Or why your personality seems to shift depending on who you’re with and what you’re doing?
Some psychologists suggest that this can be explained by something called reciprocal determinism.
This concept plays a central role in Bandura’ssocial learning theory.
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Skinner’stheory of operant conditioning, argued that the environment always controlled peoples behavior.
Such theories suggested that people were just passive recipients of environmental influences.
For example, consider a kid who acts out because they don’t like school.
The teacher responds by scolding them, making them dislike school more.
It’s a cycle where the thoughts, behaviors, and environment all feed into one another.
Behavior refers to anything you do that might be rewarded or punished.
Environmental Factors in Reciprocal Determinism
Behaviors don’t occur in isolation.
The environmental component refers to the context in which the behavior occurs.
It’s more than a person’s physical environmentit also includes their social environment.
This individual component includes all the characteristics that have been rewarded in the past.
The behavior itself is something that may or may not be reinforced at any given time or situation.
It’s an example of how positive environmental factors can have a beneficial impact on individual thoughts and behaviors.
Self-efficacy represents a personal factor in reciprocal determinism.
Applications for Reciprocal Determinism
Reciprocal determinism isn’t just a theoretical conceptit also has important real-world applications.
Remember, the behaviorists suggested that it was the environment that almost entirely shaped individual behavior.
Meanwhile, Bandura recognized the importance of thebidirectional relationshipbetween individuals, their behaviors, and the environment.
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United Kingdom, Prentice Hall, 1977.
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Smith MA.Social learning and addiction.Behav Brain Res.
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- Pastorino, Ellen E., and Doyle-Portillo, Susann M.What is Psychology?
Foundations, Applications, and Integration.
United States, Cengage Learning, 2018.
