The Self System in Reciprocal Determinism - Semantic Scholar · The Self System in Reciprocal Determinism ALBERT BANDURA Stanford University ABSTRACT: Explanations of human behavior

The Self System in Reciprocal Determinism

ALBERT BANDURA Stanford University

ABSTRACT: Explanations of human behavior havegenerally favored unidirectional causal models empha-sizing either environmental or internal determinantsof behavior. In social learning theory, causal proc-esses are conceptualized in terms of reciprocal deter-minism. Viewed from this perspective, psychologicalfunctioning involves a continuous reciprocal interac-tion between behavioral, cognitive, and environmentalinfluences. The major controversies between unidi-rectional and reciprocal models of human behaviorcenter on the issue of self influences. A self systemwithin the framework of social learning theory com-prises cognitive structures and subjunctions for per-ceiving, evaluating, and regulating behavior, not apsychic agent that controls action. The influential roleof the self system in reciprocal determinism is docu-mented through a reciprocal analysis of self-regulatoryprocesses. Reciprocal determinism is proposed as abasic analytic principle for analyzing psychosocialphenomena at the level of intrapersonal development,interpersonal transactions, and interactive functioningof organizational and social systems.

Recent years have witnessed a heightened interestin the basic conceptions of human nature under-lying different psychological theories. This in-terest stems in part from growing recognition ofhow such conceptions delimit research to selectedprocesses and are in turn shaped by findings ofparadigms embodying the particular view. Aspsychological knowledge is converted to behavioraltechnologies, the models of human behavior onwhich research is premised have important socialas well as theoretical implications (Bandura,1974).

Explanations of human behavior have generallybeen couched in terms of a limited set of determi-nants, usually portrayed as operating in a uni-directional manner. Exponents of environmentaldeterminism study and theorize about how be-havior is controlled by situational influences.Those favoring personal determinism seek thecauses of human behavior in dispositional sourcesin the form of instincts, drives, traits, and othermotivational forces within the individual. Inter-actionists attempt to accommodate both situational

344 • APRIL 1978 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGISTCopyright 1978 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0003-066X/78/3304-0344$00.7S

and dispositional factors, but within an essentiallyunidirectional view of behavioral processes. Thepresent article analyzes the various causal modelsand the role of self influences in behavior fromthe perspective of reciprocal determinism.

Unidirectional environmental determinism iscarried to its extreme in the more radical formsof behaviorism. It is not that the interdependenceof personal and environmental influences is neveracknowledged by advocates of this point of view.Indeed, Skinner (1971) has often commented onthe capacity for countercontrol. However, the no-tion of countercontrol portrays the environmentas the instigating force to which individuals cancounteract. As will be shown later, people createand activate environments as well as rebut them.A further conceptual problem is that having beenacknowledged, the reality of reciprocal interde-pendence is negated and the preeminent controlof behavior by the environment is repeatedly re-asserted (e.g., "A person does not act upon theworld, the world acts upon him," Skinner, 1971,p. 211). The environment thus becomes an auton-omous force that automatically shapes, orches-trates, and controls behavior. Whatever allusionsare made to two-way processes, environmental ruleclearly emerges as the reigning metaphor in theoperant view of reality.

There exists no shortage of advocates of alterna-tive theories emphasizing the personal determina-tion of environments. Humanists and existential-ists, who stress the human capacity for consciousjudgment and intentional action, contend that in-dividuals determine what they become by theirown free choices. Most psychologists find concep-tions of human behavior in terms of unidirectionalpersonal determinism as unsatisfying as those es-pousing unidirectional environmental determinism.

Preparation of this article was facilitated by PublicHealth Research Grant M-S162 from the National Instituteof 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 toacknowledge that environmental influences partlydetermine what people attend to, perceive, andthink. To contend further that the methods ofnatural science are incapable of dealing with per-sonal determinants of behavior does not enlistmany supporters from the ranks of those who aremoved more by empirical evidence than by philo-sophic discourse.

Social learning theory (Bandura, 1974, 1977b)analyzes behavior in terms of reciprocal determin-ism. The term determinism is used here to signifythe production of effects by events, rather thanin the doctrinal sense that actions are completelydetermined by a prior sequence of causes inde-pendent of the individual. Because of the com-plexity of interacting factors, events produce effectsprobabilistically rather than inevitably. In theirtransactions with the environment, people are notsimply reactors to external stimulation. Most ex-ternal influences affect behavior through inter-mediary cognitive processes. Cognitive factorspartly determine which external events will be ob-served, how they will be perceived, whether theyhave any lasting effects, what valence and efficacythey have, and how the information they conveywill be organized for future use. The extraordi-nary capacity of humans to use symbols enablesthem to engage in reflective thought, to create,and to plan foresightful courses of action inthought rather than having to perform possibleoptions and suffer the consequences of thoughtlessaction. By altering their immediate environment,by creating cognitive self-inducements, and by ar-ranging conditional incentives for themselves,people can exercise some influence over their ownbehavior. An act therefore includes among itsdeterminants self-produced influences.

It is true that behavior is influenced by theenvironment, but the environment is partly of aperson's own making. By their actions, peopleplay a role in creating the social milieu and othercircumstances that arise in their daily transactions.Thus, from the social learning perspective, psycho-logical functioning involves a continuous reciprocalinteraction between behavioral, cognitive, and en-vironmental influences.

Reciprocal Determinism and Interactionism

Over the years the locus of the causes of behaviorhas been debated in personality and social psy-chology in terms of dispositional and situational

UNIDIRECTIONAL

B=f(P,E)

PARTIALLY BIDIRECTIONAL

RECIPROCAL

B-

Figure 1. Schematic representation of threealternative conceptions of interaction. B signifiesbehavior, P the cognitive and other internal eventsthat can affect perceptions and actions, and E theexternal environment.

determinants of conduct. Most of the participantsin the controversy eventually adopted the positionthat behavior results from the interaction of per-sons and situations rather than from either factoralone (Bowers, 1973; Endler & Magnusson, 1975).However, these views of interactionism and theaccompanying methodologies essentially retain aunidirectional orientation toward behavior.

