Self Analysis Based on Banduras Theory free essay sample

The way we think, how we treat people, how we talk, how we perceive others, etc. are very important for us. That means it’s the aspects that our parents or environment teaches/nurtures us. Self-introspection is very important for us. Especially for psychology students, because if we don’t know about who we are, how can we understand others. In this theory Bandura wants us to express our own thoughts about ourselves. We are expected to control ourselves from anything that we have to face. In order to control ourselves, we need to have our own standpoint and stay committed to it. We can’t let anyone bother or affect us in any way. II. SELF ANALYSIS LEARNING Bandura believes that people learn through observing others and by attending to the consequences of their own actions. Although he believes that reinforcement aids learning, he contends that people can learn in the absence of reinforcement and even of a response. We will write a custom essay sample on Self Analysis Based on Banduras Theory or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page There are two types of learning, observational learning and enactive learning. Observational learning means that we learn from modeling others. For kids, mainly parents, teachers, caregiver, or anyone who’s close to the child. I know that it is impossible that I’m the only one who gone through this phase of learning, every child must’ve copied acts of others based on what they see. When I was 2 years old, I was going somewhere together with my parents. Suddenly a car passes through and cut our lane, then I yelled, â€Å"ape lo? (what do you want? )† to that car. My parents were shocked and laughed about it. That shows that I modeled what they usually do without even realizing that those acts can really do affect children. Modeling does not always occur while we were still young; it is attached to our self. We tend to model people who has higher position than us and people who got positive feedbacks on what they just did. Bandura recognized four processes that govern observational learning, which are attention, representation, behavioral reproduction, and motivation. I took ballet for 9 years since I was 3 years old. For dancing, the most important aspect that we need to do is pay attention to the teacher so that we can represent the dance step by memorizing them. After we perceive and memorize the dance step, we will try to reproduce them by practicing the dance steps that we’ve learned. The last thing is our own motivation whether we are motivated because we got positive feedbacks or not because of negative feedbacks. But we still can keep on trying and practicing in order to get the positive feedbacks. Enactive learning is the same as operant conditioning, which means that we receive consequences on anything that we do. We will get reward if we do something that’s good or right. But in contrast, we will be punished if we do something bad or wrong. There are positive and negative aspects of both reinforcement and punishment. Cognitively anyone don’t want to be punished, that’s why people tend not to repeat their mistakes and try to get more reward by doing the right things. Throughout my life as my parents’ child, I got reinforced and punished a lot. Negative reinforcement means removing pain or anything uncomfortable so that we can feel better. Me taking a medicine when I got ill means that I got negative reinforcement, whereas positive reinforcement means that we receive something for our pleasure. This happens quite a lot too, whenever I achieve something my parents tend to give me something that I want as a reward. When I do something wrong, I’ll get punished for sure. Negative punishment means that my pleasure have been revoked from me. Up until now when I got bad score or come home late, I will get grounded. My parents will take my phone away and I’m not allowed to go anywhere with my friends for some time. And for positive punishment, it’s an act that cause us feel uncomfortable. I rarely got positive punishment, but I got my things thrown into me by my mom. It’s because I spend too much on Japanese CDs, DVDs, goods, magazines, etc. and charged it to my credit card. My mom told me to reduce my spending on those things, but I keep on doing it. In the end my mom got really mad and threw those things towards me. Since then I stop spending my money on those merchants. TRIADIC RECIPROCAL CAUSATION Social cognitive theory holds that human functioning is molded by the reciprocal interaction of behavior, personal factors, including cognition, and environmental events—a model Bandura calls triadic reciprocal causation. In differential contributions, Bandura does not suggest that the three factors in the triadic reciprocal causation model make equal contributions to behavior. The relative influence of behavior, environment, and person depends on which factor is strongest at any particular moment. And in chance encounters and fortuitous events, the lives of many people have been fundamentally changed by a chance meeting with another person or by a fortuitous, unexpected event. Chance encounters and fortuitous events enter the triadic reciprocal causation paradigm at the environment point, after which they influence behavior in much the same way as do planned events. I do believe there is fate. Especially when we’re talking about friendship. So, it was back in junior high school. I was a big fan of a Japanese boyband called NEWS, there was an international forum for the fans from all over the world. And in the Indonesian topic room, I met some Indonesian who lives all over Indonesia and some abroad. Then I met my friend. She was in the same age as mine and lives in Jakarta too. We have so much in common. Until one day we decided to meet up, and we did. It was so fun. We could talk anything with each other even outside the topic