Social Cognitive Theory and Agenda Setting Theory
Social Cognitive Theory and Agenda Setting Theory are two topics that are very popular within the fields of communication and how scholars apply those theories to their studies. The term “Social Cognitive Theory” is about how our own behaviors, environment, and personal factors all contribute to the observations we have made within the context of social interactions. This term is most popularly associated with Albert Bandura and his Bobo doll experiment. Our next term of “Agenda Setting Theory” is all about how the news media can influence our awareness and concerns about certain salient issues. These two theories were the main subject for this week’s class and can be applied to anyone’s life experiences.
For me, the way these two theories play into my personal life is based on what social media apps that I use. To give an example, I was one who was so against downloading TikTok because I thought it was a stupid app that my sister used, but one day I decided to download it and now I’m hooked. Using this app you see a lot of peoples personal lives and a common thing to post is daily routines or “what I eat in a day”, through this observation I have picked up some new workout routines and cooking recipes that I enjoy due to observing others and wanting to mimic that lifestyle. The way that “Agenda Setting Theory” is connected to my everyday life is by seeing all the different news channels or websites and their articles on COVID-19 and how what I am reading has influenced my opinions on this subject.
The artifact that I have selected this week goes with “Social Cognitive Theory” and that is the movie Big Daddy. In this movie, Adam Sandler plays a man whose girlfriend leaves him because she believes he is unable to commit to anything, and then Cole Sprouse shows up thinking that Adam Sandler is his real dad when it is actually his friend’s son. During the movie, Sonny (Adam Sandler) shows Julian (Cole Sprouse) how he lives by purposefully tripping people in the park, eating takeout, peeing in public, and so on. By doing this Julian has observed Sonny’s habits and mimicks them thinking that what he is doing is normal because the person he looks up to is performing the same behaviors. The reading for this week from Social Learning Theory and Social Cognitive Theory talks about the key factors that play into the “Social Cognitive Theory” and one of them is vicarious learning. “Observing behaviors of others, and an individual can develop rules to guide his/her subsequent behavior” (Prestine). This quote perfectly describes the behaviors caused by Julian living with Sonny because he is constantly watching what he does day-to-day.
Connecting this to an outside source, according to “Social Cognitive Theory” article written by Wayne W. LaMorte from Boston University talks about the different types of constructs that go into theorizing SCT, and one of them is Reinforcements. He defines this as “the internal or external responses to a person’s behavior that affect the likelihood of continuing or discontinuing the behavior” (LaMorte). Going back to the movie, when things get more serious around having custody over Julian he tries to reinforce his behaviors by showing he is capable of taking care of him like when they were at the park and instead of tripping the rollerbladers he made the effort to clear the way and inform them passing by that their path may be blocked so that Julian is able to see this and readjust his actions.
It can be pretty obvious how the concepts of “Social Cognitive Theory” connect to my life and my classmates. The whole subject of this theory revolves around our behaviors and how they are influenced by watching what others do. I know that for myself I have learned certain habits from my teachers at school by telling us what is right and whats wrong, in addition to learning from my parents because I have lived with them for such a long time that when growing up I thought that whatever they did or say was acceptable because they are my parents. Just like how Julian learned his behavioral actions through Sonny, the same thing can be applied to our own lives of picking up certain behaviors from the people we look up to.
