Question

1. Bandura considered personality as an interaction between three components: the environment, behavior, and one’s psychological processes (one’s ability to entertain images in minds and language). Compare and contrast this view with traditional behaviorist views on learning.

Answer 1

According to psychologist Albert Bandura, reciprocal determinism is a model composed of three factors that influence behavior: the environment, the individual, and the behavior itself. According to this theory, an individual's behavior influences and is influenced by both the social world and personal characteristics.

Comparisons between Bandura and Skinner( a traditional behaviourist)

Bandura's theory differs from Skinner's, because of the expectation that not only can an individual operate on their environment to produce or avoid consequences, but they can also learn behavior by observing indirect consequences, which were not a product of their own actions in an environment.

They were both behaviorists, psychologists interested in explaining how behavior is developed by specifically focusing on learning as an effect by an enviromental stimulus.

Both Skinner's operant conditioning theory and Bandura's social learning theory include enviroment as an important factor to an individual's learning development, but diverge in their views of biology being an aspect in learning.