
D)a means of reducing anxiety.

Question 13

To Bandura,self-efficacy is synonymous with

A)outcome expectancies.
B)locus of control.
C)absence of anxiety and tension.
D)levels of aspiration.
E)None of these is correct.

Question 14

Compared to Skinner's approach,Bandura's theory is more

A)cognitive.
B)environmental.
C)deterministic.
D)psychoanalytic.

Question 15

List and describe the components of Bandura's theory of self-regulation.

Question 16

The notion that behavior is a consequence of a mutual interaction of three forces is what Bandura calls

A)triadic reciprocal causation.
B)higher cognitive processes.
C)radical behaviorism.
D)coincidental conduct.
E)balanced counteraction.

Question 17

Bandura's triadic reciprocal causation assumes that personal conduct is a function of

A)the environment.
B)the person.
C)behavior.
D)All of these are correct.

Question 18

Bandura believes that cognition

A)is solely responsible for behavior.
B)serves as an autonomous force within the person.
C)is determined by behavior and environment.
D)all of these are correct.
E)none of these is correct.

Question 19

Skinner believed that there is no learning without reinforcement.Bandura

A)agrees with Skinner's observation.
B)agrees with Skinner but also stresses vicarious learning.
C)asserts that learning is a consequence of the environment.
D)believes that cognition is unnecessary for learning.

Question 20

Bandura calls situations in life beyond one's deliberate control

A)chance encounters.
B)fortuitous events.
C)neither of these.
D)both of these.

Question 21

Like most people,Madison relies on other people such as the police,the fire department,and mechanics to exercise indirect control over her life.Bandura calls this situation

A)proxy agency.
B)external reliance.
C)collective efficacy.
D)personal efficacy.

Question 22

Ordinarily,the strongest source of self-efficacy,according to Bandura,is

A)performance.
B)vicarious experience.
C)verbal persuasion.
D)physiological arousal.
E)internal standards of conduct.

Question 23

According to Bandura,disengagement of internal control is most likely to occur when

A)a lawbreaker on trial attempts to convince the judge or jury of her innocence.
B)an otherwise law-abiding citizen attempts to convince himself that his criminal acts are justified.
C)the unconscious mind gains control of the conscious mind.
D)the conscious mind gains control of the unconscious mind.

Question 24

Bandura believes that both external and internal factors play a role in self-regulation.An example of an internal factor would be

A)performance attribution.
B)monetary reinforcers.
C)praise and encouragement.
D)punishment.

Question 25

According to Bandura,in general,intense physiological arousal

A)raises efficacy expectations.
B)lowers efficacy expectations.
C)initially lowers efficacy expectations,but later it rapidly increases efficacy.
D)has no effect on self-efficacy.

Question 26

Bandura claims that self-efficacy can be increased or decreased through

A)vicarious experiences.
B)emotional arousal.
C)performance accomplishments.
D)All of these are correct.

Question 27

Bandura believes that

A)self-efficacy and self-concept are synonymous.
B)self-efficacy is another term for locus of control.
C)people have different levels of self-efficacy in different situations.
D)high levels of self-efficacy generalize to widely different situations.

Question 28

Harrison,a professional photographer,is dissatisfied with his latest work,judging several pictures as substandard by his own criteria.Bandura would say that Harrison will probably

A)learn to live with substandard performance.
B)reward himself for his substandard performance.
C)withhold reward for substandard performance.
D)become psychologically disturbed.

Question 29

Which of these is NOT listed by Bandura as a mechanism through which behavior is disengaged from self-evaluative consequences?

A)physical flight or running away
B)displacement or diffusion of responsibility
C)dehumanization of the victim
D)minimizing or ignoring consequences

Question 30

According to Bandura,collective efficacy

A)springs from a collective mind.
B)stems from the personal efficacy of many people working together.
C)is more likely than personal efficacy to help a person quit smoking.
D)is opposed to personal efficacy in Bandura's theory.

Question 31

The concept that individuals respond positively or negatively to their behavior,depending upon how it measures up to their personal standards,is a process Bandura calls

A)self-reaction.
B)disinhibition.
C)self-monitoring.
D)self-efficacy.

Question 32

In Bandura's view,self-efficacy is most likely to be increased when

A)failure strengthens one's determination to succeed on future projects.
B)one successfully performs a difficult task.
C)one's best efforts fall a little short of success.
D)one observes others failing at a task.

Question 33

The first requirement for internal self-regulation,according to Bandura,is

A)a specific plan of action.
B)self-observation.
C)free will.
D)a non-hostile environment.
E)accurate modeling.

Question 34

According to Bandura,in self-regulation,we may judge the worth of our actions on the basis of

A)personal standards.
B)performance attribution.
C)a standard of reference.
D)the value we place on those actions.
E)All of these are correct.