Interaction processes have been conceptualizedin three fundamentally different ways. Thesealternative formulations are summarized schemati-cally in Figure 1. In the unidirectional notion ofinteraction, persons and situations are treated asindependent entities that combine to produce be-havior. This commonly held view can be calledinto question on both conceptual and empiricalgrounds. Personal and environmental factors donot function as independent determinants; rather,they determine each other. Nor can "persons"be considered causes independent of their behavior.It is largely through their actions that peopleproduce the environmental conditions that affecttheir behavior in a reciprocal fashion. The ex-periences generated by behavior also partly de-termine what individuals think, expect, and cando, which in turn, affect their subsequent behavior.

A second conception of interaction acknowledgesthat personal and environmental influences arebidirectional, but it retains a unidirectional viewof behavior. In this analysis, persons and situa-tions are considered to be interdependent causesof behavior, but behavior is treated as though itwere only a by-product that does not figure at allin the causal process. As previously noted, be-

AMEHICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • APRIL 1978 • 345

havior is an interacting determinant, not simplyan outcome of a "person-situation interaction."

The methodology used to evaluate the precedingconceptualizations relies heavily on factorial de-signs in which responses of different individualsare measured under varying situational conditions.The data are then analyzed to determine howmuch of the variation in behavior is due to per-sonal characteristics, how much to situational con-ditions, and how much to their joint effects. Theattention of researchers working within this frame-work centers mainly on the dispute over which ofthe components—persons, situations, or Person XSituation—accounts most for variation in behavior.However, the basic weakness in the conceptualscheme (i.e., treating behavior as a dependentrather than as an interdependent factor) goeslargely unnoticed.

In the social learning view of interaction, whichis analyzed as a process of reciprocal determinism(Bandura, 1977b), behavior, internal personal fac-tors, and environmental influences all operate asinterlocking determinants of each other. As shownin Figure 1, the process involves a triadic recipro-cal interaction rather than a dyadic conjoint ora dyadic bidirectional one. We have already notedthat behavior and environmental conditions func-tion as reciprocally interacting determinants. In-ternal personal factors (e.g., conceptions, beliefs,self-perceptions) and behavior also operate as re-ciprocal determinants of each other. For example,people's efficacy and outcome expectations influ-ence how they behave, and the environmental ef-fects created by their actions in turn alter theirexpectations. People activate different, environ-mental reactions, apart from their behavior, bytheir physical characteristics (e.g., size, physiog-nomy, race, sex, attractiveness) and socially con-ferred attributes, roles, and status. The differen-tial social treatment affects recipients' self-concep-tions and actions in ways that either maintain oralter the environmental biases.

The relative influence exerted by these threesets of interlocking factors will vary in differentindividuals and under different circumstances. Insome cases, environmental conditions exercise suchpowerful constraints on behavior that they emergeas the overriding determinants. If, for example,people are dropped in deep water they will allpromptly engage in swimming activities, howeveruniquely varied they might be in their cognitiveand behavioral repertoires. There are times whenbehavior is the central factor in the interlocking

system. One example of this is persons who playfamiliar piano selections for themselves that createa pleasing sensory environment. The behavior isself-regulated over a long period by the sensoryeffects it produces, whereas cognitive activitiesand contextual environmental events are not muchinvolved in the process.

In other instances, cognitive factors serve asthe predominant influence in the regulatory sys-tem. The activation and maintenance of defensivebehavior is a good case in point. False beliefsactivate avoidance responses that keep individualsout of touch with prevailing environmental con-ditions, thus creating a strong reciprocal interac-tion between beliefs and action that is protectedfrom corrective environmental influence. In ex-treme cases, behavior is so powerfully controlledby bizarre internal contingencies that neither thebeliefs nor the accompanying actions are muchaffected even by extremely punishing environmen-tal consequences (Bateson, 1961).

In still other instances, the development andactivation of the three interlocking factors are allhighly interdependent. Television-viewing behav-ior provides an everyday example. Personal pref-erences influence when and which programs, fromamong the available alternatives, individuals chooseto watch on television. Although the potentialtelevised environment is identical for all viewers,the actual televised environment that impinges ongiven individuals depends on what they select towatch. Through their viewing behavior, theypartly shape the nature of the future televisedenvironment. Because production costs and com-mercial requirements also determine what peopleare shown, the options provided in the televised en-vironment partly shape the viewers' preferences.Here, all three factors—viewer preferences, view-ing behavior, and televised offerings—reciprocallyaffect each other.

The methodology for elucidating psychologicalprocesses requires analysis of sequential interac-tions between the triadic, interdependent factorswithin the interlocking system. Investigations ofreciprocal processes have thus far rarely, if ever,examined more than two of the interacting factorssimultaneously. Some studies analyze how cog-nitions and behavior affect each other in a recipro-cal fashion (Bandura, 1977a; Bandura & Adams,1977). More often, however, the sequential anal-ysis centers on how social behavior and environ-ment determine each other. In these studies ofdyadic exchanges, behavior creates certain condi-

346 • APRIL 1978 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST

tions and is, in turn, altered by the very conditionsit creates (Bandura, Lipsher, & Miller, 1960; Pat-terson, 1975; Raush, Barry, Hertel, & Swain,1974; Thomas & Martin, 1976).

From the perspective of reciprocal determinism,the common practice of searching for the ultimateenvironmental cause of behavior is an idle exer-cise because, in an interactional process, one andthe same event can be a stimulus, a response, oran environmental reinforcer, depending on wherein the sequence the analysis arbitrarily begins.Figure 2, which represents a sequence of reactionsof two persons (A and B), shows how the sameevents change their status from stimuli, to re-sponses, to environmental reinforcers, at differententry points in the flow of the two-way inter-action. For example, event A2 is an environmentalstimulus in the third point of entry, a response inthe second analysis, and an environmental rein-forcer in the first analysis. One cannot speak of"behavior" and its "controlling environmental con-ditions" as though these two factors were funda-mentally different events.

The preceding analysis focused only on the de-pendencies among acts, and how they change fromresponses to environmental events in the flow ofinteraction. However, regulatory processes are notgoverned solely by the reciprocal influence of ante-cedent and consequent acts. While behaving,people are also cognitively appraising the progres-sion of events. Their thoughts about the probableeffects of prospective actions partly determine howacts are affected by their immediate environmentalconsequences. Consider, for example, investiga-tions of reciprocal coercive behavior in an ongoingdyadic interaction. In discordant families, coer-cive behavior by one member tends to elicit coer-cive counteractions from recipients in a mutualescalation of aggression (Patterson, 1975). How-ever, coercion often does not produce coercivecounteractions. To increase the predictive powerof a theory of behavior, it is necessary to broadenthe analysis to include cognitive factors that op-erate in the interlocking system. Counterresponsesto antecedent acts are influenced not only by theirimmediate effects but also by judgments of laterconsequences for a given course of action. Thus,aggressive children will continue, or even escalate,coercive behavior in the face of immediate punish-ment when they expect persistence eventually togain them what they seek. But the same momen-tary punishment will serve as an inhibitor ratherthan as an enhancer of coercion when they expect

Al

s'—

A2 B2 A3

_R ^sreinf.

st ^R ^sreinf .

st ^R ^sreinf.

