Social Cognitive Theory and Motivation

By D. Schunk, E. Usher. The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, 2012

339 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Social cognitive theory is a theory of human behavior that emphasizes learning from the social environment. This chapter focuses on Bandura’s social cognitive theory, which postulates reciprocal interactions among personal, behavioral, and social/environmental factors. Persons use various vicarious, symbolic, and self-regulatory processes as they strive to develop a sense of agency in their lives. Key motivational processes are goals and self-evaluations of progress, outcome expectations, values, social comparisons, and self-efficacy. People set goals and evaluate their goal progress. The perception of progress sustains self-efficacy and motivation. Individuals act in accordance with their values and strive for outcomes they desire. Social comparisons with others provide further information on their learning and goal attainment. Self-efficacy is a critical influence on motivation and affects task choices, effort, persistence, and achievement. Recommendations are made for future research.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, General Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/58719bce24ff6986738b102e1fe47ac9a688444a

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Citations in the corpus

Perseverant grit and self-efficacy: Are both essential for children’s academic success? (2019, background): “Unlike other theories that relegate full explanatory power to the controlling environment (e.g., behaviorism) or to unseen inner impulses (e.g., psychoanalysis), social cognitive theory emphasizes the role of personal agency in human development and performance (Schunk & Usher, 2012).”
The Sources of Self-Efficacy (2016, background): “The relative influence of each source of self-efficacy has been found to vary according to contextual factors such as gender, ethnicity, culture, values, ability, and domain (Schunk & Usher, 2012; Usher & Pajares, 2008).”
The Impact of Writing Anxiety, Writing Achievement Motivation, and Writing Self-Efficacy on Writing Performance: A Correlational Study of Iraqi Tertiary EFL Learners (2019, methodology): “An individual with high self-efficacy in writing may have more interest and make more effort to perform a writing task (Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2016; Schunk & Usher, 2012).”
Designing for Motivation, Engagement and Wellbeing in Digital Experience (2018, methodology): “In their paper, which provides guidance to HCI researchers on the use of behavioral theories, they discuss behavior change models such as TPB (Ajzen, 1991), Self-Eﬃcacy Theory (Bandura, 1996; Schunk and Usher, 2012), and SDT (Ryan and Deci, 2000b, 2017).”