Question 35

The confidence people have that their combined efforts will produce social change is what Bandura calls

A)socialism.
B)collective efficacy.
C)personal efficacy.
D)democracy.

Question 36

According to Bandura,collective efficacy is lowered when

A)people believe that events in another part of the world affect them.
B)people feel overwhelmed by the Internet.
C)ice storms cut power to people's homes for several days.
D)All of these are correct.

Question 37

Megan compares her test grade with that of other class members to determine her test performance.She is using which of Bandura's judgmental processes?

A)personal standards
B)standards of reference
C)performance attribution
D)positive reinforcement

Question 38

Selective activation refers to Bandura's belief that self-regulatory influences

A)are activated by an automatic controlling agent.
B)narrow a person's field of perception.
C)operate only when they are activated.
D)are activated by environmental factors.

Question 39

Erick is confident that he has the skills and abilities to be an excellent professional baseball player.However,he is uncertain whether he will be offered a job as a player.Thus,according to Bandura,he has ______ efficacy expectations and _______ outcome expectations.

A)high; high
B)low; high
C)high; low
D)low; low

Question 40

In Bandura's view,vicarious experiences are likely to have their strongest effect on self-efficacy when the observer

A)has a high level of physiological arousal.
B)sees a person of equal ability succeed.
C)has a high level of locus of control.
D)has extensive experience with the activity.
E)has maximized the use of disengagement techniques.

Question 41

Much of Bandura's theory and research on dysfunctional behaviors has centered around aggression and

A)phobias.
B)schizophrenia.
C)sexual disorders.
D)senility.

Question 42

The bureaucrat who answers criticism by responding "That's the way things are done around here" is using Bandura's disengagement technique of

A)palliative comparison.
B)displacement of responsibility.
C)diffusing responsibility.
D)euphemistic labeling.
E)moral justification.

Question 43

In Bandura's framework,selective activation and disengagement of internal control

A)let a person minimize responsibility in an ambiguous situation.
B)are nearly identical to Freud's concept of defense mechanisms.
C)operate unconsciously and automatically.
D)are attempts to justify to others one's own reprehensible behavior.

Question 44

Bandura sees modeling as

A)a more specific concept than imitation.
B)synonymous with mimicry.
C)an important method of learning.
D)being the most important type of learning for high-status people.

Question 45

A rapist excuses his violent assault on his victim by claiming the she provoked the attack by dressing provocatively.According to Bandura,this technique of disengagement is

A)minimizing consequences.
B)ignoring consequences.
C)moral justification.
D)dehumanizing the victim.
E)blaming the victim.

Question 46

Bandura claims that learning through modeling is

A)an inefficient means of acquiring behaviors.
B)impossible before the acquisition of language.
C)facilitated by self-monitoring during performance.
D)most efficient under conditions of low motivation.

Question 47

For Bandura,learning through modeling involves

A)adding and subtracting from the observed behavior.
B)generalizing from one observation to another.
C)symbolically representing information.
D)none of these is correct.
E)all of these are correct.

Question 48

With regard to learning,Bandura believes that

A)reinforcement does not facilitate learning.
B)reinforcement is essential to learning.
C)performance is the basic datum of psychological science.
D)learning can occur in the absence of a response.

Question 49

Bandura holds that reinforcement is

A)cognitively mediated.
B)automatic.
C)a function of the environment.
D)a function of the individual's history.
E)an unnecessary concept for learning theory.

Question 50

A hired killer refers to murdering another person as a "contract" or a "hit".This is an example of Bandura's disengagement technique of

A)palliative comparison.
B)moral justification.
C)euphemistic labels.
D)diffusing responsibility.

Question 51

Bandura recognizes all of these as processes that govern observational learning EXCEPT

A)attention.
B)representation.
C)motivation.
D)reinforcement.
E)behavioral production.

Question 52

In modeling,Bandura claims people are most likely to attend to

A)children.
B)attractive models.
C)people of lower social status.
D)All of these are correct.

Question 53

A government official who sanctions spying on and brutal physical harassment of legitimate,nonviolent demonstrators because "they are a threat to national security" is using Bandura's disengagement technique of

A)moral justification.
B)palliative comparison.
C)rationalization.
D)personal attribution.

Question 54

Bandura discusses which two major types of learning?

A)observational and enactive
B)engaged and disengaged
C)instinctive and acquired
D)conscious and unconscious
E)skillful and unskillful

Question 55

A terrorist dismisses the death of one hostage as unimportant in comparison to the hundreds of his comrades killed by government security forces.This illustrates Bandura's disengagement technique of

A)displacement.
B)euphemistic labeling.
C)personal attribution.
D)diffusing responsibility.
E)palliative comparison.