Figure 2. Illustration of how the same be-havioral event can be an antecedent stimulus, aresponse, or a reinforcing consequent depending onwhere one arbitrarily begins the analysis in theflow of a social interaction. The A's are successiveresponses by one person, and the B's are successiveresponses by the second person in the dyadic in-teraction. S* represents stimulus; R representsresponse; and S1'''1"* represents reinforcer.

continuance of the aversive conduct to be in-effective.

The predictive value of momentary reciprocalconsequences derives partly from people's expecta-tions of how their actions are likely to changefuture consequences over the course of sequentialinterchanges. Findings from several lines of re-search document how cognitive factors alter thefunctional relationship between actions and out-comes. The degree to which behavior is influencedby its momentary effects depends on people's be-liefs about action-outcome contingencies (Baron,Kaufman, & Stauber, 1969; Estes, 1972; Kauf-man, Baron, & Kopp, 1966; Spielberger & DeNike,1966), the meaning they attribute to the out-comes (Dulany, 1968), and their expectations thatpersistence in a given course of behavior will even-tually alter people's reinforcement practices (Ban-dura & Barab, 1971).

In the above studies, cognitive influences serveas controlling rather than controllable factors.But cognitions do not arise in a vacuum, nor dothey function as autonomous determinants of be-havior. In the social learning analysis of cogni-tive development, conceptions about oneself andthe nature of the environment are developed andverified through four different processes (Bandura,1977b). People derive much of their knowledgefrom direct experience of the effects produced bytheir actions. Indeed, most theories of cognitivedevelopment, whether they favor behavioristic, in-formation-processing, or Piagetian orientations,focus almost exclusively on cognitive changethrough feedback from direct experimentation.However, results of one's own actions are not thesole source of knowledge. Information about the

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • APKIL 1978 • 347

nature of things is frequently extracted from vi-carious experience. In this mode of verification,observation of the effects produced by somebodyelse's actions serves as the source and authentica-tion of thoughts.

There are many things we cannot come to knowby direct or vicarious experience because of lim-ited accessibility or because the matters involvemetaphysical ideas that are not subject to objectiveconfirmation. When experiential verification iseither difficult or impossible, people develop andevaluate their conceptions of things in terms ofthe judgments voiced by others. In addition toenactive, vicarious, and social sources of thoughtverification, all of which rely on external influences,logical verification also enters into the process,especially in later phases of development. Afterpeople acquire some rules of inference, they canevaluate the soundness of their reasoning and de-rive from what they already know new knowledgeabout things that extend beyond their experiences.

External influences play a role not only in thedevelopment of cognitions but in their activationas well. Different sights, smells, and sounds willelicit quite different trains of thought. Thus,while it is true that conceptions govern behavior,the conceptions themselves are partly fashionedfrom direct or mediated transactions with the en-vironment. A complete analysis of reciprocal de-terminism therefore requires investigation of howall three sets of factors—cognitive, behavioral, andenvironmental—interact reciprocally among them-selves. Contrary to common misconception, sociallearning theory does not disregard personal de-terminants of behavior. Within this perspective,such determinants are treated as integral, dynamicfactors in causal processes rather than as statictrait dimensions.

Self-Regulatory Functions of theSelf System

The differences between unidirectional and recip-rocal analyses of behavior have been drawn mostsharply in the area of self-regulatory phenomena.Exponents of radical behaviorism have always dis-avowed any construct of self for fear that it wouldusher in psychic agents and divert attention fromphysical to experiential reality. While this ap-proach encompasses a large set of environmentalfactors, it assumes that self-generated influenceseither do not exist or, if they do, that they have

no effect upon behavior. Internal events aretreated simply as an intermediate link in a causalchain. Since environmental conditions presumablycreate the intermediate link, one can explain be-havior in terms of external factors without re-course to any internal determinants. Through aconceptual bypass, cognitive determinants are thusexcised from the analysis of causal processes.

In contrast to the latter view, internal deter-minants of behavior are gaining increasing atten-tion in contemporary theorizing and research. In-deed, self-referent processes occupy a central posi-tion in social learning theory (Bandura, 1977b).As will be shown later, self-generated events can-not be relegated to a redundant explanatory link.In the triadic reciprocal system, they not onlyoperate as reciprocal determinants of behavior butthey play a role in the perception and formationof the environmental influences themselves.

Self influences have traditionally been concep-tualized in terms of the self-concept (Rogers,1959; Wylie, 1974). In these approaches, self-conceptions are measured by having people ratein one way or another evaluative statements thatthey consider apply to themselves. The principalthesis that self-conceptions determine psychologi-cal functioning is then tested by correlating self-concepts or disparities between actual-ideal selveswith various indexes of adjustment, attitudes, andbehavior.

One can point to several features of self theoriesof this type that detract from their explanatoryand predictive power. For the most part, they areconcerned with global self-images. A global viewof what people think of themselves cannot pos-sibly account for the wide variations they typicallyshow in their self-reactions under different situa-tional circumstances, on different activities, andat different times. A postulated internal determi-nant cannot be less complex than its effects. An-other limitation of self theories is that they failto specify in sufficient detail how self-conceptsregulate specific actions.

In social learning theory, a self system is not apsychic agent that controls behavior. Rather, itrefers to cognitive structures that provide refer-ence mechanisms and to a set of subfunctions forthe perception, evaluation, and regulation of be-havior. Before proceeding to a reciprocal analysisof self influences, the processes by which peopleexercise some control over their own behavior willbe reviewed briefly.