of the Japanese boyband. We did nearly lost contact, but eventually we did still keep in touch. Then she lost interest in that Japanese boyband, but we remained friends. She’s now one of my best friends. From all of the odds I found one of my best friend through the internet. It’s indeed funny and silly, even our friends consider our meeting as geeky and odd. We even still laugh at how we met. But when you are fated to meet or know that person, it will happen. HUMAN AGENCY CORE FEATURES OF HUMAN AGENCY According to Bandura, human agency is the essence of humanness; that is, humans are defined by their ability to organize, regulate, and enact behaviors that they believe will produce desirable consequences. Human has 4 core features, which are intentionally, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness. Intentionally literally means that we have the intention or plan that includes action to produce the result that we want. I planned on going abroad for college back when I was still in junior high school, that’s why I intentionally enrolled to an international high school. But when I dad changed his mind that I can’t go abroad for college, I altered my plan to enroll to UI International Program. I still want to study abroad. Then at first my dad won’t approve, and in contrast my mom told me to go for it. When my dad told me to take the SNMPTN and SIMAK exam I deliberately failed on those exam so that I could enter the international class. Because I know how much my dad wants me to be in this university and I explained to him about how mature that I’d be to leave this country and study abroad. Forethought is our ability to set goals and selecting the behavior that will produce the outcomes that we desire and avoid things that we don’t want it to happen. I planned on going to graduate school right after I finish my undergraduate studies. That was my plan since I decided to take psychology back when I was still in junior high school. I have the will to achieve this goal of mine. That’s why I will still keep on studying so that I can get in to graduate school as I planned before and I wont let anyone disturb my goal or even let myself distracted. I will to achieve my ultimate goal and be a successful consultant. Self-reactiveness is the process of motivating and regulating our own actions to fulfill our choices that we’ve made. In order to achieve my goal on being a successful psychologist/consultant I have to keep on studying and achieving good grades so that there won’t be any difficulty when it’s time to enroll myself to a graduate school. I have to keep focusing on my goal and not letting anyone or anything interfere with it. Although right now my grades are not satisfying, I still have to keep up with it and try to fix my scores. I still have to be motivated because being here was my own choice since the beginning. I have to be committed to myself. Self-reflectiveness allows us to think about and evaluate our motives, values, and life goals. By evaluating myself, I find that I’ve achieved almost every goal that I’ve made. I’m glad with it, but there are still a couple of goals that I have to achieve. I still have to improve my academic achievement. All these years I passed my courses with only average scores. I underestimated my scores; I always thought that as long as I pass it’s okay. But in fact I have to be able to achieve more. I feel that I’m too less motivated, I feel satisfied with my average score. The only thing that makes me worry is when I fail or got less than average score even though I know that it’s my own fault. I have to improve my point of view and hopefully achieve higher scores. SELF-EFFICACY How people behave in a particular situation depends in part on their self-efficacy, that is, their beliefs that they can or cannot exercise those behaviors necessary to bring about a desired consequence. Self-efficacy combines with environmental variables, previous behaviors, and other personal variables to predict behavior. It is acquired, enhanced, or decreased by any one or combination of four sources: mastery experiences, social modeling, social persuasion, and physical and emotional states. Mastery experience is the most important factor on determining our self-efficacy. It basically success raises self-efficacy and failure lowers it. I’m good at baking, when I bake people tend to enjoy what I’ve made. Whenever I got good feedbacks from people who eat my baking I feel satisfied and happy. I conclude myself as pretty good in the kitchen. But someday I tried cooking main course dishes instead of desserts, it came out not as I expected. I expect it to came out great because I handle things in the kitchen well. I had too high expectancy. That’s why since then I never cook any main course dishes. Social modeling is the experience when we see someone succeeding, our self-efficacy increases and when we see them failing, it decreases. Whenever I see someone succeeding in something, I will think that I can do it as well. When my older brother bought a Mercedes using his own money, I really think that why can’t I do that too. He finished his graduate school when he was 24 years old, and by 28 he could afford his own car. That’s why I want to be like him. I know that working is not easy, but it’ll be worth it. In contrast, when I see someone failing on a particular matter, I tend to avoid it. I don’t want the same failure to happen to me. Social persuasion basically means the encouragement or discouragement that we receive from others. Where encouragement will increase self-efficacy, and discouragement will lower it. I took ballet for 9 years, which means I was already enrolled in the advance class. There are a couple of difficult and complex routine. For example doing a triple/quadruple pirouette or a grand jete or any other complex routine. Whenever I tell my self that I can’t do it, I really can’t complete