Question 56

According to Bandura,observing a model being punished for performance will decrease one's likelihood of

A)attending to the modeled behavior.
B)cognitively representing the performance.
C)acquiring the modeled behavior.
D)performing the modeled behavior.

Question 57

In Bandura's disengagement technique of displacement of responsibility,the consequences of one's actions are minimized by

A)creating moral justifications for others' behavior.
B)euphemistically labeling one's actions as harmless and beneficial.
C)dehumanizing the victims of one's actions.
D)placing responsibility on an outside source.

Question 58

Bandura sees dysfunctional behaviors as

A)expressions of a frustrated drive toward dominance or power.
B)character weaknesses.
C)strivings for self-fulfillment.
D)initiated and maintained based on social learning principles.

Question 59

A parent injures a child with a severe beating,but explains that one should not spare the rod because that may spoil the child.This illustrates Bandura's disengagement technique of

A)minimizing consequences.
B)ignoring consequences.
C)misconstruing consequences.
D)dehumanization.
E)euphemistic labeling.

Question 60

In order for observational learning to lead to new response patterns,Bandura claims that those patterns must be

A)symbolically represented in memory.
B)physically enacted immediately.
C)followed by reinforcement on a continuous schedule.
D)attended to in an accurate and unbiased manner.

Question 61

According to Bandura,depressed individuals are inclined to punish themselves severely for poor performance.This illustrates a distortion of

A)self-observation.
B)judgmental processes.
C)self-reaction.
D)self-consciousness.
E)self-activation.

Question 62

Bandura's approach to therapy emphasizes

A)behavioral change and self-regulation.
B)minimizing disengagement.
C)exploration of dreams and fantasies.
D)the use of continuous positive reinforcement.
E)the discrimination of the effects of punishment.

Question 63

Bandura believes that ______ is a mechanism common to all successful therapy techniques.

A)cognitive mediation
B)unconscious motivation
C)increased arousal
D)enhanced disengagement
E)external reinforcement

Question 64

Which two terms best fit Bandura's concept of personality?

A)plastic and flexible
B)consistent and stable
C)reactive and proactive
D)choice and responsibility

Question 65

On the issue of determinism versus free will,Bandura favors a position that emphasizes

A)freedom.
B)determinism.
C)partial determinism.
D)None of these is correct.

Question 66

To Bandura,the ultimate goal of therapy is

A)self-actualization.
B)the recovery of repressed experiences.
C)the elimination of all major problems.
D)self-regulation.

Question 67

In his approach to therapy,Bandura sees three levels of treatment: induction of change,generalization,and

A)extinction of old dysfunctional behaviors.
B)maintenance of newly acquired functional behaviors.
C)discrimination between functional and dysfunctional behaviors.
D)spontaneous recovery of old functional behaviors.

Question 68

Bandura claims that phobias are difficult to extinguish because they

A)are a result of mental illness.
B)stem from imbalances of neurotransmitters in the brain.
C)are not affected by reinforcement.
D)are maintained by avoidant behavior.

Question 69

The classical study where children were exposed to models acting aggressively was conducted by Bandura,Ross,and Ross.These authors found that,after mild frustration,

A)girls behaved more aggressively than boys.
B)children displayed no more aggression that a control group of children exposed to non-aggressive models.
C)children exposed to a cartoon model displayed as much aggression as those exposed to a live model.
D)children exposed to a film model were about twice as aggressive as those exposed to a live model.

Question 70

Bandura's treatment technique that involves the extinction of anxiety or fear through self- or therapist-induced relaxation is

A)overt modeling of behavior.
B)vicarious modeling.
C)systematic desensitization.
D)enactive mastery.

Question 71

Basically,Bandura views humans as

A)aggressive animals.
B)driven by the master motive of self-actualization.
C)cognitive animals.
D)completely free to choose their own actions.

Question 72

Bandura's treatment mode in which clients are trained to visualize models performing fearful behaviors is

A)overt modeling.
B)covert modeling.
C)vicarious modeling.
D)active imagination.
E)enactive mastery.

Question 73

Bandura believes that motivation to change dysfunctional behavior is enhanced by

A)setting realistic goals.
B)receiving feedback on performance.
C)neither of these.
D)both of these.

Question 74

Bandura contends that aggressive behavior can result from

A)observational learning.
B)direct reinforcement.
C)training or instruction.
D)bizarre beliefs.
E)All of these are correct.

Question 75

A notable feature of Bandura's theory is

A)the little research generated.
B)its reliance on speculation in the absence of empirical data.
C)its high internal consistency.
D)its reliance on hypothetical concepts.

Question 76

In his concept of humanity,Bandura assumes that

A)people are motivated more by genetics than by social influences.
B)unconscious factors are more influential than conscious ones.
C)people automatically strive for self-actualization.
D)people are goal-directed,purposive,and anticipate the future.