SELF-OBSERVATION

PERFORMANCE DIMENSIONS

QUALITY

RATE

QUANTITY

ORIGINALITY

AUTHENTICITY

CONSEQUENTIALNESSDEVIANCY

ETHICALNESS

JUDGMENTAL PROCESS

PERSONAL STANDARDS

MODELING SOURCES

REINFORCEMENT SOURCES

REFERENTIAL PERFORMANCES

STANDARD NORMS

SOCIAL COMPARISON

PERSONAL COMPARISON

COLLECTIVE COMPARISON

VALUATION OF ACTIVITY

REGARDED HIGHLY

NEUTRAL

DEVALUED

PERFORMANCE ATTRIBUTION

PERSONAL LOCUS

EXTERNAL LOCUS

SELF-RESPONSE

SELF-EVALUATIVE REACTIONS

POSITIVE

NEGATIVE

TANGIBLE SELF-APPLIED CONSEQUENCES

REWARDING

PUNISHING

NO SELF-RESPONSE

Figure 3. Component processes in the self-regulation of behaviorby self-prescribed contingencies.

COMPONENT PROCESSES IN SELF-REGULATION

Figure 3 summarizes the different component pro-cesses in the self-regulation of behavior throughself-prescribed contingencies. Behavior typicallyvaries on a number of dimensions, some of whichare listed in the self-observation component. De-pending on value orientations and the functionalsignificance of given activities, people attend se-lectively to certain aspects of their behavior andignore variations on nonrelevant dimensions.

Simply observing variations in one's perform-ances yields some relevant information, but suchdata, in themselves, do not provide any basis forpersonal reactions. Behavior produces self-reac-tions through a judgmental function that includesseveral subsidiary processes. Whether a givenperformance will be regarded as commendable ordissatisfying depends upon the personal standardsagainst which it is evaluated. Actions that mea-sure up to internal standards are appraised favor-ably; those that fall short are judged unsatis-factory.

For most activities, there are no absolute mea-sures of adequacy. The time in which a givendistance is run, the number of points obtained onan achievement test, or the size of charitable con-tributions often do not convey sufficient informa-tion for self-appraisal even when compared withan internal standard. When adequacy is dennedrelationally, performances are evaluated by com-paring them with those of others. The referentialcomparisons may involve standard norms, the per-formances of particular individuals, or the ac-complishments of reference groups.

One's previous behavior is continuously used asthe reference against which ongoing performance isjudged. In this referential process, it is self-com-

parison that supplies the measure of adequacy.Past attainments influence performance appraisalsmainly through their effects on standard setting.After a given level of performance is attained, itis no longer challenging, and new self-satisfactionsare often sought through progressive improvement.

Another important factor in the judgmentalcomponent of self-regulation concerns the evalua-tion of the activities. People do not much carehow they perform on tasks that have little or nosignificance for them. And little effort is expendedon devalued activities. It is mainly in areas affect-ing one's welfare and self-esteem that favorableperformance appraisals activate personal conse-quences (Simon, Note 2).

Self-reactions also vary depending on how peopleperceive the determinants of their behavior. Theytake pride in their accomplishments when theyascribe their successes to their own abilities andefforts. They do not derive much self-satisfaction,however, when they view their performances asheavily dependent on external factors. The sameis true for judgments of failure and blameworthyconduct. People respond self-critically to inade-quate performances for which they hold themselvesresponsible but not to those which they perceiveare due to unusual circumstances or to insufficientcapabilities. Performance appraisals set the occa-sion for self-produced consequences. Favorablejudgments give rise to rewarding self-reactions,whereas unfavorable appraisals activate negativeself-reactions. Performances that are judged tohave no personal significance do not generate anyreactions one way or another.

In the social learning view, self-regulated in-centives alter performance mainly through theirmotivational function (Bandura, 1976). Contin-

AMEKICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • APRIL 1978 • 349

gent self-reward improves performance not becauseit strengthens preceding responses. When peoplemake self-satisfaction or tangible gratificationsconditional upon certain accomplishments, theymotivate themselves to expend the effort neededto attain the desired performances. Both the an-ticipated satisfactions of desired accomplishmentsand the dissatisfactions with insufficient ones pro-vide incentives for actions that increase the likeli-hood of performance attainments.

Much human behavior is regulated through self-evaluative consequences in the form of self-satis-faction, self-pride, self-dissatisfaction, and self-criticism. The act of writing is a familiar exampleof a behavior that is continuously self-regulatedthrough evaluative self-reactions. Writers adopt astandard of what constitutes an acceptable pieceof work. Ideas are generated and rephrased inthought before they are committed to paper. Pro-visional contructions are successively revised untilauthors are satisfied with what they have written.The more exacting the personal standards, themore extensive are the corrective improvements.

People also get themselves to do things theywould otherwise put off by making tangible out-comes conditional upon completing a specified levelof performance. In programs of self-directedchange, individuals improve and maintain behavioron their own over long periods by arranging in-centives for themselves (Bandura, 1976; Goldfried& Merbaum, 1973; Mahoney & Thoresen, 1974).In many instances, activities are regulated throughself-prescribed contingencies involving both evalua-tive and tangible self-rewards. Authors influencehow much they write by making breaks, recrea-tional activities, and other tangible rewards con-tingent on completing a certain amount of work(Wallace, 1977), but they revise and improve whatthey write by their self-evaluative reactions.

Conceptual Bypass oj the Self System

The notion that people can exercise some influenceover their own behavior and change their environ-ment was not enthusiastically received by adher-ents of unidirectional environmental determinism.Alternative conceptions were proposed that wouldmake behavior explainable without postulating anyself-generated influences. One solution is to re-define the phenomenon out of existence. Self-directed change through personally arranged in-centives was relabeled as a process of self-aware-ness (Catania, 197S) or as a stimulus signalling

that a response had been executed (Rachlin,1974). The assumptions on which such redefini-tions are based and the contravening evidence arediscussed at length elsewhere (Bandura, 1976) andneed not be repeated here.

The second, and more commonly used, solutionis to execute a regress of causes. By locating aremote environmental factor that might affect self-reactions, self-generated influences are therebyconverted into simple operants. As Stuart (1972)succinctly put it, "The behaviors commonlyascribed to self-control can be functionally ana-lyzed as a special subset of operant responseswhich are, in fact, under situational control" (p.130). The organism thus becomes simply a re-pository of self-control responses waiting to beexternally activated, but otherwise it possesses nocapacity to generate guides and incentives for itsown actions. But causal regression is a no moreconvincing disposal of self-generated influencesthan is renaming, because for every environmentalcause that is invoked, one can find a prior per-sonal cause of that environment.

