Public Relations and Social Marketing

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND SOCIAL MARKETING 4(1+3)

Lesson 11 : Importance of Social Marketing in Development

Family Interpersonal Theories

Social learning or cognitive theory

Interpersonal theories of influencing behaviors
In the 1970s, Bandura developed SLT which explains behavior in terms of triadic reciprocality ("reciprocal determinism") in which behavior, cognitive and other interpersonal factors, and environmental events all operate as interacting determinants of each other. A basic premise of the social learning theory (SLT) or SLT is that people learn not only through their own experiences, but also by observing the actions of others (vicarious learning) and the results of those actions.

This theory defines human behaviour as a triadic, dynamic and reciprocal interaction of personal factors, behaviour, and the environment, with the individual's behaviour being uniquely determined by each of these three factors.

One of the key concepts in Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) is an environmental variable: observational learning. In contrast to earlier behavioral theories, SCT views the environment as not just one that reinforces or punishes behaviors, but it also provides a milieu where one can watch the actions of others and learn the consequences of those behaviors. Processes governing observational learning include:

• Attentional: gaining and maintaining attention
  
• Retention: being remembered
  
• Production: reproducing the observed behavior
  
• Motivational: being stimulated to produce the behavior
  

Other core components of SCT include

• Self-efficacy: a judgment of one's capability to accomplish a certain level of performance.
  
• Outcome expectation: a judgment of the likely consequence such behavior will produce.
  
• Outcome expectancies: the value placed on the consequences of the behavior.
  
• Emotional coping responses: strategies used to deal with emotional stimuli including psychological defenses (denial, repression), cognitive techniques such as problem restructuring, and stress management.
  
• Enactive learning: learning from the consequences of one's actions (versus observational learning).
  
• Rule learning: generating and regulating behavioral patterns, most often achieved through vicarious processes and capabilities (versus direct experience).
  
• Self-regulatory capability: much of behavior is motivated and regulated by internal standards and self-evaluative reactions to their own actions.

SCT is viewed as one of the more comprehensive efforts to explain human behavior. Its focus on reciprocal determinism and self-efficacy (the latter, as we have seen, has been adopted by other theoretical models as well) give social marketers a strong theoretical base from which to launch environmental interventions that complement individually-focused ones. The theory also underlies many attempts to model new behaviors for our target audience, and that attention, retention, production and motivational processes must all be addressed for effective learning and performing of new behaviors.