The Self System in Reciprocal Determinism

Explanations of human behavior have generally favored unidirectional causal models emphasizing either environmental or internal determinants of behavior. In social learning theory, causal processes are conceptualized in terms of reciprocal determinism. Viewed from this perspective, psychological functioning involves a continuous reciprocal interaction between behavioral, cognitive, and environmental influences. The major controversies between unidirectional and reciprocal models of human behavior center on the issue of self influences. A self system within the framework of social learning theory comprises cognitive structures and subjunctions for perceiving, evaluating, and regulating behavior, not a psychic agent that controls action. The influential role of the self system in reciprocal determinism is documented through a reciprocal analysis of self-regulatory processes. Reciprocal determinism is proposed as a basic analytic principle for analyzing psychosocial phenomena at the level of intrapersonal development, interpersonal transactions, and interactive functioning of organizational and social systems. Recent years have witnessed a heightened interest in the basic conceptions of human nature underlying different psychological theories. This interest stems in part from growing recognition of how such conceptions delimit research to selected processes and are in turn shaped by findings of paradigms embodying the particular view. As psychological knowledge is converted to behavioral technologies, the models of human behavior on which research is premised have important social as well as theoretical implications (Bandura, 1974). Explanations of human behavior have generally been couched in terms of a limited set of determinants, usually portrayed as operating in a unidirectional manner. Exponents of environmental determinism study and theorize about how behavior is controlled by situational influences. Those favoring personal determinism seek the causes of human behavior in dispositional sources in the form of instincts, drives, traits, and other motivational forces within the individual. Interactionists attempt to accommodate both situational 344 • APRIL 1978 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST Copyright 1978 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/78/3304-0344$00.7S and dispositional factors, but within an essentially unidirectional view of behavioral processes. The present article analyzes the various causal models and the role of self influences in behavior from the perspective of reciprocal determinism. Unidirectional environmental determinism is carried to its extreme in the more radical forms of behaviorism. It is not that the interdependence of personal and environmental influences is never acknowledged by advocates of this point of view. Indeed, Skinner (1971) has often commented on the capacity for countercontrol. However, the notion of countercontrol portrays the environment as the instigating force to which individuals can counteract. As will be shown later, people create and activate environments as well as rebut them. A further conceptual problem is that having been acknowledged, the reality of reciprocal interdependence is negated and the preeminent control of behavior by the environment is repeatedly reasserted (e.g., "A person does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him," Skinner, 1971, p. 211). The environment thus becomes an autonomous force that automatically shapes, orchestrates, and controls behavior. Whatever allusions are made to two-way processes, environmental rule clearly emerges as the reigning metaphor in the operant view of reality. There exists no shortage of advocates of alternative theories emphasizing the personal determination of environments. Humanists and existentialists, who stress the human capacity for conscious judgment and intentional action, contend that individuals determine what they become by their own free choices. Most psychologists find conceptions of human behavior in terms of unidirectional personal determinism as unsatisfying as those espousing unidirectional environmental determinism. Preparation of this article was facilitated by Public Health Research Grant M-S162 from the National Institute of Mental Health and by the James McKeen Cattell Award. Requests for reprints should be sent to Albert Bandura, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 9430S. To contend that mind creates reality fails to acknowledge that environmental influences partly determine what people attend to, perceive, and think. To contend further that the methods of natural science are incapable of dealing with personal determinants of behavior does not enlist many supporters from the ranks of those who are moved more by empirical evidence than by philosophic discourse. Social learning theory (Bandura, 1974, 1977b) analyzes behavior in terms of reciprocal determinism. The term determinism is used here to signify the production of effects by events, rather than in the doctrinal sense that actions are completely determined by a prior sequence of causes independent of the individual. Because of the complexity of interacting factors, events produce effects probabilistically rather than inevitably. In their transactions with the environment, people are not simply reactors to external stimulation. Most external influences affect behavior through intermediary cognitive processes. Cognitive factors partly determine which external events will be observed, how they will be perceived, whether they have any lasting effects, what valence and efficacy they have, and how the information they convey will be organized for future use. The extraordinary capacity of humans to use symbols enables them to engage in reflective thought, to create, and to plan foresightful courses of action in thought rather than having to perform possible options and suffer the consequences of thoughtless action. By altering their immediate environment, by creating cognitive self-inducements, and by arranging conditional incentives for themselves, people can exercise some influence over their own behavior. An act therefore includes among its determinants self-produced influences. It is true that behavior is influenced by the environment, but the environment is partly of a person's own making. By their actions, people play a role in creating the social milieu and other circumstances that arise in their daily transactions. Thus, from the social learning perspective, psychological functioning involves a continuous reciprocal interaction between behavioral, cognitive, and environmental influences. Reciprocal Determinism and Interactionism Over the years the locus of the causes of behavior has been debated in personality and social psychology in terms of dispositional and situational UNIDIRECTIONAL