Some conceptual regressions of self-generated in-fluences to situational causes treat reciprocal in-fluences as rivalrous or even as confounding fac-tors. This view is exemplified by Jones, Nelson,and Kazdin (1977), who consider external influ-ences to be "plausible rival interpretations" ofthe changes people achieve by arranging condi-tional incentives for themselves. The situationalcontenders in unidirectional analyses assume sev-eral different forms. A commonly cited externalcandidate is "reinforcement history." As Joneset al. (1977) note, self-reward partly dependsupon prior training in how to judge and set stan-dards of performance. This is certainly true.Values and generic standards of self-reward areextracted from diverse experience.

Having external origins, of course, in no waydetracts from the fact that, once established, self-produced influences operate as contributory factorsin the regulation of behavior. Ascribing a gen-eralizable capability to past experiences cannotsubstitute for current influences arising throughexercise of that capability, any more than onewould attribute Shakespeare's literary masterpiecesto his prior instruction in .the mechanics of writing.A undirectional environmentalist might well con-tend that literary creations are products of thesum total of past situational influences. No onewould argue with the view, however limited itspredictive value, that human ingenuity incorpo-


rates some aspects of past experiences. A sociallearning analysis, however, emphasizes the recip-rocally interacting influences of personal and en-vironmental factors in the innovative process. Bytheir actions, people partly determine the natureof their experiences; through their capacity tomanipulate symbols and to engage in reflectivethought for innovative action, they can generatenovel ideas and fashion new environments forthemselves and others.

In laboratory investigations of self-regulatoryprocesses, behavioral standards are transmitted byselective consequences (Bandura & Mahoney,1974; Mahoney, Bandura, Dirks, & Wright, 1974)or through modeling (Bandura, 1976). In educa-tional and clinical applications of self-reinforce-ment practices, the procedures on how to set per-formance goals and regulate one's own behaviorare usually conveyed by instruction. To Joneset al. (1977), instruction on self-influence exterior-izes the locus of regulation.

Externalizing determinants in instructions, likethe embodiment of control in reinforcement his-tories, fails to do justice to the complexities of theregulatory process. As we have previously seen,one must distinguish between the mechanics andthe -agency of behavior regulation. An environmentmay provide information for developing self-reg-ulatory skills, but the recipients play an active rolein what information they extract from ongoingevents and when and how they use the acquiredskills. Instructions are merely sources of informa-tion that become influences through cognitive proc-essing rather than by reflexive adoption. It is notuncommon for people to improvise on informationconveyed by instructions to create their own per-formance guides (Bandura & Simon, 1977). In-deed, a major challenge to the investigation of self-regulatory processes, whether they involve self-observation, goal setting, cognitive rehearsal, orself-generated consequences, is that people do notsimply react mechanically to situational influences—they actively process and transform them.

It will be recalled from the earlier discussionthat in order for people to regulate their own be-havior through self-managed incentives, they haveto know what they are doing and to measure theirbehavior against personal standards of what con-stitutes a worthy performance. Hence, self-mon-itoring and goal setting are indispensable constitu-ents in the process, rather than ancillary compo-nents that can be plugged in or disconnected froma self-regulatory system. Jones et al. (1977) spec-

ulate about how self-observation, goal setting, andsituational demands might account for the effectsof contingent self-reward. An issue of contributoryinfluence need hot be cast in terms of rival deter-minants. A large body of evidence exists showingthat people who reward their own behavior achievesignificantly higher levels of performance thanthose who perform the same activities under in-struction but receive no reinforcement, are re-warded noncontingently, or monitor their own be-havior and set goals for themselves but do notreward their attainments (Bandura & Perloff, 1967;Bellack, 1976; Felixbrod & O'Leary, 1973; Glynn,1970; Jeffrey, 1974; Litrownik, Franzini, & Sken-derian, 1976; Mahoney, 1974; Montgomery &Parton, 1970; Speidel, 1974; Switzky & Haywood,1974).

Exclusive reliance on physical events in behavior-istic conceptions results in neglect of the role ofself-evaluative reactions in the regulation of be-havior. Consider, for example, the view set forthby Jones et al. (1977) that "although self-monitor-ing frequently is evaluated independently of self-reinforcement, the reverse is not the case" (p. 164).The first portion of the statement is debatable, thesecond is inconceivable. Self-monitoring can beregarded as independent of self-reinforcement onlyif the analysis is confined solely to material self-consequences of action. In fact, it is difficult forpeople to monitor their performances without set-ting goals for themselves and responding evalua-tively to their behavior. Most people value theirself-respect and the self-satisfaction derived froma job well done more highly than they do rein-forcement tokens. To ignore the influential role ofself-evaluative reactions in the self-regulation ofbehavior is to disavow a uniquely human capacity.

Self-reinforcement has never been evaluated in-dependently of self-monitoring, nor is there muchprospect that it ever will, simply because it wouldrequire an impossible feat. People cannot rewardtheir behavioral attainments contingently if they donot know what they are doing. Observation ofone's performances is a necessary precondition forcontingent self-reward, not a handy but discon-nectable component. Nor, for reasons given above,can evaluative self-reactions be easily dissociatedfrom self-monitoring and goal-setting operations.To restate a central thesis of this article, self-generated influences cannot be excised from amongthe determinants of human' behavior without sac-rificing considerable explanatory and predictivepower.

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • APRIL 1978 • 351

It might be argued that after self-regulatoryfunctions are established, the self system operatesin a wholly automatic fashion. Environmentalstimuli trigger the regulatory mechanism to producepredictable outcomes, in the manner of cyberneticcontrol. Were this the case, functional relation-ships could be established between environmentalstimuli and responses without knowing much aboutthe characteristics and processes of the self system.Such an analysis, however, rests on a number ofimprobable assumptions. The operational limitsof the cybernetic model are too numerous to pro-vide an adequate account of self-directed change.Consider only a few of the complexities involved.At the first step, a self-regulatory system requiresclose and reliable monitoring of behavior. In real-ity, most performances are difficult to codify be-cause they are multifaceted, with each aspect vary-ing on a number of relevant dimensions. Conse-quently, one must rely on integrative judgmentrather than on preset mechanical sensors. In addi-tion to complexities in the reading of behavior,self-observation is usually episodic rather than con-tinuous. The poorer the quality of self-observa-tion, the more difficult is the attainment of self-directed change (Kazdin, 1974; Mahoney, Moore,Wade, &Moura, 1973).