the routine. But when I got encourage by my teacher, I can do it. Physical and emotional states happen in a stressful situation, such as fear or anxiety and usually lower self-efficacy. Whereas in a contrast situation, it will increase our self-efficacy. This happens to me whenever I feel nervous at something. When I have to present a presentation in front of the class but I don’t feel well or I don’t really master the topic I will tremble and ended up messing up my presentation. The outcome will be very bad. But when I feel comfortable and confident, the presentation that I’m doing will turn out great. PROXY AGENCY Bandura recognize that the influence of proxy agency through which people exercise some partial control over everyday living. People nowadays have to rely on the proxies or else our life will be unproductive because we have to do all unnecessary things by ourselves. We rely on people who are specialized at their jobs. We rely on our parents to take care of us, rely on our housekeeper to clean up our house, we even rely on the internet for finishing our assignments or just stay in contact with our friends. All of them/it helps us to complete tasks easier, but the negative impact is when we rely on them too much, without them we can’t complete those tasks by ourselves. We’ll be too dependable. COLLECTIVE EFFICACY Collective efficacy is the level of confidence that people have that their combined efforts will produce social change. At least four factors can lower collective efficacy. First, events in other parts of the world can leave people with a sense of helplessness; second, complex technology can decrease peoples perceptions of control over their environment; third, entrenched bureaucracies discourage people from attempting to bring about social change; and fourth, the size and scope of worldwide problems contribute to peoples sense of powerlessness. SELF-REGULATION Humans can manipulate their environments and produce consequence of their own actions by giving them some ability to regulate their own behavior. Bandura believes that behavior stems from a reciprocal influence of external and internal factors. External factors affect self-regulation by providing people with standards for evaluating their own behavior. There are 2 factors that contribute to external self-regulation, they are standards of evaluation and external reinforcement. Environment is the most common external factor of self-regulation. My family and friends are the ones who affected me the most. I evaluate myself right after my family or friends commented something about me. Whether it’s a reprimand or complement, I’ll always re-evaluate myself what have I done, how can I keep up or change what’s wrong and become better. Internal factors there are 3 factors contributing to this matter. Which are self-regulation, judgmental process, and self-reaction. All of those factors came from inside us, our own self-introspection on our acts and behaviors. I tend to observe myself right after I do something, whether I did it correctly or not. I think about anything that bothers my mind, I even regret when I know I did something wrong towards something or someone. Once I said something wrong to my friends and I know that they were offended. I wasn’t thinking what I was saying and I just realize right after that. I feel very bad and feel like I’m such a bad person on what I’ve done. I regret it and wishing that I could take back what I’ve just said to them. Up until now, I still feel guilty towards them although they’ve forgiven me. We have our own standards on how we evaluate or judge our performance. Every person has different threshold. For me myself, I don’t want to compare myself with others. I just want to be me. I don’t want to be influenced by others. I’d accept when people tell me to change my bad habits. But if people are trying to change me, I wont accept that. DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOR Dysfunction behavior is learned through the mutual interaction of the person (including cognitive and neurophysiological processes), the environment (including interpersonal relations), and behavioral factors (especially previous experiences with reinforcement). Such as depression, phobias, and aggression. These dysfunctional behaviors can be treated by a regular therapy treatment. In my whole life, I’ve never had any dysfunctional behavior. I don’t have any specific phobias. Of course I’m disgusted by reptiles or insects but I don’t have any significant phobias towards them. I’m not a cold-headed person, I can get angry easily but I don’t imply an extreme aggression. The most aggressive thing that I’ve done is throwing things when I got really mad. But I don’t throw the things towards people but mostly doors or walls or anything that I can at least ease up my mind a bit. III. CONCLUSION After comprehending Bandura’s theory, I can conclude that he wants us to know more about ourselves and wants us to be ourselves, by not letting anyone interfere on what we believe in. Although we still have to consider what people think about us, we have to accept our flaws and try to improve ourselves. We have to be independent in some way so that we wont be dependent on one thing or another. We could achieve what we want to do by ourselves. Not forgetting that we still have to stay motivated on what we are doing and what we want to achieve. We can’t give up or just get distracted that could jeopardize our future goals. In order to still be motivated, we have to find ways so that we could still be interested and still determined to reach our goal. By looking at people who’ve reached their goals and be our role model, we could still be motivated. We have to have the will from inside ourselves to be able to reach our goal and for external factors such as family and friends that are always there for you and keep supporting you until you reach your goals.