The demands on personal judgment are evenheavier in the referential operations, which cannotrely solely on the preset properties of the system.Performances must be evaluated in terms of vary-ing arrays of circumstances under which they occurand measured against reference standards that syn-thesize several sources of comparative information.Here we are dealing with evaluative and compositecomparative judgments rather than with a mechan-ical comparator that checks the readings from asensor against a preprogrammed criterion as in themodel of cybernetic control. Nor is there anythingautomatic about the amount, type, and temporaladministration of self-consequences.

To automate a self-regulation system one wouldhave to preprogram (a) an elaborate set of intri-cate sensors that could decipher instantly informa-tion contained in novel combinations of relevantvariables that appear in multifarious varieties, (b)a comparitor that contained all the possible refer-ential standards derivable from the various com-parative factors in the relational network, and (c)a device whereby differential comparative signalswould automatically select and trigger particularself-reactions from a wide variety of possible re-sponses. The system would, of course, require

precise and continuous self-monitoring. These con-ditions are achievable in mechanical and biologicalsystems that perform a limited routine functionand hence involve only a few possible responsesregulated by a few variables. A thermostat, forexample, is sensitive only to variations in tempera-ture, it can only turn off or on, and it is everwatchful.

Because of the complexity of behavioral function-ing at "input," "throughput," and "output," cogni-tive processing serves in place of reflexive mechan-ics. The more complex the activities that are self-regulated, and the less particularized the regulatorydecision rules, the more judgmental factors enterthe process, and the more the process departs fromthe mechanical servocybernetic metaphor.

Incomplete preprogramming has some decidedbenefits. A wholly automated psychocyberneticself system would produce completely predictableresponsiveness but at the heavy price of rigidity.When adaptive demands vary significantly acrosssituations and times, as they typically do, what isfunctional under one set of circumstances becomesdysfunctional under different circumstances. Pre-programmed feedback sensitivity to immediatebenefits would often produce aversive long-runcqnsequences. An automaton that is self-guidedby instant feedback to fixed internal referentswould repeatedly direct itself into serious difficul-ties or even out of existence. In actuality, self-regulation operates in terms of basic preset prop-erties, but it also relies on reflective judgment inassessing behavioral events, in rendering referentialcomparisons, and in selecting self-responses. Toachieve full automaticity would require completeautomation of judgment as well. Those who holda wholly "robotic" view of the process face thetask of explaining how automatons program auto-matons and whether a regress of programmers ulti-mately leads to inventive nonautomatons with acapacity for reflective thought.

Reciprocal Influence of External Factorson Self-Regulatory Functions

Social learning theory regards self-generated influ-ences not as automonous regulators of behavior butas contributory influences in a reciprocally inter-acting system. A variety of external factors serveas reciprocal influences on the operation of a selfsystem. They can affect self-regulatory processesin at least three major ways: They are involved inthe development of the component functions in


self-regulatory systems; they provide partial sup-port for adherence to self-prescribed contingencies;and they facilitate selective activation and disen-gagement of internal contingencies governing con-duct.

DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-REGULATORY FUNCTIONS

The development of capabilities for self-reactionrequires adoption of standards against which per-formances can be evaluated. These internal cri-teria do not emerge in a vacuum. Behavioralstandards are established by precept, evaluativeconsequences accompanying different performances,and exposure to the self-evaluative standardsmodeled by others (Bandura, 1976, 1977b; Mas-ters & Mokros, 1974). People do not passivelyabsorb behavioral standards from the environmentalstimuli that happen to impinge upon them. Theyextract generic standards from the multiplicity ofevaluative reactions that are exemplified and taughtby different individuals or by the same individualson different activities and in different settings(Bandura, 1976; Lepper, Sagotsky, & Mailer,197S). People must therefore process the divergentinformation and eventually arrive at personalstandards against which to measure their ownbehavior.

Associational preferences add another reciprocalelement to the acquisition process. The peoplewith whom one regularly associates partly influencethe standards of behavior that are adopted. Valueorientations, in turn, exercise selective influence onchoices of activities and associates (Bandura &Walters, 1959; Krauss, 1964).

EXTERNAL SUPPORTS FOR SELF-REGULATORY SYSTEMS

In analyzing regulation of behavior through self-produced consequences, one must distinguish be-tween two different sources of incentives that oper-ate in the system. First, there is the arrangementof self-reward contingent upon designated per-formances to create proximal incentives for oneselfto engage in the activities. Second, there are themore distal incentives for adhering to the self-prescribed contingencies.

Adherence to performance requirements for self-reward is partly sustained by periodic environ-mental influences that take a variety of forms(Bandura, 1977b). First, there are the negativesanctions for unmerited self-reward. When stan-dards are being acquired or when they are later

applied inconsistently, rewarding oneself for unde-serving performances is more likely than not toevoke critical reactions from others. Occasionalsanctions for unmerited self-reward influence thelikelihood that people will withhold rewards fromthemselves until their behavior matches their stan-dards (Bandura, Mahoney, & Dirks, 1976). Per-sonal sanctions operate as well in fostering suchadherence. After people adopt codes of conduct,when they perform inadequately or violate theirstandards they tend to engage in self-critical andother distressing trains of thought. Anticipated,thought-produced distress over faulty behavior pro-vides an internal incentive to abide by personal stan-dards of performance (Bandura, 1977b).

Negative inducements, whether personal or social,are not the most reliable basis upon which to resta system of self-regulation. Fortunately, there aremore advantageous reasons for exercising some in-fluence over one's own behavior through self-ar-ranged incentives. Some of these personal benefitsare extrinsic to the behavior; others derive fromthe behavior itself.

People are motivated to institute performancecontingencies for themselves when the behaviorthey seek to change is aversive. To overweightpersons, the discomforts, maladies, and social costsof obesity create inducements to control their over-eating. Similarly, students are prompted to im-prove their study behavior when failures in coursework make academic life sufficiently distressing.By making self-reward conditional upon perfor-mance attainments, individuals can reduce aversivebehavior, thereby creating natural benefits for theirefforts.

The benefits of self-regulated change may pro-vide natural incentives for adherence to personalprescriptions for valued activities as well as forunpleasant ones. People often motivate themselvesby conditional incentives to enhance their skills inactivities they aspire to master. Here the personalbenefits derived from improved proficiency supportself-prescription of contingencies. Self-generatedinducements are especially important in ensuringcontinual progress in creative endeavors, becausepeople have to develop their own work schedulesfor themselves. There are no clocks to punch orsupervisors to issue directives. In analyzing thewriting habits and self-discipline of novelists, Wal-lace (1977) documents how famous novelists reg-ulate their writing output by making self-rewardcontingent upon completion of a certain amount of


writing each day whether the spirit moves them ornot.

If societies relied solely on inherent benefits tosustain personal contingencies, many activities thatare tiresome and uninteresting until proficiency inthem is acquired would never be mastered. Up-holding standards is therefore socially promotedby a vast system of rewards including praise, socialrecognition, and honors. Few accolades are be-stowed on people for self-rewarding their mediocreperformances. Direct praise or seeing others pub-licly recognized for upholding excellence fostersadherence to high performance standards (Bandura,Grusec, & Menlove, 1967).

Modeling is a powerful means for establishingbehavior, but it has rarely been studied as a main-tenance factor. Considering that human behavioris extensively regulated by modeling influences,there is every reason to expect that seeing otherssuccessfully regulate their own behavior by condi-tional incentives would increase the likelihood ofadherence to self-prescribed contingencies in ob-servers.

Although self-regulatory functions are developedand occasionally supported by external influences,this does not negate the fact that exercise of thatfunction partly determines how people behave. Inthe case of arduous tasks, environmental induce-ments alone often fail to produce change, whereasthe same inducements with contingent self-rewardprove successful (Bandura & Perloff, 1967; Bellack,1976; Mahoney, 1974; Switzky & Haywood, 1974;Flaxman & Solnick, Note 1). Competencies devel-oped through the aid of self-reward enable peopleto activate environmental influences that wouldotherwise not come into play. This is because mostenvironmental influences are only potentialitiesuntil actualized by appropriate action. In stillother instances, the behavior fashioned throughself-reward enables people to alter importantaspects of their environment.

Because personal and environmental determi-nants affect each other in a reciprocal fashion, at-tempts to assign causal priority to these twosources of influence reduce to the "chicken-or-egg"debate. The quest for the ultimate environmentaldeterminant of activities regulated by self-influencebecomes a regressive exercise that can yield no vic-tors in explanatory contests, because for every ulti-mate environmental cause that is invoked, one canfind prior actions that helped to produce it.

SELECTIVE ACTIVATION AND DISENGAGEMENT

OF SELF-REACTIVE INFLUENCES

The third area of research on the role of externalfactors in self-regulation centers on the selectiveactivation and disengagement of self-reactive in-fluences (Bandura, 1977b). Theories of internal-ization that portray incorporated entities (e.g., theconscience or superego, moral codes) as continuousinternal overseers of conduct are usually at a lossto explain the variable operation of internal controland the perpetration of inhumanities by otherwisehumane people.

In the social learning analysis, considerate peopleperform culpable acts because of the reciprocaldynamics between personal and situational deter-minants of behavior rather than because of defectsin their moral structures. Development of self-regulatory capabilities does not create an invariantcontrol mechanism within a person. Self-evaluativeinfluences do not operate unless activated, andmany situational dynamics influence their selectiveactivation.

After ethical and moral standards of conduct areadopted, anticipatory self-censuring reactions forviolating personal standards ordinarily serve asself-deterrents against reprehensible acts (Bandura& Walters, 1959). Self-deterring consequences arelikely to be activated most strongly when thecausal connection between conduct and the detri-mental effects it produces is unambiguous. Thereare various means, however, by which self-evalua-tive consequences can be dissociated from repre-hensible behavior. Figure 4 shows the severalpoints in the process at which the disengagementcan occur.

One set of disengagement practices operates atthe level of the behavior. What is culpable can bemade honorable through moral justifications andpalliative characterizations (Gambino, 1973; Kel-man, 1973). In this process, reprehensible conductis made personally and socially acceptable by por-traying it in the service of beneficial or moral ends.Such cognitive restructuring of behavior is an espe-cially effective disinhibitor because it not onlyeliminates self-generated deterrents but engagesself-reward in the service of the behavior.

Another set of dissociative practices operates byobscuring or distorting the relationship betweenactions and the effects they cause. By displacingand diffusing responsibility, people do not see them-selves as personally accountable for their actionsand are thus spared self-prohibiting reactions (Ban-


MORAL JUSTIFICATION

PALLIATIVE COMPARISON

EUPHEMISTIC LABELING1

REPREHENSIBLE

CONDUCT

I MINIMIZING, IGNORING,

OR MISCONSTRUING THE

CONSEQUENCES1

DETRIMENTAL

EFFECTS

OEHUMANIZATION j

ATTRIBUTION OF BLAME |I

_ J

-** VICTIM

DISPLACEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY

DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY

Figure 4. Mechanisms through which behavior is disengaged fromself-evaluative consequences at different points in the behavioralprocess.

dura, Underwood, & Fromson, 1975; Milgram,1974). Additional ways of weakening self-deter-ring reactions operate by disregarding or obscur-ing the consequences of actions. When people em-bark on a self-disapproved course of action forpersonal gain, or because of other inducements,they avoid facing the harm they cause. Self-cen-suring reactions are unlikely to be activated as longas the detrimental effects of conduct are disre-garded.

The final set of disengagement practices operatesat the level of the recipients of injurious effects.The strength of self-evaluative reactions partly de-pends on how the people toward whom actions aredirected are viewed. Maltreatment of individualswho are regarded as subhuman or debased is lessapt to arouse self-reproof than if they are seen ashuman beings with dignifying qualities (Zimbardo,1969). Detrimental interactions usually involve aseries of reciprocally escalative actions in whichthe victims are rarely faultless. One can alwaysselect from the chain of events an instance of de-fensive behavior by the adversary as the originalinstigation. By blaming victims, one's own actionsare excusable. The disengagement of internal con-trol, whatever the means, is not achieved solelythrough personal deliberation. People are sociallyaided in this process by indoctrination, scapegoat-ing, and pejorative stereotyping of people held indisfavor.

As is evident from preceding discussion, the de-velopment of self-regulatory functions does notcreate an automatic control system, nor do situa-tional influences exercise mechanical control. Per-sonal judgments operating at each subfunction pre-

clude the automaticity of the process. There isleeway in judging whether a given behavioral stan-dard is applicable. Because of the complexity andinherent ambiguity of most events, there is evengreater leeway in the judgment of behavior and itseffects. To add further to the variability of thecontrol process, most activities are performed undercollective arrangements that obscure responsibility,thus permitting leeway in judging the degree ofpersonal agency in the effects that are sociallyproduced, In short, there exists considerable lati-tude for personal judgmental factors to affectwhether or not self-regulatory influences will beactivated in any given activity.

Reciprocal Influence of Personal Factorson Reinforcement Effects

Reinforcement has commonly been viewed as amechanistic process in which responses are shapedautomatically and unconsciously by their imme-diate consequences. The assumption of automa-ticity of reinforcement is crucial to the argument ofunidirectional environmental control of behavior.One can dispense with the so-called internal linkin causal chains only if persons are conceived of asmechanical respondents to external stimuli. Theempirical evidence does not support such a view(Bandura, 1977b; Bower, 1975; Mischel, 1973;Neisser, 1976). External influences operate largelythrough cognitive processes.

During ongoing reinforcement, respondents aredoing more than simply emitting responses. Theydevelop expectations from observed regularitiesabout the outcomes likely to result from their


actions under given situational circumstances. Con-trary to claims that behavior is controlled by itsimmediate consequences, behavior is related to itsoutcomes at the level of aggregate consequencesrather than momentary effects (Baum, 1973).People process and synthesize contextual and out-come information from sequences of events overlong intervals about the action patterns that arenecessary to produce given outcomes.

The notion that behavior is governed by its con-sequences fares better for anticipated than foractual consequences (Bandura, 1977b). We havealready reviewed research demonstrating how thesame environmental consequences have markedlydifferent effects on behavior depending on respon-dents' beliefs about the nature of the relationshipsbetween actions and outcomes and the meaningof the outcomes. When belief differs from actual-ity, which is not uncommon, behavior is weaklyinfluenced by its actual consequences until morerealistic expectations are developed through re-peated experience. But it is not always expecta-tions that change in the direction of social reality.Acting on erroneous expectations can alter howothers behave, thus shaping the social reality in thedirection of the expectations.

While undergoing reinforcing experiences, peopleare doing more than learning the probabilistic con-tingencies between actions and outcomes. Theyobserve the progress they are making and tend toset themselves goals of progressive improvement.Investigators who have measured personal goalsetting as well as changes in performance find thatexternal incentives influence behavior partlythrough their effects on goal setting (Locke, Bryan,& Kendall, 1968). When variations in personalgoals are partialed out, the effects of incentives onperformance are reduced. Performance attainmentsalso provide an important source of efficacy in-formation for judging one's personal capabilities.Changes in perceived self-efficacy, in turn, affectpeople's choices of activities, how much effort theyexpend, and how long they will persist in the faceof obstacles and aversive experiences (Bandura,1977a; Brown & Inouye, 1978).

Because of the personal determinants of rein-forcement effects, to trace behavior back to en-vironmental "reinforcers" by no means completesthe explanatory regress. To predict how outcomeswill affect behavior, one must know how they arecognitively processed. To understand fully themechanisms through which consequences changebehavior, one must analyze the reciprocally con-tributory influences of cognitive factors.

Reciprocal Determinism as a GenericAnalytic Principle

The discussion thus far has primarily addressedissues regarding the reciprocal interactions betweenbehavior, thought, and environmental events asthey occur at the individual level. Social learningtheory treats reciprocal determinism as a basicprinciple for analyzing psychosocial phenomena atvarying levels of complexity, ranging from intra-personal development, to interpersonal behavior, tothe interactive functioning of organizational andsocietal systems. At the intrapersonal level, peo-ple's conceptions influence what they perceive anddo, and their conceptions are in turn altered by theeffects of their actions and the observed conse-quences accruing to others (Bandura, 1977a;Bower, 1975). Information-processing models areconcerned mainly with internal mental operations.A comprehensive theory must also analyze how con-ceptions are converted to actions, which furnishsome of the data for conceptions. In social learn-ing theory, people play an active role in creatinginformation-generating experiences as well as inprocessing and transforming informative stimulithat happen to impinge upon them. This involvesreciprocal transactions between thought, behavior,and environmental events which are not fully en-compassed by a computer metaphor. People arenot only perceivers, knowers, and actors. They arealso self-reactors with capacities for reflective self-awareness that are generally neglected in informa-tion-processing theories based on computer modelsof human functioning.

At the level of interpersonal behavior, we havepreviously examined how people reciprocally deter-mine each others' actions (Bandura et al., 1960;Patterson, 1975; Raush et al., 1974). Althoughthe mutuality of behavior may be the focus ofstudy, the reciprocal processes involve cognition aswell as action. At the broader societal level, recip-rocal processes are reflected in the interdependenceof organizational elements, social subsystems, andtransnational relations (Bandura, 1973; Keohane& Nye, 1977). Here the matters of interest are thepatterns of interdependence between systems, thecriteria and means used for gauging systemic per-formances, the mechanisms that exist for exercisingreciprocal influence, and the conditions that alterthe degree and type of reciprocal control that onesystem can exert on another.

It is within the framework of reciprocal deter-minism that the concept of freedom assumes mean-ing (Bandura, 1977b). Because people's concep-


tions, their behavior, and their environments arereciprocal determinants of each other, individualsare neither powerless objects controlled by environ-mental forces nor entirely free agents who can dowhatever they choose. People can be consideredpartially free insofar as they shape future condi-tions by influencing their courses of action. Bycreating structural mechanisms for reciprocal influ-ence, such as organizational systems of checks andbalances, legal systems, and due process and elec-tive procedures, people can bring their influenceto bear on each other. Institutional reciprocalmechanisms thus provide not only safeguardsagainst unilateral social control but the means forchanging institutions and the conditions of life.Within the process of reciprocal determinism liesthe opportunity for people to shape their destiniesas well as the limits of self-direction.

REFERENCE NOTES

1. Flaxman, J., & Solnick, J. V. Self-reinforcement, andself-monitoring under conditions of low and high de-mand. Unpublished manuscript, University of NorthCarolina, 1975.

2. Simon, K. M. Self-evaluative reactions to one's ownperformances: The role of personal significance of per-formance attainments. Unpublished manuscript, Stan-ford University, 1978.

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The Self System in Reciprocal Determinism - Semantic Scholar · The Self System in Reciprocal Determinism ALBERT BANDURA Stanford University ABSTRACT: Explanations of human behavior